|
United Kingdom labour law regulates the relations between workers, employers and trade unions.〔Northern Ireland has specific legislation and is excluded from two primary statutes, the ERA 1996 s 244 and TULRCA 1992 s 301, but has mostly analogous provisions and falls under most of the other Acts and Regulations.〕 People at work in the UK benefit from a minimum charter of employment rights,〔See KW Wedderburn, ''The Worker and the Law'' (3rd edn Harmondsworth 1986) 6, referring to a "floor of rights", and ''Gisda Cyf v Barratt'' () UKSC 41, ()〕 which are found in various Acts, Regulations, common law and equity. This includes the right to a minimum wage of £6.50 for over 21-year-olds under the National Minimum Wage Act 1998.〔https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates〕 The Working Time Regulations 1998 give the right to 28 paid holidays, breaks from work, and attempts to limit excessively long working hours. The Employment Rights Act 1996 gives the right to leave for child care, and the right to request flexible working patterns. The Pensions Act 2008 gives the right to be automatically enrolled in a basic occupational pension, whose funds must be protected according to the Pensions Act 1995. To get fair labour standards beyond the minimum, the most important right is to collectively participate in decisions about how an enterprise is managed. This works through collective bargaining, underpinned by the right to strike, and a growing set of rights of direct workplace participation. Workers must be able to vote for trustees of their occupational pensions under the Pensions Act 2004. In some enterprises, such as universities,〔See the Education Reform Act 1988 s 124A and Sch 7A, para 3〕 staff can vote for the directors of the organisation. In enterprises with over 50 staff, workers must be informed and consulted about major economic developments or difficulties.〔See the Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004〕 This happens through a steadily increasing number of work councils, which usually must be requested by staff. However, the UK remains behind European standards in requiring all employees to have a vote for their company's board of directors, alongside private sector shareholders, or government authorities in the public sector.〔See the Companies Act 2006 ss 110 ff〕 Collective bargaining, between democratically organised trade unions and the enterprise's management, remains the "single channel" for individual workers to counteract the employer's abuse of power when it dismisses staff or fix the terms of work. Collective agreements are ultimately backed up by a trade union's right to strike: a fundamental requirement of democratic society in international law. Under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 strikes are basically lawful if they are "in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute". As well as having rights for fair treatment, the Equality Act 2010 requires that people are treated equally, unless there is a good justification, based on their gender, race, sexual-orientation, beliefs and age. To combat social exclusion, employers must positively accommodate the needs of disabled people. Part-time staff, agency workers, and people on fixed-term contracts are treated generally equally compared to full-time or permanent staff.〔Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000, Fixed-Term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002 and Agency Workers Regulations 2010〕 To tackle unemployment, all employees are entitled to reasonable notice before dismissal after a qualifying period of a month, after two years they can only be dismissed for a fair reason, and are entitled to a redundancy payment if their job was no longer economically necessary.〔ERA 1996 ss 86, 94 and 135. The qualification period is one month two have one week's notice, and after two years, employees must have at least two week's notice, a fair reason and redundancy pay. The minimum level of notice and redundancy pay increases each year of employment.〕 If an enterprise is bought or outsourced, the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 require that employees' terms cannot be worsened without a good economic, technical or organisational reason. The purpose of these rights is to ensure people have dignified living standards, whether or not they have the relative bargaining power to get good terms and conditions in their contract.〔See ''Autoclenz Ltd v Belcher'' () (UKSC 41 ), ()〕 ==History== Labour law in its modern form is primarily a creation of the last three decades of the 20th century. However, as a system of regulating the employment relationship, labour law has existed since people worked. In feudal England, the first significant labour laws followed the Black Death. Given the shortage of workers and consequent price rises the Ordinance of Labourers 1349 and the Statute of Labourers 1351 attempted to suppress sources of wage inflation by banning workers organisation, creating offences for any able-bodied person that did not work, and fixing wages at pre-plague levels. Ultimately this led to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, which was in turn suppressed and followed up with the Statute of Cambridge 1388, which banned workers from moving around the country. Yet conditions were improving as serfdom was breaking down. One sign was the beginning of the more enlightened Truck Acts, dating from 1464, that required that workers be paid in cash and not kind. In 1772 slavery was declared to be illegal in ''R v Knowles, ex parte Somersett'',〔(1772) 20 State Tr 1〕 and the subsequent Slave Trade Act 1807 and Slavery Abolition Act 1833 enforced prohibition throughout the British Empire.〔However, it was not until the Criminal Justice Act 1948 that penal servitude, forced labour for prisoners, was abolished.