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New Labour’s Reform of Britain’s Employment Law: The Devil is not only in the Detail but in the Values and Policy Too
Author(s) -
Smith Paul,
Morton Gary
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
british journal of industrial relations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.665
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1467-8543
pISSN - 0007-1080
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8543.00192
Subject(s) - labour law , government (linguistics) , general partnership , dual (grammatical number) , labour economics , power (physics) , economics , industrial relations , market economy , political economy , art , linguistics , philosophy , physics , literature , management , finance , quantum mechanics
The Labour government’s goal of social partnership embodies a particular view of the appropriate role of labour within the employment relationship, which requires the marginalization of trade unionism as an autonomous force. Its programme of employment law reform combines a dual focus: first, the reaffirmation of measures that weaken workers’ collective power through the exclusion of autonomous trade unionism, and second, initiatives to regulate the labour market, strengthen workers’ rights within the employment relationship, and include enterprise‐confined, cooperative unions as subordinate ‘partners’. However, the second policy dimension has been diluted because of the commitment to free‐market values.