About
My research project
Work performance, specification, management, and evaluation: a neglected concept in UK Employment lawThe commoditisation of work, in whatever employment context, the contractual basis for that work, fairness, ethics of governance, remuneration, allocation of responsibility, and wider matters of social justice have become increasingly prominent in the short history of ‘modern’ Employment law, not least in the UK in the period from the 2008 global financial crash, and 2009 European sovereign debt crisis, leading up to the 23 June 2016 UK EU Referendum and possibility of an exit from the EU, and period between the Employment Appeal Tribunal Fees Order (29 July) 2013 (SI 2013/1893) and the landmark R (on the application of UNISON) v Lord Chancellor [2017] UKSC 51 case, a period approximately spanning the research for this thesis.
To a significant degree the performance of work as a potential cause for action is largely predicated upon, and circumscribed by the dictum of Harmer v Cornelius CEXC (1858) 5 CB (NS) 236 (that the employee is ‘impliedly competent’), and (ERA 1996, s. 98(1)) ‘conduct’ or ‘capability’. The semantic as well as practical (procedural) limitations of this situation are significant, as has been illustrated by cases such as Edwards v Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Botham v Ministry of Defence [2011] UKSC 58.
This study seeks to offer not merely a purposive, diachronic examination of this aspect of employment law, including its historical, socio-economic context (particularly Beveridge, Sinzheimer, Kalecki, et al.), but also its wider implications for the nature and future of work itself, as well as the existential task of regulating it and attendant social justice issues.
Supervisors
The commoditisation of work, in whatever employment context, the contractual basis for that work, fairness, ethics of governance, remuneration, allocation of responsibility, and wider matters of social justice have become increasingly prominent in the short history of ‘modern’ Employment law, not least in the UK in the period from the 2008 global financial crash, and 2009 European sovereign debt crisis, leading up to the 23 June 2016 UK EU Referendum and possibility of an exit from the EU, and period between the Employment Appeal Tribunal Fees Order (29 July) 2013 (SI 2013/1893) and the landmark R (on the application of UNISON) v Lord Chancellor [2017] UKSC 51 case, a period approximately spanning the research for this thesis.
To a significant degree the performance of work as a potential cause for action is largely predicated upon, and circumscribed by the dictum of Harmer v Cornelius CEXC (1858) 5 CB (NS) 236 (that the employee is ‘impliedly competent’), and (ERA 1996, s. 98(1)) ‘conduct’ or ‘capability’. The semantic as well as practical (procedural) limitations of this situation are significant, as has been illustrated by cases such as Edwards v Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Botham v Ministry of Defence [2011] UKSC 58.
This study seeks to offer not merely a purposive, diachronic examination of this aspect of employment law, including its historical, socio-economic context (particularly Beveridge, Sinzheimer, Kalecki, et al.), but also its wider implications for the nature and future of work itself, as well as the existential task of regulating it and attendant social justice issues.