Although proven effective in protecting pregnancy, giving birth and breastfeeding – that is, the biological differences of women related to maternity – the current European Union (EU) legislative framework on maternity leave tends to overlook the roles of both parents, especially during the post-delivery period of ‘bonding’ with the child. This framework, along with EU law on parental leave, which does not encourage an equal take-up of the leave, gives rise to serious issues of gender equality affecting both men and women. This deeply researched and urgent book proposes alternative options for future EU law on child-related leave which can be applied to both employees and self-employed workers to mitigate these limitations and side effects. Analysing the various EU Directives which, directly or indirectly, relate to maternity leave, paternity leave, adoption leave and parental leave, as well as the corresponding case law of the Court of Justice of the EU, the author uses a social risk approach and tackles the following issues: narrow focus of the legislation on the delivering mother’s incapacity to work; in practice, excessive emphasis on the protection of the delivering mother; silent assent to the unequal distribution of caring responsibilities within the family; lack of attention to women’s labour market outcomes; and the new direction followed by the recently adopted Directive on work-life balance. The research focuses on working parents (including non-delivering parents in same-sex couples or adoption) and includes a comparative analysis of the law of six countries – Belgium, Ireland, Spain, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Portugal – chosen to illustrate the variety of national schemes available and how their desirable features can be introduced into EU law. A more balanced design of child-related leave is a must in today’s society for reasons of fairness and also for economic considerations. This complete analysis of EU legislation and case law about child-related leave – including the first-ever systematic and in-depth analysis on whether maternity leave can be considered discriminatory against fathers and a review of economic literature on how child-related leave affects the situation of women in the labour market – offers forward-looking solutions for child-related leave to enhance gender equality. Practitioners and nongovernmental organisations dealing with EU and national matters related to labour and employment law, social security law and gender equality law will welcome this important book, as will academics and policymakers interested in maternity and other child-related leaves.

This book considers the European Union as a project with a major antidiscrimination goal, which is important to remember at a time of increasing resentment against particularly exposed groups, especially migrants, refugees, members of ethnic or religious minorities and LGBTI persons. While equality and non-discrimination have long been core principles of the international community as a whole, as is made obvious by the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, they have shaped European integration in a particular way. The concepts of diversity, pluralism and equality have always been inherent in that process, the EU being virtually founded on the values of equality and non-discrimination. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU contains the most modern and extensive catalogue of prohibited grounds of discrimination, supplementing the catalogue enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights. EU law has given new impulses to antidiscrimination law both within Europe and beyond. The contributions to this book focus on how effective and credible the EU has been in combatting discrimination inside and outside Europe. The authors present different (mostly legal) aspects of that topic and examine them from various intra- and extra-European angles.

In-work poverty is a reality for too many persons in the European Union (EU). Although everyone is in agreement that poverty must be reduced, rarely is there a specific focus on the plight of those who, despite working, are poor. This important book is the first to unreservedly meet the challenge of defining, measuring, and comparing the legal regimes to combat in-work poverty in Europe, fully attending to the strengths and shortcomings of indicators and allowing the assessment of comparative best practices among the Member States. The distinguished contributors each describe and analyse this complex and multidimensional phenomenon, with its manifold and intertwined causes, in relation to such factors as the following: employment-related factors (wage, type of contract, atypical employment); worker’s socio-demographic characteristics (level of education, gender, age, country of birth); size and composition of household; household work intensity; and institutional factors (childcare, flexible work arrangements, employment protection, housing, technological change). In a major innovation, the book’s methodology approaches the ‘working poor’ by distinctly defining four groups of vulnerable and under-represented persons (VUPs) with detailed statistical information on in-work poverty in each group. Following an in-depth introduction focusing on the definition and ramifications of the concept of in-work poverty – including a discussion of legal scholarship and relevant EU instruments – the situations in seven EU Member States (Belgium, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden) are compared, revealing important variations. For each of the VUP groups, these chapters explain their composition at the national level and assess the impact of regulation on the incidence of in-work poverty. The last chapter highlights differences and similarities in an attempt to find patterns and identify common regulatory problems and best practices. The book’s comparative perspective greatly assists in understanding in-work poverty determinants, appraising varieties of relevant national policies, and stimulating the development of effective legal measures. With its close analysis of the limitations of existing measurement indicators, the book sheds light on the role of regulation in the prevalence and persistence of the phenomenon and equips policymakers at the EU and national levels with targeted tools to tackle this severe social problem.

