Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law

Centre Members and Associates frequently contribute to commercial news media by participating in radio and television interviews and writing for both print and online publications. Find out more.

Find out more about prizes and awards available to students.

The Centre is pleased to co-host the Melbourne lectures of the Workplace Relations Lecture Series of the Fair Work Commission. Find out about past events.

These free public seminars are intended to be of interest to a wide audience including academics, members of the legal profession, and those engaged in the day to day business of industrial relations and/or human resource management. They provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of preliminary research results and to that end are designed both to be informative and to engender critical discussion and debate. The seminars are usually held at lunchtime and a light lunch is provided, so RSVPs to the Centre Coordinator are encouraged. See a list of our past events.

The Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law coordinates a series of seminars exclusively for the members of the legal practices that sponsor the Centre. These seminars are intended to be a forum in which to examine the key aspects of current developments in labour law. Speakers in the series typically include senior public officials, visiting labour law scholars from interstate or abroad, and legal practitioners who have been involved in significant labour law cases. View the list of the Centre's sponsors. Melbourne Law School has been accredited as a suitable provider of professional development by the Continuing Legal Education Committee of the Victorian Bar.

The Centre for Employment and Labour Relations is the administrative home of the Australian Labour Law Association (ALLA).

The objectives of ALLA are to promote the study of labour law and social security both in Australia and internationally, and to provide a forum for discussion and debate for lawyers and others working in these fields. ALLA is affiliated with the International Society for Labour and Social Security Law (ISLSSL).

The National Committee of Management is made up of academics and legal professionals from across Australia. Centre member Dr Tess Hardy is a member of the National Committee.

ALLA was incorporated in Victoria on 27 February 2001. There are currently active State Chapters in the ACT, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia. State Chapters provide a regional format for discussion and collaboration, and organise regular state-based events that aim to further the objectives of the Association.

At a national level, ALLA also runs a biennial conference to provide a forum for the discussion of current labour law issues. For more information about the Australian Labour Law Association, including conference information, membership fees and registration forms, visit the ALLA website.

The Centre is one of the founding members of the RDW Network. The RDW is a collaboration between researchers at the International Labour Organization (ILO), the University of Amsterdam’s Amsterdam Institute for Labour Studies / Hugo Sinzheimer Instituut (AIAS-HSI), the Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law (CELRL), Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies (CISLS), the University of Durham’s Law School (DLS), the Cornell University’s ILR School, the University of Duisburg-Essen’s Institut Arbeit und Qualifikation (IAQ), the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), the Korea Labor Institute (KLI), the University of Manchester’s Work and Equalities Institute (WEI), and academic and policy institutions from across the world. The network is interdisciplinary and involves researchers from a range of fields including economics, law, sociology, development studies, industrial relations and geography.

The objective of the RDW Network is to foster research and exchange of ideas concerning the role of labour and employment law protections in fostering economic development. The Network also aims to advance research and policy directions tailored towards making labour market regulation more effective.

The RDW’s Sixth Conference was held at the International Labour Office in Geneva in 2019. Further information about the RDW.

In 2011, the Centre assisted in the formation of a new association of labour law scholars, the Labour Law Research Network (LLRN).

The Network is based on cooperation between over 70 labour law research centres from all over the world. The goal of the LLRN is to advance research in labour law, and specifically to facilitate the dissemination of research work and encourage open discussion of scholarship and ideas in this field. All individual labour law scholars are welcome to join, whether affiliated with a research centre or not.

Centre member John Howe was a member of the inaugural Steering Committee of the Network, and was Chair of the Steering Committee from 2015-2019.

The LLRN holds a biennial conference, with the 5^th Conference to be held at the University of Warsaw in 2021.

Visit the LLRN website.