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2017
Tuesday 5 December 2017 The EAT Uber judgment and workers' rights in the 'sharing economy' Speakers:
| About this event: Following the recent judgment of the EAT in Uber v Aslam, it is clear that tribunals are becoming increasingly assertive and keen to interfere with the contractual arrangements shaping the employment status of workers employed through on-line platforms.
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Tuesday, 28 February 2017 Brexit and Labour Rights - Challenges and Perspectives | About this event: As it is becoming increasingly clear that ‘Brexit really means Brexit’, a panel of distinguished speakers explores what Brexit would mean for labour rights. How are the rights of workers in the UK likely to be affected by the UK’s withdrawal from the EU? And how are the labour rights of British citizens working, on a temporary or permanent basis, in other EU countries likely to be shaped by Brexit? Finally how are EU labour rights likely to develop once the UK is no longer a Member State of the Union? |
Tuesday, 24 January 2017 The Optimism of the Will – Towards a Comprehensive Revision of Workers’ Rights: ‘A Manifesto for Labour Law’ Speakers: | About this event: Labour law reform debates have been caught between the rock of neoliberal deregulation and the hard place of nostalgia for an often idealised past. With its ground breaking publication ‘A Manifesto for Labour Law’, the Institute for Employment Rights, has sought to open a new discourse on the debate on the future of the world of work and on labour regulation, a discourse that is quickly gaining political traction in the UK and has important echoes in other European jurisdictions. John Hendy QC, Honorary Professor at UCL Laws, will introduce the key regulatory threads of the Manifesto, and in particular the objectives of giving ‘voice’ to workers, shifting the emphasis of workplace regulation from statute to collective agreements between workers and employers, renewed administrative support and public intervention in labour market regulation (with the establishment of a Ministry of Labour), and the introduction of fundamental and enforceable protection for all workers. Nicola Countouris, Professor of Labour Law and European Law at UCL Laws, will briefly illustrate a number of other similar regulatory initiatives currently developing in other European systems, in particular the Italian, CGIL backed, Carta dei Diritti Universali del Lavoro and the French project ‘Pour un Autre Code du Travail’. |
2015
Tuesday, 27 October 2015 The Trade Union Bill 2015 Speaker Professor John Hendy QC is a leading expert on Freedom of Association and the Right to Strike, and his work on the practical and legal consequence of the Bill is currently shaping much of the policy debate and critical thinking around the proposed reforms. | About this event: ‘A critical assessment of its impact on the fundamental right to strike’ Introduced by the new Conservative Government with the declared objective of ‘tackl[ing] the disproportionate impact of strikes in essential public services by introducing a tougher threshold’ in strike ballots, (Conservative Party Manifesto 2015) the Trade Union Bill 2015 has been viewed by both opposition and the union movement as ‘the most significant, sustained and partisan attack on six million trade union members and their workplace organisations that we have seen in this country in the last 30 years’. If adopted, some of the provisions contained in the Bill would render lawful industrial action virtually impossible by subjecting it to a 50% turnout requirement and, for some essential public services, to a 40% approval rate by all those eligible to vote. |
Thursday 23 April 2015 “Changing Times, Changing Relationships at Work...Changing Law?” Chair: Professor Keith Ewing (Prof. of Public Law, KCL) | About this event: We are privileged to host two distinguished members of the Australian and UK judiciary, offering us a unique perspective on the charged question as to whether labour law has kept pace with the constantly changing nature of work relations so as properly to regulate them. |
| Tuesday 10 March 2015 ‘Trade Unions and Economic Inequality’ With Dr. Lydia Hayes and Professor Tonia Novitz Chaired by Professor Keith Ewing. To visit the event website, please click on this link. Please click here for event Powerpoint presentations:
| About this event: Dr. Hayes and Prof. Novitz will illustrate the extremely significant, and often neglected, contribution that trade unions make to the pursuit of more equal societies. Building on their recent IER publication Trade Unions and Economic Inequality (2014, The Institute of Employment Rights) the two speakers will detail some of the economic and social achievements of Trade Unions, and reflect on the key regulatory reforms necessary to renew their ability to address inequalities. This panel discussion is part of a series on ‘Tackling Inequalities through Labour and Social Regulation’ co-organised by the UCL Labour Rights Institute and the Institute of Employment Rights, generously supported by the UCL European Institute. |
