In an empirical study of the interaction between law, adjudication, and conflicts about behaviour in the workplace, Lizzie Barmes analyses how labour and equality rights operate in practice in the UK. Arguing that individual employment rights have a Janus-faced quality, simultaneously challenging and sustaining existing distributions of power between management and employees, she calls for legal intervention at work to focus on resolving tensions between collective and individual concerns across the range of workplaces, and to stimulate the expression and reconciliation of different viewpoints in the implementation and enforcement of individual legal entitlements.

Based on extensive primary research, the volume surveys and analyses experiences and attitudes towards negative behaviour in the workplace, and explains relevant employment and equality law as it has developed from 1995 to the present day, covering the major case law and legislative developments over this time. This book provides qualitative analysis of authoritative UK judgments about behavioural conflict at work from 1995 to 2010, as well as of interviews with senior managers and senior lawyers, allowing the reader first-hand insight into the influence of law and legal process on problems and conflict at work.