ILPC 2027

 The regulation of work in Britain has broadly shifted from an emphasis on collective to more individual forms of regulation since the 1980s (e.g. Colling, 2006). Enforcing individual rights has become increasingly difficult given reforms and the introduction of fees for employment tribunals (Dickens, 2014), and broader forms of regulation covering health and safety, minimum wages and labour subcontracting have become increasingly difficult to enforce given the wider climate of austerity, the restructuring of regulatory agencies and deregulation (Grimshaw et al, 2015; Tombs, 2016). Trade unions have been further restricted by the Trade Union Act 2016 (Bogg, 2016). While the remit of the state as an enforcer of labour law has ostensibly increased (as with the Modern Slavery Act 2015, the expanded role of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, instruments to address exploitation contained within the Immigration Act 2016, and state action to address bogus self-employment in the ‘gig economy’), unions have been increasingly suppressed (Rogers, 2016), and the context of austerity creates further challenges for state enforcement bodies.

This paper focuses on labour regulation and enforcement based on qualitative interviews with labour market actors including trade unions, labour inspectors, representatives of state enforcement agencies, NGOs and employers. Two broad sets of findings are identified; firstly, wider processes of re-regulation and the restructuring and contraction of enforcement agencies create significant challenges that state agencies alone are unlikely to overcome, especially given concurrent policy seeking to weaken the role of unions. We are seeing the context and not just the mechanisms of state intervention and regulation being eroded, along with the possibility of joint working across unions, employers and state agencies. Secondly, the role of the labour inspector is also subject to notable change, including duties to stimulate economic growth, reduced resources and heightened expectations of regulatory reach, and changes to the labour process of inspectors themselves including performance-related pay, work intensification, ‘fees for intervention’ where inspectors engage with employers, and wider job insecurity and pay suppression evident across much of the public sector. The very nature of inspectors’ work is being transformed and fragmented; relatively little research has addressed the role of inspectors themselves in processes of regulation. This paper seeks to broaden understanding of the labour process of labour inspection and how this relates to regulatory processes more generally.

References

Bogg, A. (2016) ‘Beyond Neo-Liberalism: The Trade Union Act 2016 and the Authoritarian State.’ Industrial Law Journal, 45:3, 299-336.

Colling, T. (2006) ‘What Space for Unions on the Floor of Rights? Trade Unions and the Enforcement of Statutory Individual Employment Rights.’ Industrial Law Journal, 35:2,140-160.

Dickens, L. (2014) ‘The Coalition government’s reforms to employment tribunals and statutory employment rights—echoes of the past.’ Industrial Relations Journal,  45: 3, 234–249.

Grimshaw, D., Johnson, M., Keizer, A. and Rubery, J. (2015) Reducing Precarious Work through Social Dialogue: An analysis of ‘protective gaps’ facing people at work in the UK. Manchester: EWERC (http://www.research.mbs.ac.uk/ewerc/Portals/0/Documents/uk-national-report-part-1.pdf)

Rogers, L. (2016) Labour Law, Vulnerability and the Regulation of Precarious Work. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Tombs, S. (2016) ‘Making better regulation, making regulation better?’ Policy Studies (published online May 2016)