Bullying and Behavioural Conflict at Work: The Duality of Individual Rights (Oxford Monographs on Labour Law)

Based on extensive empirical research examining behavioural conflict at work, this book gives a much-needed insight into the current law that regulates workplace behaviour. Arguing that current law and policy is insufficient, the author suggests reforms which seek to reconcile individual and collective perspectives on working life. Abstract: Based on extensive empirical research examining behavioural conflict at work, this book gives a much-needed insight into the current law that regulates workplace behaviour. Arguing that current law and policy is insufficient, the author suggests reforms which seek to reconcile individual and collective perspectives on working life This empirical study of the interaction between law, adjudication, and conflicts about behaviour at work argues that individual employment rights are Janus-faced, simultaneously challenging, and sustaining existing distributions of power between management and employees. The central finding is that labour and equality rights, as currently legislated, implemented, and enforced in the UK, overall enhance the status-quo by supporting a good deal of traditional workplace hierarchy and marginalizing more plural, collective workplace ways of being. This is rooted in a paradox that individual rights are quite easily minimized, sidelined, and defused in employer-dominated environments, while more receptive organizations are at particular risk of individualized conflict that is damaging and disruptive. Behind this is a massive, growing number of working people who are left to cope alone with workplace problems and a tiny number who litigate, finding themselves in an alienating, often unsatisfying ordeal. While managers in theory benefit from this dynamic and are often responsible for workplace problems, they can face parallel isolation as shock absorbers for conflict between collective employer power and individual employee interests. At the broadest level this is a story of law supporting individualism through a process of individualization. It concludes that individual labour and equality rights should be recast to stimulate the expression and reconciliation of different points of view in their implementation and enforcement across the range of organizations. Without such innovation, the use of law to emancipate at work must represent an ongoing loss, not only for those directly affected by problems and conflict at work, but for society as a whole, and the many who hope for more just distributions of power, in working life and beyond In an empirical study of the interaction between law, adjudication, and conflicts about behaviour in the workplace, Lizzie Barmes analyses how labour and equality rights operate in practice in the UK. Arguing that individual employment rights have a Janus-faced quality, simultaneously challenging and sustaining existing distributions of power between management and employees, she calls for legal intervention at work to focus on resolving tensions between collective and individual concerns across the range of workplaces, and to stimulate the expression and reconciliation of different viewpoints in the implementation and enforcement of individual legal entitlements. Based on extensive primary research, the volume surveys and analyses experiences and attitudes towards negative behaviour in the workplace, and explains relevant employment and equality law as it has developed from 1995 to the present day, covering the major case law and legislative developments over this time. This book provides qualitative analysis of authoritative UK judgments about behavioural conflict at work from 1995 to 2010, as well as of interviews with senior managers and senior lawyers, allowing the reader first-hand insight into the influence of law and legal process on problems and conflict at work.