The Contract of Employment in 3D

Abstract

The contract of employment has often been described as a relational contract (Bird, 2005; Boyle, 2007; Brodie, 2011). Indeed, the contract of employment possesses many features that are frequently highlighted in descriptions of relational contracts: it is likely to be long term, to require cooperation from both parties, and to depend for its successful performance on flexibility and adaptation to changing circumstances. There have even been occasional judicial references to the relational character of the contract of employment: Lord Steyn, in Johnson v Unisys Ltd [2001] ICR 480 said_ ‘it is no longer right to equate a contract of employment with commercial contracts. One possible way of describing a contract of employment in modern terms is as a relational contract.’ (at [16]) Ian Macneil, the originator of the idea of relational contracts (Macneil, 1978), often refers to the contract of employment as an example of a relational contract or, more precisely, at the relational end of the spectrum of exchange relationships between the polarities of discrete and relational contracts. For example, he describes employment as ‘an extremely relational contract, no matter how strenuously a party tries to make it discrete’ (Macneil, 1985, p. 492).