Labour Constitutions and Occupational Communities: Social Norms and Legal Norms at Work

This paper considers the interaction of legal norms and social norms in the regulation of work and working relations, observing that, with the contraction of collective bargaining, this is a matter that no longer attracts the attention that it deserves. Drawing upon two concepts from sociology – Max...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of law and society 2020-11, Vol.47 (4), p.612-638
Main Authors: DUKES, RUTH, STREECK, WOLFGANG
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Collective bargaining
Constitutions
Crises
Enforcement
Justice
Labor
Labor law
Law
Legal norms
Procedural justice
Social norms
Transformation
Weber, Max (1864-1920)
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Summary:This paper considers the interaction of legal norms and social norms in the regulation of work and working relations, observing that, with the contraction of collective bargaining, this is a matter that no longer attracts the attention that it deserves. Drawing upon two concepts from sociology – Max Weber's ‘labour constitution’ and Seymour Martin Lipset's ‘occupational community’ – it focuses on possibilities for the emergence, within groups of workers, of shared normative beliefs concerning ‘industrial justice’ (Selznick); for collective solidarity and agency; for the transformation of shared beliefs into legally binding norms; and for the enforcement of those norms. If labour law is currently in ‘crisis’, then a promising route out of the crisis, we argue, is for the law to recover its procedural focus, facilitating and encouraging these processes.
ISSN:0263-323X
1467-6478
DOI:10.1111/jols.12254