Tuesday 20 January 2015 | About this event: Ideas long rejected may turn out to be essential or even obvious in another age. Does this apply to the idea of a basic income, that is, a universal unconditional regular payment to every individual? This event is part of a series on ‘Tackling Inequalities through Labour and Social Regulation’ organised by the UCL Labour Rights Institute and generously supported by the UCL European Institute. |
2014
| Tuesday 28 October 2014 ‘Equality: The New Legal Framework Revisited’ Key Speaker: Other speakers: | About this event: This panel discussion was opened by Professor Bob Hepple’s presentation of his latest work Equality – The Legal Framework (2nd ed., Hart, 2014) and his analysis of the main developments in the UK Equality Law framework since the adoption of the Equality Act 2010. His analysis was followed by a discussion focusing predominantly on the many outstanding issues that, partly due to the partial and incomplete implementation of the EqA 2010, the next post-election Government may have to address in order to combat inequalities in the UK labour market and in society at large. This panel discussion was part of a series on ‘Tackling Inequalities through Labour and Social Regulation’ organised by the UCL Labour Rights Institute and generously supported by the UCL European Institute. The event was been co-organised by UCL Faculty of Laws and the Equal Rights Trust. |
| Tuesday 25 March 2014 Privacy and Employment: Time for Reform? Key speaker: Gillian Morris (Matrix Chambers/UCL) Chair: Dr Nicola Countouris (UCL) | About this lecture: In an age of electronic communications and social media there are now a multitude of ways in which employers may seek information about workers and prospective workers. English law in this area is complex and fragmented and it may be difficult in practice for workers to enforce their rights. One area of particular concern is the relevance of 'consent' to whether the provision of personal information is lawful and what 'consent' means in reality in the employment sphere. In this seminar Professor Gillian Morris asked whether it is now time for the law to adopt a more integrated approach to privacy which takes adequate account of the specific issues that may arise in relation to employment.
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Monday 24 March 2014 This event is a joint event by the UCL Labour Rights Institute and Institute for Human Rights. Speakers: Chair: Dr Virginia Mantouvalou (Reader in Human Rights and Labour Law, UCL)
| About this lecture: In the first ever case relating to HIV/AIDS discrimination in the workplace, I.B. v. Greece, the European Court of Human Rights held that the dismissal of an HIV-positive worker in response to workforce pressure violated human rights. The applicant was represented by the Co-Directors of the UCL Institute for Human Rights, Dr George Letsas and Dr Virginia Mantouvalou. The case concerned an employee, I.B., who was dismissed from his job in the private sector, when colleagues found out that he had HIV. They refused to work with him, demanding his dismissal. The employee challenged the dismissal as unlawful. However, the Greek Court of Cassation upheld the dismissal on the ground that it was not motivated by hostility towards his HIV status on the part of the employer, but by the need to ensure the peaceful running of the business. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that this the applicant's dismissal violates the European Convention on Human Rights. This seminar placed the case in its broader context of HIV discrimination and stigma in the workplace, the law on equality and discrimination, as well as the protection of labour rights in the European Convention on Human Rights. |
| Tuesday 4 February 2014 Next Generation Trade Unionism – What More Can Unions do to Recruit and Support Britain’s Young Workers? Key speaker: Paul Nowak, TUC Assistant General Secretary Chair: Jeremias Prassl | About this lecture: Paul Nowak, TUC assistant general secretary, reviewed union efforts to organise and recruit young workers and to build effective trade unions in the private service sector. The session also explored what practical steps unions can take to make trade unionism relevant to Britain’s young workers. |
2013
Tuesday 14 May 2013 Speakers: | About this symposium: In recent years, even months, the issue of rapidly declining labour rights standards in Greece has become the subject of intense academic debate and (more recently) human rights litigation, with a number of regional and international organisations assessing recent reforms against Greece’s international human/labour rights obligations. In 2011 a Report of the ILO High Level Mission to Greece, explicitly noted that ‘overall, the changes being introduced to the industrial relations system in the current circumstances are likely to have a spillover effect on collective bargaining as a whole, to the detriment of social peace and society at large’ and reminded Greece of its obligations ‘under ratified Conventions to promote the practice of collective bargaining in general’. These concerns are, if anything, more forcefully expressed in last year’s 356th Report of the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association (cf. page 249-274). The European Committee of Social Rights, in two recent decisions of 2012, was even more explicit in declaring the Greek state in breach of Articles 1, 4, 7, and 10 of the European Social Charter. This event proposed to debate in greater detail the labour law, industrial relations and human rights implications of these reforms from a national, European, and ILO perspective. |
