Labour Law Utopias Post-Growth & Post-Productive Work Approaches

Labour Law Utopias: Post-Growth & Post-Productive Work Approaches engages with new socioeconomic ideas that look beyond the current growth-driven competitive market economy. Building on analysis of economic growth, as well as the limits of the logic of human productivity and competitivity for workers and the environment, it explores alternative approaches and what those will mean for work in general, and labour law in particular. The concept of 'post-growth' is used to rethink the purpose of the economy by looking beyond merely increasing wealth, consumption, and production, considering what this means for the position of work in society as well as the individual worker. The post-productive work approach is used to question the centrality of economically productive work and its regulation in labour laws. The chapters in this book take a progressive approach and discuss whether and how labour law can contribute to the emancipation of work from the constraints of growth and productivity by revisiting the value, organization, and impact of work. With these utopian ideas for labour law, the contributions in this book present inspirational 'dots on the horizon' that could guide the direction of changes in labour law as it navigates issues such as the implementation of digital and green solutions, the energy crisis, migration, rising inequality, and precariousness. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

1 - Labour Law Beyond Growth and Productivism: An Introduction
2 - The Coast of (Labour Law's) Utopia
3 - Economic Paradigm Shifts for Labour Law
4 - Labour Law for Degrowth and Meaningful Work
5 - First Lines for an Ecological Labour Law: A Social Utopia for the Anthropocene
6 - A Global South Perspective on Labour Rights and Supply Chains for a Post-Growth World
7 - Including the Non-Economic Value of Work in Labour Law
8 - Labour Law and the Utopia of the Commons
9 - Labour Law for Care and Wellbeing
10 - Channelling Technologies to Benefit Employees via Labour Law
11 - Social Security and the Right to Laziness Beyond just Basic Income
12 - Utopia, Power, and Free Labour
13 - Conclusion: Utopias for an Ecological Social Law and How to Get There

Nicolas Bueno is Assistant Professor of Law at UniDistance Suisse. He completed his PhD in public international law at the University of Lausanne after a research stay at Columbia Law School (2012-2013, Fulbright). He conducted post-doctoral research at the University of Louvain (2016), the London School of Economics (2017), and at the University of Zurich (2018-2021) with research grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation. His research in Labour Law & Political Economy has been published in the International Labour Review, the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, and the International Journal of Comparative Labour Law. His current project focuses on the economic ideology of labour law from classical liberalism to post-growth economics. Beryl ter Haar is UW Professor and Head of the Centre for International and European Labour Law Studies (CIELLS) at the University of Warsaw, Poland and Endowed professor European and Comparative Labour Law at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Her research deals with international and European labour law, especially collective bargaining, social dialogue, new governance, transnational private regulation, and the future of labour law. She has published widely on these issues in national and international journals and edited books. She is co-editor of several books and a member of editorial boards of various (labour) law journals. Nuna Zekic is Associate Professor of labour law at the Amsterdam Institute of Advanced Labour Studies - Hugo Sinzheimer Institute (AIAS-HSI) at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Previously, she worked at Tilburg University where she also obtained her PhD in the field of labour law. Her expertise lies in the area of labour law and more precisely, dismissal law, flexible working arrangements, and collective bargaining. She has published widely on these issues both in national and international journals. She has been a visiting researcher at the European University Institute (EUI) in Italy, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and Lund University in Sweden. She acts as deputy judge at 's-Hertogenbosch Appeal Court in the Netherlands.