Labour law is in crisis. Global economic factors and the changing contours of work and workplace relations have led to a reorientation of the social, economic, political and cultural environment within which labour law has developed. This is not a jurisdictional problem but rather is deeply entrenched in transnational development. Solutions must recognise and mobilise the transformational shift that has taken place over recent decades. Law should be viewed as a force for and a facilitator of change, capable of expressing and determining social relations. The essays in this book explore the challenges posed by labour law's potential reinvention as a discipline fit for accommodating and investigating such change within a range of different but connected jurisdictional and regulatory concepts and paradigms.

This unique selection of chapters brings together researchers from a variety of academic disciplines to explore aspects of law's engagement with working families. It connects academic debate with policy proposals through an integrated set of approaches and perspectives. Families, Care-giving and Paid Work offers an original approach to a very topical area. Not only does it consider the limitations of law in relation to the regulation of care-giving and workplace relationships, but it is premised upon a reconsideration of law's potential and engages with suggested strategies for bringing about long-term social change. Offering a range of analyses, this book will strongly appeal to policy makers and practitioners involved with promoting work and family issues, students in labor and employment studies, law and social policy, as well as academics interested in work and family reconciliation issues, or gender and law issues. Contributors: N. Busby, T. Callus, E. Caracciolo di Torella, S. Charlesworth, R. Guerrina, R. Horton, G. James, C. Lyonette, S. Macpherson, A. Masselot, O. Smith, M. Weldon-Johns

A Right to Care? considers the reconciliation of unpaid care and paid work which is among the most pressing and difficult problems currently facing employment law. The incompatibility of carers' needs and the demands of the labor market is commonly identified in relation to working mothers, but is by no means confined to this group as dependency for aspects of personal care can arise as a result of disability, illness or aging. In all of its forms, unpaid care is predominantly provided by women so that its intersection with paid work is severely gendered. In recent years European integration has focused on the need to increase employment rates whilst maintaining labor market flexibility. Many workers who seek to combine unpaid care with paid employment find themselves engaged in increasingly precarious forms of work, yet legal and policy responses have, to date, been reactive and incremental, resulting in a framework which is operationally ineffective in certain respects.
Nicole Busby explores the potential for the development of a specific right to care within European employment law which would facilitate the reconciliation of these two central aspects of an individual's life and, in raising the status of care, would assist in the rebalancing of paid and unpaid work between men and women. The central premise is that the current constitutional and regulatory framework is in fact sufficiently flexible to take account of the diverse circumstances and resulting needs of working carers and that the European Court of Justice has the competence and capability to provide the necessary creativity to give effect to such a right. She argues that what is needed to instil coherence and consistency is a specific focus on unpaid work within European employment law, and provides a policy solution on how this should be brought about.

Families in market economies have long been confronted by the demands of participating in paid work and providing care. Across Europe the social, economic and political environment within which families do so has been subject to substantial change in the post-World War II era and governments have come under increasing pressure to engage with this important area of public policy. In the UK, as elsewhere, the tensions which lie at the heart of the paid work/unpaid care conflict remain unresolved posing substantial difficulties for all of law's subjects both as carers and as the recipients of care. What seems like a relatively simple goal - to enable families to better balance care-giving and paid employment - has been subject to and shaped by shifting priorities over time leading to a variety of often conflicting policy approaches. This book critiques how working families in the UK have been subject to regulation. It has two aims: * To chart the development of the UK's law and policy framework by focusing on the post-war era and the growth and decline of the welfare state, considering a longer historical trajectory where appropriate. * To suggest an alternative policy approach based on Martha Fineman's vulnerability theory in which the vulnerable subject replaces the liberal subject as the focus of legal intervention. This reorientation enables a more inclusive and cohesive policy approach and has great potential to contribute to the reconciliation of the unresolved conflict between paid work and care-giving.

Families in market economies have long been confronted by the demands of participating in paid work and providing care. Across Europe the social, economic and political environment within which families do so has been subject to substantial change in the post-World War II era and governments have come under increasing pressure to engage with this important area of public policy. In the UK, as elsewhere, the tensions which lie at the heart of the paid work/unpaid care conflict remain unresolved posing substantial difficulties for all of law’s subjects both as carers and as the recipients of care. What seems like a relatively simple goal – to enable families to better balance care-giving and paid employment – has been subject to and shaped by shifting priorities over time leading to a variety of often conflicting policy approaches. This book critiques how working families in the UK have been subject to regulation. It has two aims: · To chart the development of the UK’s law and policy framework by focusing on the post-war era and the growth and decline of the welfare state, considering a longer historical trajectory where appropriate. · To suggest an alternative policy approach based on Martha Fineman’s vulnerability theory in which the vulnerable subject replaces the liberal subject as the focus of legal intervention. This reorientation enables a more inclusive and cohesive policy approach and has great potential to contribute to the reconciliation of the unresolved conflict between paid work and care-giving.