Hollowing out Labour and Equality Rights at Work: UK Experience of Individualism and Individualisation (May 2018)

Professor Lizzie Barmes, Queen Mary University of London and Professor Beth Gaze, Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law

CELRL Labour Law Seminar

Hollowing out Labour and Equality Rights at Work: UK Experience of Individualism and Individualisation

Seminar presented by Professor Lizzie Barmes

Discussant: Professor Beth Gaze

Wednesday 2 May 2018: 1–2pm at Melbourne Law School

Lizzie Barmes and Beth Gaze

About the event

This presentation drew on a UK study of behavioural conflict at work to theorise the impact in practice, and emancipatory potential, of workplace regulation that takes the form of individual labour and equality rights. The presentation saught also, first, to draw out the implications of the findings for other systems and, secondly, to extend the analysis to the current turn to re-institionalising enforcement and associated emphasis on criminalisation and immigration policy.

About the speaker

Lizzie Barmes is a Professor of Labour Law at Queen Mary University of London and co-Director of the QMUL School of Law's Centre for Research on Law, Equality and Diversity (LEAD). She taught at UCL from 1999-2007, was a Government Lawyer in the Common Law Team of the Law Commission of England and Wales from 1995-1999 and practiced as a solicitor from 1988-1994. Professor Barmes’ research interests are in the fields of equality and employment law. Her 2016 monograph, Bullying and Behavioural Conflict at Work: The Duality of Individual Rights, won the 2017 SLSA’s Hart Socio-Legal Book Prize. Other main research interests include positive and affirmative action, discriminatory harassment, the contract of employment and judicial diversity.