New Theoretical Trends and Political Approaches in Labor and Employment Law (Japanese)

The primary role of the labour law has been viewed traditionally as addressing the unequal bargaining power between employers and employees focusing on standard employment contracts. The rapid and continuous increase in non-standard employment, however, made many labour scholars reconsider the role and the normative foundation of the labour law. In response, various new theories have been put forward. The purpose of this article is to look into these arguments particularly proposed by the UK labour law scholars which are that the role of the labour law can be attributed to labour market regulations. The point of view that the labour law should be regarded as labour market regulations originates in the argument of the UK labour scholars during the 1980s. This argument asserted the usefulness of putting individual bargaining processes between employers and employees into the perspective of labour market regulations. By taking this approach, the labour law can be understood as the means for providing the institutional framework for maintaining a sustainable labour market. But Hugh Collins criticized this argument and stated that we should point toward the new normative foundation of the labor law instead of addressing the unequal bargaining power and should delineate its new scope if we were to take such approach as labour market regulations. The new version of the labour law as labour market regulations since 2000 has proposed new normative foundations for the labour law and the expansion of its scope. In other words, the recent approach of labour market regulation has been implying for the new normative foundations, the new ambits, and the new methods of the labour law. It is argued in this paper what implications the approach of labour market regulations can bring to Japanese labour law.