Jedidiah Kroncke on LPE and workplace organization (New book chapter)

"LPE and workplace organization"
Jedidiah Kroncke
in John D. Haskell(ed), Research Handbook on Law and Political Economy (2nd edition, Edward Elgar Publishing, September 2025), Chapter 33, pp. 562 - 576
Published online: September 2025

Abstract: Critical scholarship on workplace law has a long traditional of emphasizing the central role of extralegal factors in the effective realization of both individual employment rights and regimes of collective bargaining. Classic and contemporary scholarship in law and political economy builds on this awareness by emphasizing the interconnection of workplace law with other core areas of economic organization—notably antitrust and corporate law. Moreover, such scholarship also illustrates the disabling legacy of isolating workplace organization from broader debates about the necessary economic dimensions of democratic citizenship writ large. Instead, LPE approaches emphasize the social centrality of the workplace as a forum for exercising and developing democratic agency that is mutually reinforcing and energizing with formal political institutions and enfranchisement. This chapter will highlight recent scholarship which shows how an LPE perspective on workplace organization illustrates both the promise of LPE approaches for identifying the illusory nature of the public/private law divide as well as for mapping out the inter-related reforms necessary for promoting a renewed, robust vision of democratic citizenship. One key quandary explored will be how to integrate existing traditions of critical work on employment rights and collective bargaining with current interest in fundamentally reshaping the place of labor in the decision-making of economic enterprises.

Welcome the new Global Academic Fellow Dr Jiahui Duan!

Welcome to Dr Jiahui Duan who joined the Faculty of Law as a Global Academic Fellow. Dr Jiahui Duan is an interdisciplinary legal researcher with an interest in feminist jurisprudence, legal consciousness, labor rights, power, and resistance. She has previously researched the land rights of rural Chinese married-out women. The current research she conducts focuses on workplace sexual harassment issues in China, with the aim of understanding the development of workplace sexual harassment issues in Chinese society, as well as exploring potential anti-sexual harassment strategies within an emerging economic and political context such as China’s. A common intellectual thread of her work is: examining how individuals’ legal consciousness is formed, reshaped, or even disintegrated in their interactions with other socio-legal actors, and investigating the dynamics of legal rules, social norms, and human agency, as well as the Internet and other technologies.

    Dr Duan received her J.S.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. She was also a Lloyd M. Robbins Fellow and a BELS Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at Berkeley. Prior to joining Berkeley, she was a certified lawyer in mainland China.    

      Research Areas:

• Law and society
• Gender and Law
• Employment Law

Urania Chiu and Daisy Cheung on Claiming Wrongful Diagnosis under the Mental Health Ordinance: The Impossibility of Building a Reasonably Arguable Case (HKLJ)

"Claiming Wrongful Diagnosis under the Mental Health Ordinance: The Impossibility of Building a Reasonably Arguable Case"

Urania Chiu and Daisy Cheung
Hong Kong Law Journal, 

2020, Vol. 50, Part 3 of 2020, pp. 837-850

Abstract: In the recent Court of First Instance decision Bhatti Bhupinder Singh v Hospital Authority, the judge refused to grant leave under s 69 of the Mental Health Ordinance (Cap 136) (MHO) to the claimant for his wrongful diagnosis and wrongful detention claims against the Hospital Authority. This article considers this decision in detail, arguing that the judge’s reasoning was highly flawed due to its lack of consideration of a crucial factual context of the case, as well as its lack of scrutiny of the decisions made by the various medical professionals involved, in particular in relation to whether the criteria specified by each relevant section of the MHO was satisfied. The resulting approach demonstrates an unacceptable level of deference towards the judgment of medical professionals, to the extent that it is difficult to see how a reasonably arguable case could ever be mounted under s 69 of the MHO — a problematic outcome, given the implications of s 69 on the important right to access to courts. Given that compulsory admission and treatment is a highly draconian regime involving deprivation of liberty and the administration of powerful, mind-altering drugs, the court cannot simply be a rubber stamp and must exercise its supervisory role in a much more meaningful manner.

