Legal Construction of Personal Work Relations

• Provides a critical and systematic analysis of the regulation of personal work contracts in European law that aids understanding of the changes affecting the regulation of the contract of employment and other personal work contracts
• Develops a new central organising idea for modern employment protection systems in the form of 'the personal work relation', which aids understanding the relationship between the standard contract of employment and other work relationships
• Presents a comparative analysis of the regulation of personal work relations across selected European legal systems, which highlights the differences and similarities faced by other legal systems striving to adapt their employment protection systems to the changing work practices
• Explores the concepts of dignity, capability, and reliance in the context of the regulation of personal work relations and suggests new avenues for the reform of labour law systems on the basis of fairness, personal development, and economic performance

This book explores the conceptual framework of European employment law, focusing on understanding the law's construction of employment relationships. The book draws on extensive comparative research of the legal architecture of employment relations in national legal systems and EU law to analyse the traditional model of the contract of employment and the difficulties of using the traditional model to frame modern working relationships.

The authors then present a new model of the foundations of employment relationships, based on the concept of a personal work nexus, and explore the potential of their model to shape the future development of employment law.

Throughout the book, the authors analyse the interaction of domestic and EU employment law, and discuss the possibility of future legal harmonisation in the area. They conclude by exploring the potential for a common framework for European employment law, in the context of broader debates surrounding the harmonisation of European private law.

Readership: Academics, researchers, and practitioners interested in employment law, or more broadly in European comparative law