THE FINDING OF RESEARCH
4.1.1 ABSENCE OF STATUTORY DEFINITION
The literatures that have been gathered and observed by researchers, scholars from all over the world has succeeded in pointing out that fixed-term contracts employment is a new phenomenon in the labour society.
One of the recognised distinctions between Malaysia and United Kingdom concerning the fixed-term worker is the absence of statutory definition. It is noticeable that the definition of fixed-term employment in Malaysia is ambiguous. The Employment Act 1955 does not provide any definition on fixed-term employment. The only reference that reflects fixed-term employment is section 11 of the Act, where it state impliedly that “a contract of service for a specified period of time or for the performance of a specified piece of work shall terminate when the period of time for which such contract was made has expired or when the piece of work specified in such contract has been completed”. Hence, with the absence of statutory definition to interpret fixed-term employment contract, the Malaysian law has failed to distinguish between the workers who concluded a bilateral employment contract, with the one who concluded a trilateral contract such as an agency worker.
In contrast, as a result of having a statutory definition in its legislation, the United Kingdom employment laws were able to draw a clear distinction between the fixed-term worker and the agency worker. The Fixed-term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002 has provided a specific and statutory definition of fixed term employment which refers to a person with a contract of employment which is due to end when a specified date, event or task has been completed. Whereas, the Agency W...
... middle of paper ...
...er the scope of Section 2 of the Act. As a result, these workers were excluded from the claiming the benefit and protection provided by the Act. Hence, the only option that is left for these workers to resolve any dispute which arised is to rely on the employment contract that was entered into with their employers or contractor for labour. The onus is on the worker to prove that that contract that he entered into with the contractor for labour is the employment contract made between him and the principal employer.
However, such a problem does not exist in United Kingdom since it has specific legislations which cover this issue. The employment relationship of fixed-term worker who enter into bilateral contract with the employer is governed by the 2002 Regulation, while the agency worker or the worker employed trilateral contract is protected by the 2010 Regulation.
Ferguson, J. (1997), Casual Employment Contracts: Continuing Confusion when Protection and Free Market Clash, New Zealand Journal of Industrial Relations, 22(1): 123-142
Moran, J. J. (2008). Employment law: New challenges in the business environment. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Blanpain, R and Bamber, G J. (2010). Comparative Labor Law and Industrial Relations in Industrialized Market Economies: Xth and Revised Edition. Alphen aan den Rijn: Kluwer Law International.
Commission for Labor Cooperation (2002) “ United States Labor Law.” Viewed online on 11/18/2004 at http://www.naalc.org/english/publications/labormain.htm
The Canadian employment law system consists of three regimes: common law, employment regulation, and collective bargaining agreement (CBA). From these regimes, the common law of employment is one that was created by Judges over centuries in order to regulate the employer-employee relationship. Judges, from lower level to upper level courts have used employment contracts and torts, two tools available to them under the common law system to aid in decision-making with respect to employment law cases. The decisions of which have been recorded and used as a precedent in future employment law cases of the same nature. When considering the common law of employment from the three listed regimes, I relate to speaker two while disagreeing with speaker one. Although, the common law of employment has historically excluded protections covered by the employment legislation and CBA, which has made it appear to favor the economic interests of employers more than employees, it has not completely put employees at a disadvantage because, it has protected them and their interests in other significant a...
Bennett-Alexander, D.; Hartman, L (2012) Employment Law for Business 7th Edition. New York, NY. McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.
In this paper, I will cover the employment-at-will doctrine, cover three scenarios with actions that the Chief Operating Officer (COO) can take to resolve the problems in the scenarios. Also, cover my state’s employment -at-will doctrine and provide an example of a recent situation that has happened in the last five years.
The discussion proves that the Standard Employment Relationship is slowly declining as the norm. However, the disadvantage to this is that non-standard employment is only covering up the gender discrimination as well as suspicious labor trends.
..., (21 and over). The Employment Rights Act of 1996 has included benefits UK’s citizens with four weeks paid yearly leave, sick pay, maternity and father leave. All employees are legally entitled to 5.6 weeks paid holiday time per year. All employers are responsible of their employee’s health and safety care. Adults are limited to 48 hours per week of work. Direct/indirect discrimination or harassment is not tolerated as well as favoritism. Age, disability, sexual orientation, race, religion, etc. are all factors. The UK is in progress for a plan of terminations.
Svensson, S. & Wolven, L-E. (2010) Temporary agency workers and their psychological contracts, Employee Relations, 32(2), 184-199
Dunlop(1958) argues that in the system of industrial relations, there are 3 major components in the system. There are the actors, the context and the common ideology. The actors consist of the employers and their organizations and employees and, if present, the groups that represent them and the state or government agencies. The second major component, the context, is the situation or environment that influences any decision or activity, this is usually technology, market constraints or distribution of power in the wider society. The common ideology, under which the purpose of this essay falls, can be seen as a binding idea or theory which the actors share for the purpose of stability in the system. Under the common ideology component, there are various conflicting theories or frames of reference.
According to the real world practice in the employment relationship, we can see that there is totally three party involved the employment process, which is the Government, employer and employee themselves. These three different parties represent different interest and point of views. For job discrimination, there is always issues and conflicts between the employer and the employees (job applicants). Government is a party that over watch and set regulations to ensure that these relations are fair and equal for everyone.
Research philosophy, refers to the development of knowledge adopted by the researchers in their research (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009). In other words, it is the theory that used to direct the researcher for conducting the procedure of research design, research strategy, questionnaire design and sampling (Malhotra, 2009). It is very important to have a clear understanding of the research philosophy so that we could examine the assumptions about the way we view the world, which are contained in the research philosophy we choose, knowing that whether they are appropriate or not (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009). According to Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2009), three major ways of thinking about research philosophy are examined: ontology, epistemology and axiology. Each of them carries significant differences which will have an impact on the way we consider the research procedures. Ontology, “is concerned with nature of reality”, while epistemology “concerns what constitutes acceptable knowledge in a field of study and axiology “studies judgements about value” (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009, p110, p112, p116). This study is intent on creating some “facts” from objective evaluations which are made by the subjects. Therefore, epistemology will be chosen for this study as the way of thinking about the research philosophy.
Suffield, L., & Templer A. (2012). Labour Relations, PH Series in Human Resources Management, 3rd Edition
The theory holds work to be governed by a wide range of formal and informal rules and regulations, which cover everything from recruitment, holidays, performance, wages, hours, and a myriad of other details of employment. It asserts that these rules are what industrial actors try to determine, that their establishment is influenced by the wider environmental context in which the actors operate, and that the actors themselves share an interest in maintaining the processes of negotiation and conflict resolution. On the back of these assertions four elements are held to make up the system of industrial relations rule-making. The first is industrial actors, which consists of employers and their representatives (i.e., employer associations), employees and their representatives (i.e., trade unions), and external agencies with an interest in industrial relations (i.e., government departments and labour courts). The second is the environmental context, which