22 - Technological Disruption and Labour Law: Between Utopia and Dystopia

Summary

The collection offered in this book is a kaleidoscopic exercise in contrast. Contrast between the promises and pitfalls of technological innovation that often reach a degree of hype in the public discourse, on the one hand, and the speed and breadth of law reform, on the other. Between the varying legal traditions of regions and countries in dealing, through labour and employment law, with what has been a historical constant of modernity: adjusting and responding to technological change. Between regimes more favourable to embracing technological innovation through evolving labour organisation and/or regulation, and regimes more favourable to restricting technology by old or new labour organisation and regulation. Between countries where the pace of legal progress is set primarily through courts and cases in a typically incremental, organic, and occasionally transformational fashion, and countries where the statute book sets the tone in a typically categorical fashion.