In recent years, the tendency of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to treat human rights as indivisible and consider cases relevant to employment has contributed significantly to jurisprudence relating to human rights at work in the Council of Europe. This indispensable book is the first to thoroughly survey and analyse recent ECtHR’s cases relevant to employment law. It is based on a deeply informed structural analysis of more than fifty cases considered by the ECtHR during 2017–2021, many of which have not heretofore been considered in the legal literature. The authors examine, in particular, the following topics raised in the jurisprudence of the ECtHR: privacy and surveillance; freedom of thought, conscience and religion; freedom of expression; discrimination; unfair dismissal; forced labour; collective bargaining; and the right to strike. The authors explore the reasoning that led the ECtHR to broaden the scope of Article 8 ECHR, which protects the right to private life, in order to develop new employment rights. They also detail the impact of International Labour Organization (ILO) standards on the Court’s jurisprudence. As a clear and eminently useable guide to the applicability of ECHR for protection of labour rights and human rights at work, this book is of practical value to labour lawyers in spelling out the legal positions of the ECtHR which might support individual and collective labour rights protection in national proceedings. Academics in the field will appreciate the authors’ clarification of the trends of the ECtHR’s reasoning, especially in respect of the right to workplace privacy.

Platform work – in which work activities are channelled through web platforms or apps – has emerged as one of the major transformations in the world of work over the past decade. Although platform work presents many of the labour law issues related to casual work – often linked to insecure or precarious working conditions – until this book, no in-depth research has been conducted on specifically positioning platform work in the context of casual work arrangements. The author systematically evaluates how strategies aimed at regulating casual work can be extended to enhance the employment relationships and working conditions of platform workers. The analysis proceeds through a detailed comparative legal analysis of casual work in four industrialized countries – the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy – shedding light on the divergent regulatory approaches to this work typology. Then, it moves on to EU legislators’ efforts to develop a regulatory matrix on casual work, focusing on directives such as those on fixed-term work, working time, and transparent and predictable working conditions. The author concludes with recommendations for redefining the EU legal initiative on platform work, in light of the national and EU legal instruments examined in this contribution. Issues, such as the insecure nature of work, unpaid stand-by time, and work insecurity, come to the fore. The purpose of this book is to assist policymakers and social partners in finding viable legal solutions to tackle some of the labour protection challenges posed by platform work. At the same time, it serves as a reminder to EU policymakers, that existing legal instruments on casual work constitute an available blueprint which could be beneficial in dealing with such regulatory problems. Issues and topics covered, in a nutshell, include the following: what is captured under the label of casual work arrangements; the shared features between casual work and platform work, with a focus on their insecure working conditions; the employment status insecurity; the insecurity of working hours; the uncertainty of the continuity of employment; the income insecurity; peculiar traits of platform work; the development of the EU regulatory matrix on casual work; the relevance of the directives on working time, fixed-term work, and transparent and predictable working conditions, for the protection of platform workers; and the improvement of the proposal for a Platform Work Directive in light of the above instruments.

Platform work arrangements are often defended as an expression of technological progress with the potential to enable people to work as self-employed individuals, often without any supervision or control. However, by now, it is well-documented that platform work not only shares important features of flexibility and precariousness with other casual work arrangements that are on the rise around the world, but it also entails the risk of excluding a significant portion of workers from the protection of fundamental collective labour rights, including their coverage from collective agreements. In this important and timely book, the author shows how a human rights-based approach (HRBA) towards collective labour rights can bridge this protection gap. Such an approach identifies workers, regardless of their employment status, as rights-holders that are entitled to rights, like the right to collective bargaining, derived from international human rights and labour rights instruments. Fully describing the phenomenon of platform work as well as presenting a detailed global overview of responses related to the challenges stemming from platform work arrangements, the research, inter alia, covers aspects, such as the following: problems, challenges, and questions related to platform work arrangements, and how those are linked to broader labour market trends; platform work’s deeper foundational implications for labour law; legal developments related to the regulation of platform work with an assessment of their limits when it comes to collective labour rights, also recognised as human rights; various ways in which platform workers and other atypical workers have managed to exercise their collective labour rights; and promising indications of closer cooperation between organised labour and workers in non-standard forms of employment. The analysis draws on international human rights and labour rights treaties and conventions, domestic legislation and regulations, rulings from international and national courts, and interpretative and authoritative sources including the relevant legal literature. The book manifests and responds to a genuine need for in-depth research with respect to the protection of the human rights of platform workers with an analytical framework that will ensure their adequate protection. Its crucial observations will be welcomed by practitioners in labour law, human rights law, and competition law, as well as by academics, human resources professionals, and labour and employment policymakers.

