Waivability of Employment Rights: New Frontier or Road to Perdition?
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Description
The employment relationship is essentially contractual, founded as it is on an individual’s agreement to perform work for another for remuneration. Yet many terms and conditions of employment are governed by legislated rights and labour standards that are mandatory and not derogable by the parties to the employment contract. The principle of nonwaivability of employee rights is basic to the law of work across the developed world, and highlights the basic division of labour, so to speak, between mandates and contract in the law of work. But the principle is not uniformly applied and questions continue to percolate: Should workers or their unions be allowed to trade away some existing or future worker entitlements? In short, should the law of work concede more ground to contract? This chapter asks whether, and when, limited waiver rights might help to meet challenges posed by heterogeneity of jobs, industries, and workers’ interests.
First Page
323
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780192870360.013.27
Source Publication
The Oxford Handbook of the Law of Work
Source Editors/Authors
Guy Davidov, Brian Langille, Gillian Lester
Publication Date
8-21-2024
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Recommended Citation
Cynthia Estlund,
Waivability of Employment Rights: New Frontier or Road to Perdition?,
The Oxford Handbook of the Law of Work
323
(2024).
Available at:
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/2114
