RESEARCH STRATEGY
1) Locate and outline the topics to be covered in a presentation
in English on the subject of Employment law. The presentation should include
a comparison of recent developments in UK and US jurisdictions with reference
to some or all of the following:
• written statements of terms/employment contracts;
• sex and race discrimination;
• redundancy;
• minimum notice periods;
• wrongful and/or unfair dismissal;
• employment tribunals;
• future developments.
Meta-searches and meta-search engines
Meta-search engines (meta-crawlers) can be very useful when you are
researching general topics and wish to be able to compare results of multiple
searches.
Meta-search engines submit your search query to a number of individual
search engines at once. This can be useful because some search engines
may uncover data on the Internet which other search engines do not.
The tools built into some meta-search engines can help you identify
important vocabulary, allowing you to refine and expand your search in
English.
Using the Ixquick search engine (www.ixquick.com),
enter the following search query:
labour law
One of the first hits returned is the Social Sciences Information Gateway
(www.sosig.ac.uk) website entry for Employment and Labour
law: SOSIG: Employment and Labour Law.
This contains links to many informative documents which will help you
prepare your presentation. The SOSIG website is particularly useful when
researching topics relating to the UK.
Ixquick has a useful feature which will help you refine your search.
Some of the links returned include a  (tick/check
mark) and/or a  (cross).
You can use the check mark to find more results relating to that concept.
Repeat your search for labour law using Ixquick. Scroll
down and/or click on the next page of returned hits until you find the
reference to: Amazon.co.uk: The Law of the Labour Market: Industrialization,
Employment, and Legal Evolution.
Moving the mouse pointer over the
at the end of this link will prompt you to More results about
Employment. Alternatively, placing your cursor over the
will
allow you to Remove results about Employment.
This feature allows you to refine or expand your search by adding or subtracting
words and concepts in order to find the most relevant information.
Click on the
to see if widening your search provides any more useful links.
One of the first links you are given is to the Lectric Law Library’s
(www.lectlaw.com) Employment and Labor Law index:
Employment and Labor Law.
Use the information you find here to help you research US Employment
law.
Comparing the results from different search
engines
Using the Dogpile search engine (www.dogpile.com),
enter the following search query:
Employment law
Dogpile returns hits from different sources on the Best of All Search
Engines results page. The Are you looking for? clustering
menu on the right-hand side of the screen will help you refine your search.
Clicking on UK Employment law on the clustering
menu will lead you to more detailed links relating to Employment law in
the UK, whereas Labor Law (US spelling) will lead
you to information on US Employment law.
In this way, the clustering menu will help you to compare the UK and
US jurisdictions.
Dogpile also includes a feature which allows you to compare the results
from different search engines. When you have submitted a search query
you will see the following buttons on the results page:
By default, the results page shows the Best of All Search Engines.
Click on the Google button. A new window opens in your search
window which shows Google's top hits. Now click the Yahoo! button.
This will open the Yahoo! search results in another window, allowing you
to compare the two. In this way it is easy to compare the top links returned
by several different search engines without leaving the Dogpile results
window.
Spelling
The variety of English (e.g. American English or British English)
in which you conduct your search may affect the results. If you
compare the results for labor law (AE) and labour
law (BE) you can see that while the resulting number of
links may differ slightly, the links themselves may be very different.
In Dogpile, the resulting clustering menu items change entirely.
The spelling of a term may have a significant impact on the efficiency
and success of your search.
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Restricting your search using field file types
Suppose you wanted to find some information on recent developments in
Hungarian Labour Law for use in your partners’ presentation. One
way of narrowing your search would be to use search engine templates (field
file types).
Go to the AltaVista search engine (www.altavista.com).
Next to the FIND button, click Advanced Search.
In the Build a query with... field, enter the following search
query next to exact phrase:
labour law
Now scroll down to the Date: field and choose one year
in the by timeframe field. In the Location field under
by domain:, enter (type) hu. Now click FIND.
This limits your search to Hungarian (hu) registered sources published
in the last year.
Answer
Written statements of terms/employment contracts
In the UK, the Employment Rights Act 1996 entitles all employees
to receive a written statement of employment from their employer
within two months of starting work. Full details of what a written
statement of employment should/can contain are available on the
Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) website.
No such right to a written contract exists in the US, and many
people routinely accept work without a formal written contract.
Sex and race discrimination
In 1999 the European Commission proposed new rules to require
all EU Member States to prohibit discrimination in employment on
the grounds of:
racial or ethnic origin;
religion or belief;
disability;
age;
sexual orientation.
In the US, equal employment opportunity (EEO) laws prohibit specific
types of job discrimination in certain workplaces. The US Department
of Labor has two agencies which deal with EEO monitoring and enforcement:
The Civil Rights Centre and The Office of Federal Contract Compliance
Programs (OFCCP).
