Atypical Forms of Employment Contracts in Times of Crisis

‘Ordinary’ employment contracts—including those of domestic servants—have been deemed to attract diplomatic immunity because they fall within the scope of diplomatic functions. This chapter highlights the potential for conflict between these forms of immunity and the rights of the employees, and reflects on cases in which personal servants of diplomatic agents have challenged both the existence of immunity and the scope of its application. The chapter examines claims that the exercise of diplomatic immunity might violate the right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the way in which courts have dealt with these issues. The chapter analyses diplomats’ own employment claims and notes that they are usually blocked by the assertion of immunity, but also reflects on more recent developments in which claims had been considered which were incidental to diplomatic employment (eg Nigeria v Ogbonna [2012]).

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Employee Satisfaction in Labor-Owned and Managed Workplaces: Helping Climate and Participation Spillover to Non-Owners

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13063278 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (6) ◽

pp. 3278

Author(s):

Renée De Reuver ◽

Brigitte Kroon ◽

Damian Madinabeitia Olabarria ◽

Unai Elorza Iñurritegui

Keyword(s):

Survey Data ◽

Corporate Responsibility ◽

Employee Satisfaction ◽

Multivariate Analyses ◽

Archival Data ◽

Temporary Employees ◽

Employment Contracts ◽

Employee Wellbeing ◽

Worker Cooperatives ◽

Different Levels

In contrast to shareholder-owned organizations, worker-owned cooperative organizations foster employee wellbeing such as employee satisfaction as an important outcome by itself. Due to expansions and economic fluctuations, larger worker-owned cooperations nowadays use mixtures of employment contracts resulting in varying shares of co-owners, contracted and temporary employees in workplaces. In the current paper, we research if this situation challenges the moral commitment of worker cooperatives to their employees, which derive from the cooperative philosophy on corporate responsibility. Where previous research contrasted employee wellbeing in worker cooperatives with share- holder owner organizations, this paper describes how various shares of co-owners in workplaces change mediating processes of helping climate and workplace participation and ultimately result in different levels of employee satisfaction. Archival data combined with survey data of 5907 employees in 99 hypermarkets were tested with multivariate analyses, and indicated that the helping climate and workplace participation positively mediated the association between the share of co-owners in hypermarkets and employee satisfaction. The findings imply that traditional worker-owned cooperatives, where a majority of all workers are owners, had more success in fostering cooperative values as a strategic outcome.

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Contracts and the Implied Freedom of Political Communication

Federal Law Review ◽

10.1177/0067205x20979754 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 0067205X2097975

Author(s):

Patrick McCabe

Keyword(s):

Political Communication ◽

Common Law ◽

Employment Contracts ◽

Out Of Hours ◽

The Common

This article considers the phenomenon of contractually-imposed restraints on political communication. Such restraints often incidentally arise from broad limits on out-of-hours conduct imposed by employment contracts or from confidentiality or non-disparagement clauses in deeds of settlement. It is argued that the implied freedom of political communication has work to do in relation to at least some categories of such restraints. The various objections to that view are examined and it is argued those objections are not compelling. The article analyses the question of how the implied freedom would operate in respect of contracts that impermissibly burden freedom of political communication, and suggests that this may be achieved by developing the common law of contract to accomodate a doctrine similar to the doctrine governing unreasonable restraints of trade.

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