Lockout Law in a Comparative Perspective: Corporatism, Pluralism and Neo-Liberalism

The object of this paper is to develop a classification of national legal systems and institutional practices in relation to lockouts. Three primary systems regulating the use of lockouts currently have been used in advanced market economies. First, lockouts are sometimes subject to a blanket prohibition (Southern European Corporatism). Secondly, most OECD nations limit lockouts to exceptional circumstances in which employers are considered to suffer from an imbalance of bargaining power so as to balance a right to lockout with other legal principles such as the right to strike and freedom of association (Pluralism). Thirdly, whereas most OECD nations limit lockouts to 'equalising' collective bargaining power, contemporary reforms in the Antipodes allow lockouts to be directed at unorganised workers and used to reconfigure power relations by decollectivising bargaining (Neo-Liberalism).