Introduction: Issues and Overview

In all developed countries, workers are protected by statutory and/or contractual employment rights, and there are institutions for adjudicating between workers and employers should disputes arise. This book focuses solely on the organisation and operation of these institutions. We do not examine workers’ employment rights as such or how those rights are publicised, although such provisions contribute to the ability of the law to resolve disputes. Nor do we look at workplace institutions that provide scope for such disputes to be resolved before they enter the judicial domain, except where there is a direct and prescribed link between the workplace and external adjudication. We leave that to other books. We define ‘adjudicating’ broadly to include decisions by a court, by an arbitral body, by an administrative body or by an enforcement body and we restrict our attention to individual disputes of rights, not of interests, although in some countries there is an overlap in terms of the institutions used.