What is labour law?

What are the aims of labour law? Why is it regarded as a distinct and important field of study? One place to start thinking about these questions is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 23

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 23 identifies many of the characteristic aims of labour law:

• to secure fair access to labour markets under conditions of equal opportunity;

• to ensure that the conditions under which people work are just, safe, healthy, and respectful of human dignity;

• to require pay to be fair and sufficient for a decent standard of living;

• to protect job security and fair treatment at work;

• to permit workers to form trade unions and other representative organisations to protect their interests at work.

In pursuing these aims (and others), the objects of labour law include the contract of employment between employer and worker, working conditions within organisations, relations between workers, access to employment through the labour market, and more generally measures to steer the economy with a view to promoting full employment with decent jobs. Most studies of labour law have not examined these topics dispassionately, but have rather been concerned critically to assess how far labour law achieves the central aims identified in Article 23. The case for studying this subject rests in part on the crucial economic, social and political significance of paid work in a market economy and in part on the distinctive characteristics and problems that labour law must address.