Labour migration in hard times

Reforming labour market regulation?

Bernard Ryan (ed), Institute of Employment rights, 174 pages pages, paperback, £10 unions and students/£30 others

Each of the essays in this latest collection by expert contributors, published by the Institute of Employment Rights and edited by Professor Bernard Ryan of the University of Leicester, sets the issue of migration firmly in the current economic context.

For migrant workers in the United Kingdom, times are most certainly “very hard indeed” and the book explores the challenges they face through a variety of lenses, historical, political, economic, organising and regulatory.

It casts a bright light on the dark world of ineffective enforcement across all regulatory bodies, highlighting the huge gulf between theory and practice, and the bleak patterns of exploitation of both regular and irregular workers, including migrant domestic workers.

Their position is uniquely vulnerable, often hidden from the authorities and from support networks and, as the book shows, they are comprehensively failed by employment tribunals applying the “doctrine of illegality”.

Trade union reps in particular will benefit from the discussion of research into the challenges of organising a fragmented and precarious group of workers without collective rights, as well as the chapter explaining legal developments in relation to “posted workers”, the growing evidence of their poor treatment and justifiable concern about access to employment and deteriorating labour standards in host states.

Reviews contributed by the Bookmarks socialist bookshop. Order online at www.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk