Contracting for Work in Tourism and Catering in Greece: Beyond a State/Market Dichotomy

Drawing on a case study of contemporary employment relations in tourism and catering in Greece, this paper seeks to contribute to our empirical understanding of employment law. Which factors determine the ways in which the law is perceived by employers and workers and complied with, breached or avoided? The main argument of the paper is that not only market forces are relevant here; several other factors need to be taken into consideration, which when combined with market forces can re-regulate as well as deregulate the field of employment. These tend to be informal, locally embedded and influenced by wider social relations. By constructing a simple matrix of employment settings based on locale and seasonality on one axis, and size of enterprise and scope of services provided on the other, the paper demonstrates how organisational and spatial parameters and the social environment interact with market forces and legal forces to shape prevailing norms and to influence the behaviour of parties to the contract for work. It further demonstrates that the structuring of the sectoral labour market is a process determined by broader social power dynamics. Beyond serving as part of the context within which contracting for work takes place, legal rules are a resource to be mobilised by both employers and workers.

Reconceptualising the Nautical Fault Exception in the Fog of Emerging Technologies

It is expected that the maritime world will be significantly different by 2050, from smart ports through to blockchain-based shipping documents and autonomous vessels. As the maritime trade witnesses further developments in this field, there will be an inevitable struggle to harmonise the new technology vessels with the traditional rules of law. This article seeks to further the discussion of one of the main legal rules that will have a significant role in shaping sea carriers’ liability for goods carried by autonomous vessels: the nautical fault exception, which operates to remove, to some extent, sea carriers’ liability for losses arising from the acts or omissions of their employees. The main tenet of this article is that an adapted version of the exception should be available to govern the carriage of goods by new technology vessels. In this context, it advocates the use of legal personhood for the purposes of the nautical fault exception. In so doing, this article contributes to the important debate in employment law on the distribution of the risk of losses arising from autonomous systems when, in future, they take over tasks traditionally carried out by employees. In the absence of employment contracts to perform certain commercial activities, the law will need to decide whether legal personhood should be assigned to autonomous systems for efficient and fair risk allocation. This article illustrates why this may be the solution particularly where there is a ‘fine-tuned’ balance of liability already struck in the current legal landscape.

Union Freedoms in the Armed Forces: Still a Taboo?

This article addresses unionisation in the armed forces, an issue which has recently attracted the attention of the courts, most prominently in Europe. First, the article focuses on the organisational profiles of military structure, discussing the relationships between the exercise of union freedoms and the necessity of preserving the chain of command, the readiness of troops and their political neutrality. It concludes that some recent evolutions in military organisation have contributed to the pressure to unionise the military. Therefore, this article focuses on the legal perspective to clarify the role of international law in this issue. To this end, international treaties and courts’ or authoritative bodies’ interpretations of them are collected, analysed and compared. The article then confirms that several arguments developed in the European judicial context can be reasonably applied outside Europe, in accordance with similar or identical clauses enshrined in all international treaties addressing the issue of military unionisation. International law thus leaves room for interpretations whereby restrictions on military unionisation should not go so far as to ban union freedoms altogether. Finally, this article considers the risks inherent in military unionisation and suggests possible approaches that will facilitate a homogeneous balance between union rights and the general interests at stake.