Voices at Work: Continuity and Change in the Common Law World, edited by Alan Bogg and Tonia Novitz. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014, 528 pp., ISBN: 978 0 19 968313 0, £70.00, hardback. Creative Labour Regulation: Indeterminacy and Protection in an Uncertain World, edited by Deirdre McCann, Sangheon Lee, Patrick Belser, Colin Fenwick, John Howe and Malte Luebker. International Labour Organization, Geneva, 2014, 302 pp., ISBN: 978 92 2 127820 7, £65.00, hardback. Rethinking Workplace Regulation: Beyond the Standard Contract of Employment, edited by Katherine V. W. Stone and Harry Arthurs. Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 2014, 440 pp., ISBN: 978 0 87154 859 7, $47.50, paperback.

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12110
AuthorSusan Corby
Published date01 March 2015
Date01 March 2015
well-documented voice effect of unions, but sadly how such an effect might be mani-
fested is not elaborated further. Overall, rich in original high-quality economic
research presented in an approachable manner for non-specialist audiences, this book
is a vital contribution to perhaps the most overlooked yet prevalent labour market
institution of our times.
MARIA KOUMENTA
Queen Mary, University of London
Voices at Work: Continuity and Change in the Common Law World, edited by Alan
Bogg and Tonia Novitz. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014, 528 pp., ISBN:
978 0 19 968313 0, £70.00, hardback.
Creative Labour Regulation: Indeterminacy and Protection in an Uncertain World,
edited by Deirdre McCann, Sangheon Lee, Patrick Belser, Colin Fenwick, John
Howe and Malte Luebker. International Labour Organization, Geneva, 2014,
302 pp., ISBN: 978 92 2 127820 7, £65.00, hardback.
Rethinking Workplace Regulation: Beyond the Standard Contract of Employment,
edited by Katherine V. W. Stone and Harry Arthurs. Russell Sage Foundation,
New York, 2014, 440 pp., ISBN: 978 0 87154 859 7, $47.50, paperback.
These three books are all based on the widely accepted premise that the labour market
has changed largely as a result of subcontracting, franchising and outsourcing, so
workers now often have a contingent and precarious relationship with their employer,
rather than a standard full-time, indefinite one. Moreover, all three books are cross-
national, interdisciplinary, edited collections albeit with a significant labour law com-
ponent; all three books contain chapters covering topics where there is little literature,
for instance Japanese labour tribunals (Araki’s chapter in the Stone and Arthurs
volume), garment workshops in Buenos Aires (Amengual’s chapter in McCann et al.),
and indigenous people in New Zealand, Australia, USA and Canada (Roth’s chapter
in Bogg and Novitz). Finally, all three books contain a chapter by Mark Freedland.
Yet, despite these similarities and their common premise, these books are different
both in the countries that they cover and in their focus.
The edited collection by Bogg and Novitz concentrates on Anglophone common
law countries and focuses on the interaction between labour law and worker voice.
Accordingly, the majority of the chapters are written by lawyers whose methodologi-
cal standpoint is doctrinal and jurisprudential, rather than empirical, with a table of
cases (but no notes on the contributors).
The starting point of Bogg and Novitz is the decline of collective employee voice in
the wake of labour market fragmentation and the legal reforms that might remedy this.
The first part looks at identities of voice, encompassing those who have little or no
voice, such as migrant workers in the USA and UK (chapter 4 by Fine), and low-paid
care workers in Australia (chapter 3 by Cooper), while Davies (chapter 6) criticizes UK
collective labour law. For instance, the statutory procedure for trade union recognition
for collective bargaining and the EU rules on collective consultation only apply to firms
employing a certain number of workers, but some firms escape legal coverage because
of the way that non-standard workers are counted. The book’s second part considers
the institutions of voice, including chapter 9 by Anderson and Nuttall on New
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178 British Journal of Industrial Relations
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics.

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