Labour law and new forms of corporate organization

n today’s global economy, the drive for corporate competitiveness I and flexibility has led to sweeping changes in the ways enterprises are organized, economically, financially and in terms of their workforce (Boyer and Durand, 1998; Castels, 1998). Developments such as the emergence of global financial networks, outsourcing, relocation and the establishment of networks of enterprises have had far-reaching consequences for labour relations and labour law enforcement. This article examines a few of the issues raised by these transformations together with the ways in which they could be managed – tentatively at this stage – in law, particularly with reference to the experience of France and Europe. 1 Born of the second industrial revolution, contemporary labour law is, historically, the outcome of a gradual process of construction, concomitant with that of productive organization itself, within national boundaries. Such law, be it statutory or contractual, was strongly influenced by the integrated large-scale enterprise model. It conceptualizes wage employment relationships in terms of binary relations between employers and workers. It is therefore hardly surprising that the reorganization of firms, under the combined effects of financial concentration and productive decentralization, should give rise to a new set of needs for protection. The necessary evolution of labour law has already been the subject of important contributions (Supiot, 1999; Simitis, 1997; Verge and Vallee, 1997). Since the early 1980s, a process of important legal reform has