Redundancy
In many US states, workers who are laid off can file an unemployment
claim and receive compensation. Depending on local or state laws,
workers who leave voluntarily are generally ineligible to collect
unemployment benefits, as are those who are fired for gross misconduct.
In the UK, redundancy is only one possible reason for losing one’s
job. The 1965 Redundancy Payments Act gave the statutory right to
‘redundancy pay’ to employees dismissed by reason of
redundancy and since then the expression has become a common part
of general language.
Quite separately from any right he/she may have to statutory redundancy
pay, an employee may, if his/her service agreement so provides,
be entitled to contractual redundancy pay.
Minimum notice periods
In the US, The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act
(WARN) 1988 protects workers, their families, and communities by
requiring employers with 100 or more employees (generally not counting
those who have worked less than six months in the last 12 months
and those who work an average of less than 20 hours a week) to provide
at least 60 calendar days advance written notice of a plant closing
and mass layoff affecting 50 or more employees at a single site
of employment.
However, this act is specific to the situation outlined above,
and in many contracts there is relatively little protection offered
to the worker as long as the employer has reasonable grounds for
terminating a contract of employment. This concept is known as ‘employment
at will’.
In the UK, the proper notice that an employer must give should
be specified in the contract of employment. If a notice period has
not been expressly agreed, employment may be terminated upon 'reasonable'
notice. What is reasonable depends on factors such as seniority,
age, length of service, remuneration and what is usual in the particular
profession or industry.
Whatever the contractual provisions for termination of the contract,
the notice actually given must not be less than the statutory minimum
period of notice, which is as follows:
Employee's length of service isless than 1 month - No notice period
Employee's length of service is 1 month to 2 years - 1 week
Employee's length of service is 2 to 3 years - 2 weeks
Plus an additional week for each year of continuous employment to
a maximum of 12 weeks
If proper notice is not given, the employee may claim for wrongful
dismissal (see below).
Wrongful and/or unfair dismissal
During the 1980s, more than two million private sector US employees
each year were asked to take a lie detector test. Based on these
tests, approximately 300,000 workers annually were branded liars
and fired, disciplined or not hired as a result.
The Employee Polygraph Protection Act was passed in 1988 (EPPA).
Most US employees can now no longer be forced to endure such tests
by polygraph machines (lie-detectors), whose accuracy has often
been questioned.
Such cases in the UK are governed by the Employment Act 2002.
See Employment tribunals for further details.
Employment tribunals
In the US, The National Labor Relations Act 1935 established the
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to hear disputes between employers
and employees arising under the act and to determine which labor
organization will represent a unit of employees. The act also establishes
a General Council to independently investigate and prosecute cases
against violators of the act before the NLRB.
In the UK, employment cases are governed by the Employment Act
2002. A series of tribunals and appeal tribunals had already been
established prior to the act, which instituted a series of reforms
and clarified the powers and jurisdiction of the UK tribunal system.
Future developments
One of the key factors influencing the development of both US
and EU Employment law is the emerging link between trade, investment
and employment standards, which has placed labour law at the centre
of the globalization debate. An international Employment law conference,
Meeting the Challenges of Globalization, held at the Law
Faculty of The University of Western Ontario, Canada in 2003, discussed
the future development of both US and EU Employment law.
Key areas of current interest include the implications of the
Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) following negotiations
between 34 countries. The implications of the FTAA can be compared
with recent developments in the regional system established by the
European Union and the challenges posed to that system by the accession
of new member states from Eastern Europe.
Conference delegates present at the 2003 event also considered
whether and to what extent the European system could be an appropriate
model for the future development of international labour law and
other regional systems.
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2) If possible, the partners would like to include either an audio
and/or a video clip in the presentation. Try to find an appropriate clip
illustrating one or more aspects of Employment law.
Using the Dogpile search engine (www.dogpile.com), click
on the audio tab and enter the following search
query:
“Employment law”
Try to find both an audio file and a corresponding text file to help
prepare your presentation. You could include an audio clip in your presentation
by recording your own clip from the Internet using a program such as Total
Recorder (www.highcriteria.com). Alternatively, it is
sometimes possible to download an entire audio file. Some online radio
stations allow you to download recent programmes as mp3 files. See Justice
Talking (www.justicetalking.org) for a list of recent
law-related broadcasts. You must gain the permission of the copyright
holder first before recording a copyrighted clip and playing copyrighted
clips in public.
Now enter the following search query to find an audio clip detailing
one or more aspects of UK Employment law:
“Employment law” site:uk
Similar searches for video clips can be carried out by clicking the
video tab in Dogpile and AltaVista. Google is
currently developing its own video search too. Go to www.video.google.com
to see what clips are currently available.
Answer
US Employment law
UK Employment law
The BBC news website includes an archive of video and audio clips
on the subject of UK, EU and US Employment law, as well as many
other video an audio files.http://news.bbc.co.uk |
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