The state subsidies and philanthropy that traditionally allowed orchestras to flourish have greatly diminished in the wake of recent financial crises and the COVID-19 pandemic. As in other fields affected by the precarious labor arrangements prevalent in the world of work today, it is the employees and freelancers—in this case, the musicians themselves—who suffer most. In this deeply knowledgeable and provocative book, a highly acclaimed scholar who combines the roles of law professor, music journalist, and orchestral violinist presents the first major legal study to focus on labor relations and the institutional dynamics at play within orchestras. Drawing on personal interviews with more than 250 orchestral musicians and other stakeholders—whose testimonies and actions often stand in contradiction to narratives provided by cultural economists and government cultural policymakers—the author uncovers the deteriorating welfare of musicians in two countries, the United States and the Netherlands, in which she has considerable practical orchestral experience. The methodology will reverberate with great intensity to musicians worldwide with its novel system of “movements” that focus on different vulnerabilities besetting orchestral players to highlight such issues and topics as: orchestra financing, with a special focus on the nonprofit sector and the changing nature of state subsidies in Europe; the impact of the perception of orchestras as “elitist” and of limited social value; discriminatory practices in auditions and hiring; legal and practical relevance of contemporary questions of employee categorization (regularly employed; self-employed; false self-employed); and how fair practice codes and collective bargaining agreements can be designed, implemented, and enforced. An interdisciplinary approach to a multiplicity of vulnerabilities in the sector, the study incorporates economic, historical and legal research along with a consideration of sociological factors. Case studies—from the EU Court of Justice, the Dutch Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of the United States, and the U.S. National Labor Relations Board—offer practical insight into specific legal issues, including the fundamental question of how musician employees are differentiated from freelancers. Reflecting on the cutbacks and compromises that traumatize orchestral negotiations in today’s musical world, the book not only provides orchestral musicians with a wealth of useful information and suggestions for future action but also adds to the growing body of legal literature on the self-limitations of labor law and the increasing vulnerability of workers. Practitioners in labor and employment law as well as academics in the field will benefit from a powerful analysis of workers’ vulnerabilities in today’s labor market.

Male-dominated law and legal knowledge essentially characterized the whole of pre-modern history in that the patriarchy represented the axis of social relations in both the private and public spheres. Indeed, modern and even contemporary law still have embedded elements of patriarchal heritage, even in the secular modern legal systems of Western developed countries, either within the content of legislation or in terms of its implementation and interpretation. This is true to a greater or lesser extent across legal systems, although the secular modern legal systems of the Western developed countries have made great advances in terms of gender equality. The traditional understanding of law has always been self-evidently dominated by men, but modern law and its understanding have also been more or less “malestreamed.” Therefore, it has become necessary to overcome the given “maskulinity” of legal thought. In contemporary legal and political orders, gender mainstreaming of law has been of the utmost importance for overcoming deeply and persistently embedded power relations and gender-based, unequal social relations. At the same time and equally importantly, the gender mainstreaming of legal education – to which this book aims to contribute – can help to gradually eliminate this male dominance and accompanying power relations from legal education and higher education as a whole. This open access textbook provides an overview of gender issues in all areas of law, including sociological, historical and methodological issues. Written for students and teachers around the globe, it is intended to provide both a general overview and in-depth knowledge in the individual areas of law. Relevant court decisions and case studies are supplied throughout the book.

This essential Research Handbook provides a multifaceted exploration of surrogacy and the law, examining a variety of critical yet under-researched perspectives including globalisation, power, gender, sexual orientation, genetics, human rights and family relations. It covers four distinct topics: surrogacy and rights, the interplay between surrogacy and different areas of the law, cross-border aspects, and regional perspectives.

Trusted by students and lecturers for almost thirty years, Steiner & Woods EU Law is the most comprehensive black letter guide to the subject, leading the reader through the subject in a straightforward way, and bringing together the expertise of three authors engaged in the teaching and practice of EU law. The book includes a well-balanced range of topics for students taking an EU law course at any level. Offering a careful blend of institutional and substantive coverage, it focuses on explaining the law clearly for student readers. Case detail is clearly sign-posted throughout the text, with key cases highlighted and discussed in feature boxes, ensuring students are up to speed with the most important case law in the area. End of chapter reading suggestions, along with a detailed bibliography, provide a helpful starting point for essay preparation and independent research. The book is accompanied by an Online Resource Centre which includes self-test questions and answers, a flashcard glossary, downloadable diagrams from the text, an interactive map and timeline of the EU, and video clips relating to the development and procedures of the EU. As the process of the UK leaving the EU unfolds, readers can also visit the OUP European Union Law Resource Centre for up-to-date comment, opinion, and updates created by our authors to engage students with the legal and political issues and considerations at play.