Flexibility and Stability in Working Life – Edited by Bengt Furåker, Kristina Håkansson and Jan Ch. Karlsson
| Author | Beatrice Appay |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2007.00654.x |
| Date | 01 December 2007 |
| Published date | 01 December 2007 |
could be used to prevent trade unions from taking collective action. In Laval, Swedish
trade unions objected to a Latvian construction company ignoring national collective
wage bargains by paying its workers lower wages and boycotted the site in Vaxholm
eventually forcing the company into liquidation.
In his opinion the Advocate-General said that the internal market rules on the
freedom to provide services did not prevent trade unions from attempting, by means
of collective action, to compel companies from other member states to pay their
workers the same wages as domestic workers. The Advocate-General cautioned,
however, that such industrial action must be motivated by public interest objectives
‘such as the protection of workers and the fight against social dumping’. A similar
Opinion was issued in the Viking case, which involved a Finnish ferry company
reflagging its vessel to Estonia to take on Estonian workers at lower wages than their
Finnish counterparts.
The final two chapters — by John Hendy QC and Gregor Gall and by Simon
Deakin and Frank Wilkinson — examine the current state of British trade union
rights and the case for the Trade Union Freedom Bill, the idea for which was
unanimously approved at the September 2005 Trades Union Congress conference.
The Bill, which would go some way to meet the UK Government’s ratified interna-
tional obligations, would include the abolition of restrictive balloting procedures; the
right to strike and the right to automatic reinstatement for taking lawful industrial
action; and the freedom to take solidarity action.
One has to ask, however, whether it would really make any difference as to whether
the legal system is cast in terms of immunities rather than rights. Would anything be
improved by granting the right to strike in express terms? Would the change be
anything other than presentational? Would a rights-based system be clearer, be easier
to carry out in practice and, most importantly, be less subject to judicial re-
interpretation? This last question is fundamental. Any comparative study of labour
law systems demonstrates that a positive right to strike is no more inherently judge-
proof than a revised or more sophisticated immunity.
The problem lies not in the substance of the law, but in its administration. The
judiciary have been rightly criticized for applying the law in trade disputes restrictively
to the rights of individual workers. As McIlroy points out (p. 54), it is unfortunate
that the working class response to decisions such as Taff Vale and Quinn v Leathem
‘did not embrace reform of the judiciary as well as reform of their decisions’.
All those involved in this valuable project, in particular the editor and the Institute
of Employment Rights, are to be unreservedly congratulated. No one with the slight-
est interest in the relationship between industrial relations and the law should be
without this book.
Anthony Kerr
School of Law
University College Dublin
Flexibility and Stability in Working Life edited by Bengt Furåker, Kristina Håkansson
and Jan Ch. Karlsson. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2007, xiv +239 pp.,
ISBN 0 230 01364 3, £55.00
Who could oppose flexibility or praise rigidity? Although flexibility is a positively
charged term, does it mean that flexibility is good for everyone? Flexibility is, in fact,
Book Reviews 863
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2007.
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