Labour Law in an Era of Globalization: Transformative Practices and Possibilities

Throughout the industrial world, the discipline of labour law has fallen into deep philosophical and policy crisis, at the same time as new theoretical approaches make it a field of considerable intellectual ferment. Modern labour law evolved in a symbiotic relationship with a postwar institutional and policy agenda, the social, economic, and political underpinnings of which have gradually eroded in the context of accelerating international economic integration and wage-competition, a decline in the capacity of the nation-state to steer economic progress, the ascendancy of fiscal austerity and monetarism over Keynesian/welfare state politics, the appearance of post-industrial production models, the proliferation of contingent employment relationships, the fragmentation of class-based identities and emergence of new social movements, and the significantly increased participation of women in paid work. These developments offer many appealing possibilities - the opportunity, for example, to contest the gender division of labour and re-think the boundaries between immigration and labour policy. But they also hold out quite threatening prospects - including increased unemployment and inequality and the decline of workers' organizations and social participation - in the context of proliferating constraints imposed by international financial pressures on enacting redistributive social and economic policies. New strategies must be developed to meet these challenges. These essays - which are the product of a transnational comparative dialogue among academics and practitioners in labour law and related legal fields, including social security, immigration, trade, and development - identify, analyse, and respond to some of the conceptual and policy challenges posed by globalization. Contributors to this volume - Harry Arthurs is University Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto. He is President Emeritus of York University and Dean Emeritus of Osgoode Hall. James Atleson is Professor of Law at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Paul Benjamin practices labour law in Cape Town, South Africa. Linda Bosniak is Professor of Law at Rutgers University Law School in Camden, New Jersey. Carlos de Buen Unna is a labour lawyer in Mexico City. Bruno Caruso is Professor of Labour Law and Comparative Labour Law at the Faculty of Law, the University of Catania, Sicily. Hugh Collins is currently Professor of English Law at the London School of Economics, and was formerly a Fellow of Brasenose College Oxford. Joanne Conaghan is a Reader in Law at the University of Kent and Managing Editor of Feminist Legal Studies. Dennis Davis has been a judge of the High Court of South Africa, sitting in Cape Town, since 1998. Massimo D'Antona was, at the time of his assassination on 20 May 1999, Ordinario of Labour Law in the University of Rome `La Sapienza' and advisor to the Ministry of Labour. Simon Deakin is Reader in Economic Law at the University of Cambridge. Richard Michael Fischl is Professor of Law and Master of Pearson Residential College at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. Alan Hyde is Professor of Law and Sidney Reitman Scholar at the Rutgers University School of Law in Newark. Paddy Ireland is Senior Lecturer in Law and Head of the Law School at the University of Kent in Canterbury. Makoto Ishida is Professor of Law at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. Karl Klare is George J. and Kathleen Waters Matthews Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern University, Boston Dr. Margriet Kraamwinkel works as a lawyer and policy analyst for the largest construction trade union in the Netherlands. Brian Langille is Professor of Law and Dean of the Graduate Programme at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, where he teaches labour law and legal theory. Patrick Macklem is Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. Molly S. McUsic is Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina Law School in Chapel Hill. Guy Mundlak is a Senior Lecturer of Law at the Faculty of Law and the Department of Labor Studies, Tel-Aviv University. Maria L. Ontiveros is Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco. Frances Raday is the Elias Lieberman Professor of Labour Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Kerry Rittich is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law and the Women's Studies Programme at the University of Toronto. Michael Selmi teaches employment law and civil rights at George Washington University Law School. Lucy Williams is Professor of Law at Northeastern University, where she was the School of Law's 1994-1995 Public Interest Distinguished Professor.