Labour Law in a Service World
| Author | Einat Albin |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2010.00826.x |
| Date | 01 November 2010 |
| Published date | 01 November 2010 |
Labour Law in a Service World
Einat Albin
n
Drawing on the genealogy of the theoretica l thought about services i n economic and geographical
economic lite rature,I a rgue in this a rticle that in today’sSer viceWorld it is highly i mportant to develop
an integrated approach that sees both consumption and production as impacting work relationships
within legal thought. The current structure of labour law, which is based on the Fordist model of
employment,is centred mainly on theproductionside, thuscreatingan incongruitybetween labour
law and services. I propose thin king about work relations through a new framework ^ ‘the nexus of
service work’ ^ that incorporates consumeri sm into the legal thought of work relationships, detach ing
it from the Fordist model of employment to achieve a more attuned approach to today’sS erviceWorld.
INTRODUCTION
‘Services are no longer worthy of an ‘‘after-thought’’status’.
1
This saying, by Bryson,
Daniels and Warf i n their work on ServiceWorlds, re£ects the growing acceptance of
the fact that one of the most fundamental changes in the past century is the move
from industrialism to services and a constant growth in service activities.With sig-
ni¢cant transformations occurring in forms of production and consumption, and
with the emergence of new types of organisation, management and work, services
today have become the central players in the economies of mostWestern countries.
2
The new world of services has fuelled ongoing debates in economics, business
studies, economic geography, policy science, sociology and other ¢elds of
research, but it has been discussed only marginally in the ¢eld of labour law,
despite the fact that services are increasingly governing the organisation of work
and of employment relations. While labour law literature has recognised the
extreme growth in services, it has not devoted enough attentionto the challenges
that servicespose for this ¢eld of study. Such challenges result from the essence of
service work, which di¡ers from the manufacturing model upon which modern
labour law is structured and in which it is still embedded, that is, the ‘Fordist’
model of employment.
3
The mismatch between that model and services should
n
Universityof Oxford. I am gratefulto Mark Freedland, Guy Davidovand Guy Mundlak for valuable
comments on this paper.
1J. R.Bryson, P. N. Daniels and B.Warf,ServiceWorlds: People, Organizations,Technologies(London:
Routledge,2004) 3.
2According to an OECD reportfrom 200 0,manufacturing has been sl ipping to less than 20% of
GDP while services have risen to moretha n 70%i n someOECD countries.With the narrowing
of the di¡erences between services and other economic activities, especially due to technological
advances, characteristics associated with service work are becoming increasingly widespread in
mostWestern countries. See: OECD,The Business and Industry Policy Forum Series,The Service
Economy(Paris: OECD Publications, 2000) 3, 7.
3By the term‘Fordist model of employment’,I mean employment in an assembly line of produc-
tion as seen in the Ford factories.This work pattern is also associated with a viewof employment
relationships as being personal and bilateral, and the idea of a full-time, permanent, male bread-
r2010The Author.The Modern Law Review r2010The Modern Law Review Limited.
Published by BlackwellPublishing, 9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ,UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
(2010)73(6) 959^984
not only give rise to theoretical discussions, but alsobe a cause for practical con-
cern, for it a¡ects numerous employment relationships around the globe that are
prevalent in service activities.
This article draws on theoretical insights from studies on the economics and
economic geography of services to analyse the tension between labour law and
the service world.Based on that analysis, it o¡ers a more service-oriented account
of labour relations in the thinking of labour law. My foremost claim is that in
today’s Service World the market transaction of labour includes multiple players,
the dominant ones being workers, employers and customers, and that labour law
should be thought of accordingly. Structurally, the article is arranged as follows:
Part I introduces the genealogy of service theory in the ¢elds of economics and
economic geography and explains the notion of ServiceWorlds as presented by
Bryson, Daniels andWarf. It then goes on to laydown some of the main charac-
teristics of today’s service work. Part II analysesthe way labour lawaddresses four
of these characteristics: (a)typical employment patterns, a directconsumer impact
on work relations,body and work, and personal relationships.The analysisstresses
the incongruitybetween the essence of service ^ that is, the intrinsic relationships
between production and consumption ^ and the current structure of labourlaw,
drawing principallyon the British experience, mainly in the hospitality industry,
which is a dominant service sector. PartIII discusses the prospective e¡ectiveness
of considering the essence of ServiceWorlds in labourlaw via Freedland’s idea of
the ‘personal work nexus’, through what I term ‘the nexus of service work’. In
other words, it looks at the potential of thinking about labour law as aiming to
regulate the market transactionof work relations as impacted bycustomers, while
protecting workers against the logic of commodi¢cation.
4
Part IVconcludes.
SERVICE WORK
In the past four decades,Western countries, including Britain, have experienced
an increasing growth in service-sector activity. Although the economies of these
countries are still dominated by the production of goods, with the move of pro-
winner. It was mainly dur ing the twentieth century that ‘Fordism’ became the organising idea of
British labour law. Before that time there were di¡erent categories of work contracts arranged
around di¡erent conceptionsof work. Deakin and Wilkinson have shownhow during the eight-
eenth and nineteenth centuries there were the categories of ‘servants’that later on became ‘work-
men’^ referring to manual workers ^ and of ‘employees’, which covered managerial and clerical
positions, a groupvery relevant to service activities. See S.F. Deakin and F.Wilkinson,The Law of
the Labour Market (Oxford: OUP, 2005) chapter 2. Another central category through the eight-
eenth until the mid-twentieth century was that of ‘domestic servants’, which mainly included
workersperforming personal service work in various industries. For a discussion of that category
see E. Albin, SectoralD isadvantage:The Case ofWorkers in the British Hospitality Sector (Oxford: DPhil
dissertation, 2010) chapter 3. On the historical reasons for the emergence of the modern contract
of employment and the strengthening of those that fall into the category of ‘workmen’, and
accordinglythe centrality of the Fordist model of employment,see the discussion in both sources.
4These two goals oflabour regulation ^ the regulation of employmentrelations to ensure that they
function successfully as market transactions, while at the same time protecting workers against
the economic logic of the commodi¢cation of labour ^ have been mentioned by a few wr iters;
see, for example, H. Collins, Employment Law (Oxford:OUP, 2003)5.
Labour Lawi n a ServiceWorld
960 r2010The Author.The Modern Law Review r2010The Modern Law ReviewLimited.
(2010)73(6) 959^984
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