Search results

In order to succeed in an action under the Equal Pay Act 1970, should the woman and the man be employed by the same employer on like work at the same time or would the woman still be covered by the Act if she were employed on like work in succession to the man? This is the question which had to be solved in Macarthys Ltd v. Smith. Unfortunately it was not. Their Lordships interpreted the relevant section in different ways and since Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome was also subject to different interpretations, the case has been referred to the European Court of Justice.

Proposes to treat social law contracts by covering the two most important aspects of the contract of employment, and also the collective agreement. Covers the contract of employment in full with all the integral laws explained as required, including its characteristics, written particulars, sources or regulations, with regard to employers, are also covered. Lengthy coverage of the collective agreement is also included, showing legal as well as moral (!) requirements, also included are cases in law that are covered in depth.

Most research on employment relationship has been done on the Anglo‐Saxon context, the results of which may not be totally valid for India. The emerging employment relationship in India is best viewed through the lens of psychological contracts. Psychological contract has significant influence on valuable workplace outcomes. This paper seeks to propose a model for understanding employment relationship through the concept of psychological contracts.

With the help of published case studies in the Indian context and based on social exchange theory, this paper proposes a model wherein trust mediates the relationship between the perception of breach of the psychological contract and HR systems.

As more and more employees come under non‐unionized workforce, the non‐formal aspects of employment through the lens of psychological contracts becomes an important lever to manage employment relationships. The model presented in this paper suggests that depending on the HR system an organization adopts, the perception of breach of psychological contract gets affected. Based on the notion of consistency of HR practices, it is argued that HR systems across organizations form two archetypal extremes and each of these give rise to a different perception of breach of psychological contract.

As HR managers are faced with a range of choices in implementing HR systems, it becomes difficult to narrow down the available options. This study would provide some guidelines to do so, by highlighting the process through which HR systems impact the perception of breach of psychological contracts and the resulting employment relationship.

The purpose of this monograph is to examine the various ways in which the contract of employment may be terminated at common law other than by the common law of wrongful dismissal or statutory unfair dismissal and redundancy. Wrongful dismissal has already been discussed in another monograph and unfair dismissal and redundancy will feature in a subsequent one.

The recent House of Lords decision in Carmichael v. National Power plc decided that a casual/zero‐hours worker was self‐employed and thus excluded from most of the basic employment statutory rights. The aims of this article are to note the incidence and characteristics of the casual workforce in the UK and EU; to explore the current legal framework applying to casual workers, including the decision and implications of Carmichael; to note recent and intended legal measures which have particular relevance for casual workers; to evaluate the likely effectiveness of those recent or proposed legal measures; and to consider possible alternative strategies to establish an appropriate framework for casuals.

The original legislation which introduced the redundancy payments scheme was the Redundancy Payments Act 1965. This was the first of the substantive statutory individual employment rights given to an employee; other individual employment rights, as for example, the right not to be unfairly dismissed, followed some years later. The Redundancy Payments Act 1965 has been repealed and the provisions on redundancy are now to be found in the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978.

In an article entitled “Collective Bargaining — a theoretical analysis” A. Flanders defined collective bargaining as an “…institution for the joint regulation of labour management and labour markets.” The collective agreement, the result of the collective bargain, is normally an uninforceable contract and is a very different legal notion from that of the contract of employment. The function of the collective agreement is to regulate relations between the collective parties, that is between the employer's association or an individual employer, and a union or unions. Such relations are known as relations of a collective nature. They could include procedure agreements between the collective parties in relation to no‐strikes or other industrial action before the disputes procedure has been exhausted; matters to do with the structure of negotiations between the parties; the constitution of the bodies set up for collective bargaining purposes; procedures on re‐ negotiation of the collective agreement; and so on. The collective agreement has however another function, the individual function, which regulates relations between employer and employee. Terms and conditions of employment are usually regulated by the collective agreement. Thus pay scales, hours of work, holidays, wages during illness, overtime work, any matters relating to training, re‐training, apprenticeship, are some from among the numerous subjects to be found in conditions of employment. Procedures which relate to the individual employee, such as grievance and disciplinary procedures, may equally feature as part of the terms and conditions of employment which emanate from the collective agreement. Indeed statute requires that the employer gives his employee particulars of this latter's major terms and conditions of employment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how initial employment experiences of new entrants to the labor market, which results from changes in organizations employment practices affect individuals’ expectations from their future employers (their anticipatory psychological contracts and anticipated job insecurity) and to explore the implications of these effects for theory and practice.

The paper focussed on four common experiences and tested the hypotheses about their effects using data collected by a relatively large survey among mature college students with work experience (n=1,164).

Individuals who had been exposed to the experiences of being laid off, witnessing layoffs and having to accept reductions in pay or status held higher transactional and lower relational expectations from their future employers, in comparison with individuals who had not been exposed to such experiences. They also anticipated a higher level of job insecurity in their future employment.

In order to mitigate the potential negative consequences of the phenomenon discovered on employee retention and organizational performance, organizations have to develop and implement specific HR practices to deal with cohorts of new members, who have been exposed to the employment experiences investigated. Of particular importance are orientation and socialization practices that address new recruits’ concerns and expectations, and exposing new members to training and learning experiences that increase their employability outside the organization.

This is one of a few studies that documents empirically the (anecdotally based) claims about the effects of changes in the economic environment on individuals’ employment expectations and perhaps the first study to focus specifically on the effects of initial experiences of entrants to the labor market. It extends psychological contract research by focussing on the antecedants and formation of the psychological contract rather than on its consequences and on the anticipatory contract rather than on employees’ current psychological contracts.

In this part it is proposed to discuss five aspects of the contract of employment and matters relating to it. The nature of the contract of employment will be considered first and the discussion will then go on to treat statutory intervention as a factor which regulates the underlying structure of the law of employment. In the second instance the characteristics of the contract of employment will be considered. There will then follow a brief excursus on how a contract of employment is formed. Here only offer, acceptance, consideration capacity, intention to enter into legal obligations and form will feature. Discussions on legality of object and restrictive covenants will be left until later. Following on from this third aspect, the fourth will consist of a detailed examination of the statutory written particulars of employment, i.e. (written statement); the discussion will then go on to examine in what circumstances complaints connected with the written statement may be made to an industrial tribunal. The reader will finally be invited to look at a sample written statement by way of practical exercise.

Explores worker choices to become self‐employed contractors. Adopts a qualitative method and uses data from in‐depth interviews with workers from two contrasting occupational groups. Reveals five sets of factors which appear to be central to worker decision making. Contrasts the perspectives of the workers and draws conclusions relating to the impact of skill and labor market power on the choice of employed/self‐employed status, and subsequent career prospects. Suggests that recent views of “boundaryless careers” are more relevant to highly‐skilled groups of workers, and discusses the tensions between structural forces that constrain individuals’ career autonomy and the desire of many workers to be proactive agents in the construction of their own careers. The findings suggest that a balanced examination of “new careers” should account for the complexity of a new world of work that advantages only some. Argues for greater understanding of the choice between different modes of employment rather than just occupational choice. Finally, suggests that researchers and career practitioners need to be able to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of different modes of employment from a sound knowledge base.