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The conception of Labour law as a distinctive branch of legal studies was a product of the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The underlying theories (such as British collective laissez faire and US industrial pluralism) and the categories of legal thinking (such as “employee” and “contract of employment”) were shaped in industrialised nation states where the typical subjects of the law were Fordist manufacturing companies employing full-time male workers in life-time jobs on standardised contracts often regulated by collective agreements with trade unions. That “classical” model of labour law is plainly untenable in the post-industrial 21st century world in which union density and collective bargaining coverage have dramatically declined, and the “contract of employment” has lost much of its analytical value as paid work is increasingly performed outside conventional employment relationships. The feminisation of the workforce is now an irreversible fact, with profound consequences for the division between “work” and “family”, between paid and unpaid work, and between “jobs” and “careers”. Perhaps, the most important changes are those resulting from modern globalisation: the liberalisation of trade and investment, the domination of transnational companies (TNCs), the growth of a worldwide networked society, and increasing global competition. A major consequence of this is the reduced power of nation states to regulate labour within their own borders or migration across frontiers, the growth of complex multivalent legal orders with murky boundaries between supranational, transnational, national and workplace legal norms, and the prevalence of “soft” law such as corporate codes of conduct.
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