〕 The turn into the 19th century coincided with the start of the massive boom in production. Gradually people's relationship to their employers moved from one of status - formal subordination and deference - to contract whereby people were formally free to choose their work.〔See Henry James Sumner Maine, ''Ancient Law'' (1861)〕 However, freedom of contract did not, as the economist Adam Smith observed, change a worker's factual dependency on employers. As its height, the businesses and corporations of Britain's industrial revolution organised half the world's production across a third of the globe's surface and a quarter of its population. Joint Stock Companies, building railways, canals and factories, manufacturing household goods, connecting telegraphs, distributing coal, formed the backbone of the ''laissez faire'' model of commerce. Industrialisation also meant greater urbanisation, and inevitably miserable conditions in the factories. The Factory Acts dating from 1803 required minimum standards on hours and conditions of working children. But people were also attempting to organise more formally. Initially, trade unions were suppressed, particularly following the French Revolution of 1789 under the Combination Act 1799. The Master and Servant Act 1823 and subsequent updates stipulated that all workmen were subject to criminal penalties for disobedience, and calling for strikes was punished as an "aggravated" breach of contract. But then the position was slowly liberalised and through the Trade Union Act 1871 and the Conspiracy, and Protection of Property Act 1875 trade unions were legitimised.〔See also, the ''Royal Commission on Trade Unions'' (1867) Cmnd ???; Employers and Workmen Act 1875.〕 Toward the turn of the 20th century, in ''Mogul Steamship Co Ltd v McGregor, Gow & Co'',〔() AC 25〕 the House of Lords emphasised that businesses should be free to organise into trade associations in the same way that employees organised into unions. However, with growing unrest and industrial action the House of Lords changed its mind. At the turn of the 20th century he notorious judgment of ''Taff Vale Railway Co v Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants'',〔() AC 426〕 made unions liable in economic tort for the costs of industrial action. Although a combination of employers in a company could dismiss employees without notice, a combination of employees in a trade union were punished for withdrawing their labour. The case led trade unions to form a Labour Representation Committee, which then became the UK Labour Party, to lobby for the reversal of the law. After their landslide victory in the 1906 general election, the Liberals, among whom David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill were rising stars, embarked on significant welfare reforms. These included the Trade Disputes Act 1906, which laid down the essential principle of collective labour law that any strike "in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute" is immune from civil law sanctions. The Old Age Pensions Act 1908 provided pensions for retirees. The Trade Boards Act 1909 created industrial panels to fix minimum wages and the National Insurance Act 1911 levied a fee to insure people got benefits in the event of unemployment. During World War One the brutality of the Western Front demanded the participation of every available person and resource. As women took over traditional "men's jobs" the Suffragette movement gained momentum. Before the war's conclusion, the Representation of the People Act 1918 gave universal suffrage to men over age 21 and women over 28. A new beginning was promised by the victors to their people. The Versailles Treaty created the International Labour Organisation to draw up common standards between countries, for as it said, "peace can be established only if it is based on social justice", and echoed the US Clayton Act 1914 in pronouncing that "labour should not be regarded merely as a commodity or an article of commerce".〔Versailles Treaty 1919, Part XIII and Art 427〕 But the international system remained disjointed as the United States Congress withheld its approval to join the League of Nations. Within the UK the postwar settlement was to make a home fit for heroes. Whitley Councils extended the Trade Boards Act 1909 system to Joint Industrial Councils that encouraged (non legally binding) fair wage agreements,〔The Whitley Report was published by the Ministry of Reconstruction, see Committee on Relations between Employers and Employed, ''Final Report'' (1918) Cmnd 9153; see also, Whitley Committee, ''Interim Report on Joint Standing Industrial Councils'' (1917) Cmnd 8606〕 while the Ministry of Labour actively organised and advised the growth of trade unions.〔See KD Ewing, 'The State and Industrial Relations: 'Collective Laissez-Faire' Revisited' (1998) 5 Historical Studies in Industrial Relations 1.〕 This was based on a theory of collective bargaining, agreement or action, advocated by Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb in ''Industrial Democracy'' to remedy the inequality of bargaining power of workers.〔S Webb and B Webb, ''Industrial Democracy'' (Longmans 1902)〕 Without legal force behind collective agreements, the law remained in a state of collective ''laissez faire'', encouraging voluntarism for agreement and dispute settlement between industrial partners. The 1920s and 1930s were economically volatile. In 1926 a General Strike against coal miners' pay cuts paralysed the country, though was broken by Winston Churchill, by then the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Labour Party had formed Parliamentary majorities in 1924 and 1929, but achieved little in the way of reform, particularly after the onset of the Great Depression. By the Second World War and the Labour government of Clement Attlee, trade union membership was well established and collective agreements covered over 80 per cent of the workforce. With the British Empire in rapid dissolution, immigration from Commonwealth countries, and record levels of female workplace participation the character of Britain's workforce was changing fast. Though the common law was sometimes comparatively progressive,〔See ''Constantine v Imperial Hotels Ltd'' () KB 693.