The Constitutionalization of Employment Relations: Multiple Models, Pernicious Problems

Abstract

The constitutionalization of employment relations has been proposed as a possible response to the serious difficulties confronting workers and unions in an era of neo-liberalism and globalization. This article challenges this proposal on two grounds. First, ‘employment’ no longer serves as an appropriate platform for labour policy, and in any event is conceptually inappropriate for constitutionalization. And second, a survey of the multiple meanings and manifestations of ‘constitutionalization’ at the level of the nation state, the global economy and the enterprise reveals that this approach is unlikely to produce positive practical results for workers. Nonetheless, to think about the constitutionalization of employment relations is productive in the sense that it requires engagement with the pernicious problems of articulating a ‘new normal’ — a ‘new normativity’ — that represents a better balance between workers’ interests and those of employers.