The contract of employment heads the list of those labour market institutions whose continued usefulness is called into question by what appear to be fundamental changes in the world of work. However, given the multiple tasks of classification, regulation and redistribution which it has...

This paper reconstructs the evolutionary path of the contract of employmentin English law. It demonstrates that the contract of employment is a more recent innovation than widely thought, and that its essential features owe as much to legislation as they do to the common law of contract. The...

The paper reviews industrial relations developments in Britain during 1999 by assessing how New Labour's policy commitment to encouraging 'partnership' is developing in practice. After a discussion of the Employment Relations Act it considers the wider influence of European legislation. It then...

The paper assesses the prospects for Britain's new statutory trade union recognition procedure in the light of empirical evidence concerning union derecognition practice in the 1990s. It draws on 15 cases of union derecognition across a broad spread of employment, matched with comparable cases...

The management of pay in Britain has changed substantially in recent years. The paper starts with a theoretical discussion of the extent to which individual employers can exercise discretion in the management of their employees' pay. It then examines the ways in which pay is used to secure...

Using data gathered primarily during interviews with managers and trade union officials, this article examines how trade unions and employers have reacted to the introduction of the statutory procedure for union recognition in the Employment Relations Act 1999 (ERA). Findings indicate that the...

The article analyses the institutional basis and form of the employment contract in Britain using the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey. It assesses the extent to which collective bargaining still regulates pay and non-pay aspects of employment. The paper shows that while collective...

The EU Working Time Directive has so far had little impact on an ingrained culture of long-hours working in the UK. Case studies suggest that the use of individual opt-outs from the 48-hour limit on weekly working time is a principal reason for this. However, removal of the individual opt-out...