〕 sometimes not,〔See ''Nairn v The University Court of the University of St Andrews'' (1907) 15 SLT 471, 473, per Lord McLaren, it was "a principle of the unwritten constitutional law of this country that men only were entitled to take part in the election of representatives to Parliament."〕 the first statutes to prohibit discrimination focused on gender and race emerged in the 1960s as the Civil Rights Act was passed in the United States. Discrimination in employment (as in consumer or public service access) was formally prohibited on grounds of race in 1965,〔See the Race Relations Act 1965, RRA 1968 and RRA 1976; ''Charter v Race Relations Board'' () AC 868, 889, Lord Morris says "a new guiding principle of fundamental and far-reaching importance... In the terms decreed by Parliament, but subject to the exceptions permitted by Parliament, discrimination against a person of colour, race or ethnic or national origins has become unlawful by the law of England."〕 gender in 1975, disability in 1995, sexual orientation and religion in 2003 and age in 2006.〔See the Equal Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, Disability Discrimination Act 1995, Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003, Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003 and the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006.〕 A complicated and inconsistent jamboree of Acts and statutory instruments was placed into a comprehensive code in the Equality Act 2010. Much discrimination law is now applicable throughout the European Union, to which the UK acceded in 1972. Although labour laws in the early European Treaties and case law were scant,〔With the notable exception of the leading case, ''Defrenne v Sabena (No 2)'' () ECR 455 (C-43/75)〕 the Social Chapter of the Maastricht Treaty brought employment rights squarely into the EU's jurisprudence. Meanwhile, starting from the Contracts of Employment Act 1963, workers gained a growing list of minimum statutory rights, such as the right to reasonable notice before a fair dismissal and a redundancy payment.〔See also Redundancy Payments Act 1965 and the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978.〕 Labour governments through the 1960s and 1970s were troubled by reform of the unwieldy trade union system. Despite producing reports such as ''In Place of Strife'' and the ''Report of the committee of inquiry on industrial democracy''〔Alan Bullock, ''Report of the committee of inquiry on industrial democracy'' (1977) Cmnd 6706〕 which would have made unions accountable to their members created more direct workplace participation, reform did not take place. From 1979, a new Conservative government took a strongly sceptical policy to all forms of labour law and regulation. During the 1980s ten major Acts gradually reduced the autonomy of trade unions and the legality of industrial action.〔Employment Act 1980 (trade union right to government funds for ballots, narrowed picketting immunity, reduced secondary action immunity, unions right to expel members limited), Employment Act 1982 (narrowed "trade dispute" definition), Trade Union Act 1984 (secret ballots for union elections and strikes), Public Order Act 1986 (set out offences related to picketing, and increased police power over groups of over 20 people), Wages Act 1986 (deregulated restrictions on employers fining and deducting money from employees' pay, removed statutory holiday entitlement, reduced state funding for redundancies), Employment Act 1988 (worker's right to not join a union, trade union member's right to challenge strike ballots), Employment Act 1989 (restricted trade union officials' time off for duties, abolished the Training Commission, abolished government support for redundancy payments), Employment Act 1990 (removing closed shop and secondary action protection), TULRCA 1992 (consolidated legislation hitherto), Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act 1993 (trade union duty to inform employers of upcoming strikes)〕 Reforms to the internal structure of unions mandated that representatives be elected and a ballot is taken before a strike, that no worker could strike in sympathetic secondary action with workers with a different employer, and that employers could not run a closed shop system of requiring all workers to join the recognised union. The wage councils were dismantled. A public campaign against the merits of unions paralleled the decline of membership and collective agreement coverage to under 40 per cent. In addition, the government opted out of the EU Social Chapter in the Maastricht Treaty. In 1997 the new Labour government brought the UK into the EU's Social Chapter, which has served as the source for most reform in UK law since that time. Domestic led reform was minimal. The National Minimum Wage Act 1998 established a country-wide minimum wage, but did not attempt to reinvigorate the Wage Board system. The Employment Relations Act 1999 introduced a 60-page procedure requiring employers to compulsorily recognise and bargain with a union holding support among workers, though union membership remained at a level steadily declining below 30 per cent. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「United Kingdom labour law」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|