2012
Friday 30 November 2012 Key speakers include Prof. Hugh Collins (LSE), Prof. Guy Davidov (Jerusalem), Prof. Simon Deakin (Cambridge), Prof. Sandra Fredman (Oxofrd), Prof. Brian Langille (Toronto), Prof. Judy Fudge (University of Victoria, Canada) and Prof. Guy Mundlak (Tel Aviv) | About this symposium: This event was organised by the Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies and hosted by the UCL LRI. Attendance was by invitation only. |
Wednesday 14 November 2012 Speaker: Professor Katherine Stone (Arjay & Frances Miller Distinguished Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law) Chair: Dr Virginia Mantouvalou This event was hosted by the UCL Labour Rights Institute and UCL Institute for Human Rights. | About this talk: The most important question for social policy today is: Can the United States participate in global trade while maintaining a robust middle class? Or does expanded global trade necessarily mean doom for the U.S. middle class and others in advanced industrial nations? This question might have sounded provocative, incendiary, or just plain silly a decade ago, but it can no longer be ignored. Several different approaches have been advocated to preserve the living standards of the middle class in advanced countries in the face of expanded global trade. This talk examines three clusters of policies that are the most promising, policies to (1) encourage a race to the top that can counterbalance a race to the bottom; (2) promote the creation of local and regional agglomeration economies that will act as counterweights to a race to the bottom, and (3) foster firm-level innovation and develop the skills and human capital of the local population. It concludes that we adopt policies that braid these three together in order to preserve the U.S. middle class. About the speaker: Professor Katherine Stone is the Arjay and Frances Fearing Miller Professor of Law at UCLA. She is also Visiting Professor at UCL in November 2012 and is on the advisory board of the UCL Labour Rights Institute. Professor Stone is a leading expert in labor and employment law in the United States. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship Award in 2008 and a Russell Sage Fellowship for 2008-2009 for her work on the changing nature of employment and the regulatory implications. Professor Stone's recent book, From Widgets to Digits: Employment Regulation for the Changing Workplace (Cambridge University Press in 2004) won the 2005 Michael Harrington Award from the American Political Science Association for the "outstanding book that best links scholarship to struggles for justice in the real world." The book was also the Finalist (Second Place) for the C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Her forthcoming book, Globalization and Flexibilization: The Remaking of the Employment Relationship in the 21st Century, will examine the changing employment landscape in Japan, Australia, and Europe. Prof Stone's paper can be found here. |
Tuesday 23 October 2012 Chair: Dr Nicola Countouris (UCL) | About this lecture: Both speakers are recognised experts in the field, with Prof. McKay recently completing an extensive EU funded Study on Precarious Work and Social Rights (2012) and Prof. Standing authoring the much acclaimed and widely circulated book The Precariat(Bloomsbury Academic, 2011). |
Friday 25 May 2012, 9 - 5.30pm Participants included:: | About the Event: |
Friday 18 May – Sat 19 May 2012 Participants included:
| About the Event: Terms such as ‘Social Europe’, the ‘European Social Dimension’, ‘European Social Model’, and, more recently, ‘European Social Pact’, have long resided in the political and regulatory lexicon of European integration. But arguably, after reaching a climax in 2000 with the inclusion of a ‘Solidarity’ chapter in the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the social profile of the EU has entered a deep period of crisis, one may say a phase of ‘social eurosklerosis’. The status quo is arguably one in which workers once again appear to shoulder most of the risks attendant upon the making and execution of arrangements for the doing of work, and associated with their particular personal work situation in the labour market at large. We define this status quo as one in which a process of de-mutualization of work related risks is seriously undermining the hard-fought and hard-earned social acquis that national social law, and Social Europe itself, once aspired to provide. And we advocate a reversal of the this trend in favour of a process of fair-mutualization of these risks, so as to disperse them away from workers, and share them more equitably between employers, the state, but also consumers, and society at large. The Labour Rights Institute of UCL (LRI), with the financial support provided by the British Academy Conference Grant (Grant No. CS110461) and by a number of other stakeholders (please see acknowldgements), seeks to bring together an interdisciplinary group of experts from the UK and the rest of Europe to discuss whether this current phase of ‘social eurosklerosis’ is likely to become a permanent feature of the EU, or whether new regulatory trajectories could and ought to be pursued. Acknowledgments: This event is organised with the support of the British Academy, UCL European Institute, UCL Centre for Law and Governance in the EU |