Glofcheski & Aslam's Employment Law and Practice in Hong Kong (2nd Edition)

Employment Law and Practice in Hong Kong, Second Edition
General Editors: Rick Glofcheski and Farzana Aslam
Sweet & Maxwell
2016

Content highlights of the Second Edition: A string of ground-breaking Court of Final Appeal decisions in a number of important areas, including: (i) Trade union discrimination protections and an expanded interpretation of Employment Ordinance s 21B “activities of a trade union” (Blakeney-Williams v Cathay Pacific Airways, 2012); (ii) Restrictions on multiple concurrent employers (Chung Yuen Yee v Sam Woo Bore Pile Foundation, 2013); (iii) Reach of the Employment Ordinance’s statutory annual leave provisions (Kwan Siu Wa Becky v Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, 2012); (iv) The extension of a contractor’s duty of care to subcontractor’s employees (Luen Hing Fat Coating & Finishing Factory Ltd v Waan Chuen Ming, 2011); and (v) Damages awards for failure to conduct contractually entitled disciplinary hearings (Blakeney-Williams v Cathay Pacific Airways, 2012). Important statutory developments examined in this edition including: (i) The introduction of the Minimum Wage Ordinance (2010); (ii) Criminalization of the failure to pay awards made by the Labour Tribunal and Minor Employment Claims Adjudication Board (2010); (iii) Expansion of the scope of the Protection of Wages on Insolvency Fund (2012); and (iv) The introduction of paternity leave and paternity leave pay (2015).

Farzana Aslam on Proper Care for Overseas Employees (China Daily)

"Employees working overseas must be properly cared for"
Farzana Aslam
China Daily
31 May 2016

With the impact of globalization resulting in increased transnational business opportunities, Hong Kong-based companies are faced with an ever-increasing requirement to send their employees abroad on business-related activities.

     Many employees are expected and required to be mobile, flexible and ready to travel at short notice in pursuit of business opportunities, or to manage operations, personnel or crises overseas. Others are required to spend longer periods of time on assignment or secondment in a foreign jurisdiction as part of their training, knowledge exchange or career development.

     While many employees welcome the prospect of overseas travel and assignments, employees traveling and working overseas may be exposed to a number of risks that fall outside of the scope of risks contemplated by health and safety management systems applicable to workplaces in Hong Kong. For instance, employees who contract an illness or pandemic disease may, in countries with weak healthcare infrastructure, be exposed to an increased level of risk. As borders open and markets emerge in areas that are politically, socially or economically unstable, risks related to personal safety and security present themselves alongside more readily assumed health-related risks.

     From a legal perspective there is a duty of care on employers to ensure the health and safety of their employees at work. The duty of care is a personal, non-delegable duty. It is thus no defense for an employer to say he has delegated his responsibility to the employee himself or to another company to which the employee is assigned, even if the workplace is located overseas. An employer’s breach of this duty will give an employee a right to bring a claim to recover damages for losses suffered as a result of the breach, for example for the pain and suffering of any personal injuries and for loss of earnings for any period of time which the employee was unable to work as a result of such injuries... Click here to read the full article.

CCPL White Paper on Employer's Duty of Care for Employees Working Overseas

"White Paper on Employer's Duty of Care for Employees Working Overseas"

Farzana Aslam
Centre for Comparative and Public Law
May 2016
Abstract: This paper presents the findings of a study to identify the nature of health and safety risks faced by Hong Kong-based employees who are required to travel and work overseas, together with human resource policies and procedures that are used by Hong Kong employers to manage and respond to such risks. The first part of this Paper discusses the extent to which a Hong Kong-based employer’s duty of care for the health and safety of its employees has extra-territorial application by reference to legal duties imposed upon an employer at common law and by health and safety-related legislation, as well as broader obligations arising from principles of corporate social responsibility. The second part of this Paper presents the research findings from the study together with recommendations to inform best practice human resource policies and procedures with a view to improving the management of health and safety for employees required to travel and work overseas.  Click here to download the full paper.  To read more about this project, click here.  Farzana presented her paper at a HKU talk and panel discussion on 24 May 2016. 

Farzana Aslam on Domestic Helpers' Day Off (SCMP)

"Up to domestic helpers themselves to decide how to spend their day off in Hong Kong"

Farzana Aslam

South China Morning Post

21 November 2015

Three letters have been published recently on the subject of where and how migrant domestic workers spend their days off.

     The tone that has been used throughout this series of letters is polarising, patronizing, and problematic. The latest has the letter writer suggesting that the Hong Kong government provide training courses in community centres or city halls. The rationale being: "This will prevent them from mixing with the wrong company, which most of Hong Kong employers are afraid of…"

     The writer goes on to argue, "nowadays it is not uncommon for maids to have to look after family members with certain health conditions, such as Alzheimer's disease … In such cases, professional training courses can be offered to the helpers, who often have no experience in looking after people with such conditions. Wouldn't this be a more meaningful way for helpers to spend their days off, rather than mingling with other helpers?"

     Really? Yes, there are many migrant domestic workers who choose to congregate in Central and other urban areas on their day off. But, then again, there are many Hong Kong residents who also choose to spend their day off in Central and other densely populated areas of the city.  Click here to read the full article.