| Tuesday 31 January 2012 A Bill of Rights or a Bill of Wrongs? Speaker: Peter Reading (Director of Legal Policy at The Equality and Human Rights Commission) Chair: Colm O'Cinneide, UCL Accredited with 1 CPD hour by the SRA and BSB About this event: In March 2011 the coalition government established an independent Commission on a Bill of Rights. It has terms of reference to investigate the creation of a UK Bill of Rights that replaces the Human Rights Act (HRA) but '...incorporates and builds on all our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, ensures that these rights continue to be enshrined in UK law.' This lecture will examine the political and legal ramifications of the debate on replacing the HRA with a Bill of Rights. Do we already have a Bill of Rights in the form of the HRA? Does the HRA work effectively and should it be retained? What are the national implications for the devolution settlements in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland of a possible repeal of the HRA? And finally what are the potential international ramifications of repealing the HRA on the protection of human rights globally. | |
2011
| Tuesday 29 November 2011 Jivraj v Haswani and the Scope of Discrimination Law before the Supreme Court Speaker: Prof. Christopher McCrudden (Queen's University Belfast / Blackstone Chambers) Chair: Dr Nicola Countouris (UCL) Accredited with 1 CPD hour by the SRA and BSB About this lecture: In Jivraj v Haswani [2011] the Supreme Court redefined the personal and material scope of application of UK anti-discrimination law by reference to the EU Equality framework, and in particular Directive 2000/78. We are priviledge to host a public lecture by Professor Christopher McCrudden who, in addition to being one of the country's authorities in the area of equality and labour law, was directly involved as a barrister in the case discussed. | |
Thursday 16 June 2011 About this debate: | |
The EU Legal Migration Package This panel discussion presented and discussed the proposed directives in detail, placing them within their policy context, and weighed up arguments both in favour and against EU legislative involvement in this area.
The panel was co-organised by the UCL European Institute and the UCL Labour Rights Institute. It was their contribution to UCL Migration Week - a series of lectures, panel discussions, conferences and exhibitions, which will explore migration from a number of academic perspectives. The week was co-organised by the UCL Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration and the UCL Grand Challenges programme. | |
Tuesday 22 February 2011 | |
| Wednesday 9 February 2011 Labour Administration, Labour Inspection and the ILO: Current Regulatory Perspectives Speaker: Dr Guiseppe Casale, International Labour Organization (ILO) PowerPoint presentation here: |
2010
Tuesday 23 November 2010
'Precarious Working Lives - Labour Rights in Ken Loach's filmography: When Fiction meets Reality'
An evening spent in the company of Ken Loach, discussing the Director's most poignant and insightful recent masterpieces on the intrinsic vulnerability of working lives in this brave new world
About the event:
Ken Loach, a panel of labour law academics and practitioners, and an enthusiastic audience of UCL/London University students and members of the public, analysed and debated selected scenes from 'The Navigators' (2001), 'Bread and Roses' (2000), and 'It's a Free World' (2007), elaborating on the thin red line that separates fiction from reality, dignity from exploitation, stability from precariousness, hope from despair.
With the active participation and contribution of Dame Hazel Genn (Dean at UCL Laws), Dr Nicola Countouris (UCL Laws - LRI), Dr Ingrid Boccardi (UCL Laws - LRI), Professor Mark Freedland (Oxford - chairing the event), Professor Diamond Ashiagbor (SOAS), Professor Sonia McKay (London Metropolitan), Mrs Jeannette Sainsbury (Thompsons Solicitors), and the UCL employment law students of 2010-2011.
Comments:
'How useful for us, law students, to approach employment law and labour rights, not through books, as we are usually required to do, but through the work of a well-known filmmaker dealing with controversial political and social issues' - Victoria
'I found it absolutely fascinating, and so inspiring to hear the views and efforts of so many working towards fighting for changes in employment protection. I also thoroughly enjoyed the movies and found it such a useful way to get to grips with some of the problems currently at the centre of employment law, and not just in the UK' - Stephanie
'I found the discussions truly inspirational and refreshing. I was not aware of such influential films and you have introduced many of us to a talented and thoughtful director. The use of DVD's in seminars was an excellent way to portray the real life nature of what we study' - Masuma
'It was very encouraging. I do hope the passion that you all express so clearly translates into coherent action' - Ken Loach