Rationale and recommendations on decolonising the pedagogy and curriculum of the Law School at the University of Exeter

This is the final version. Available on open access from Routledge via the DOI in this recordThis report outlines the rationale behind and recommendations on the steps that need to be taken towards decolonising the Law School's pedagogy and curriculum. It concludes a two-year process of research and discussions involving a joint effort between staff and students. A rationale for a change in approach to both pedagogy and curriculum is presented together with recommendations and practical examples of how this might be achieved in modular teaching in the Law School

Domestic Workers, the ‘Family Worker’ Exemption from Minimum Wage, and Gendered Devaluation of Women’s Work

This is the final version. Available on open access from Oxford University Press via the DOI in this recordData statement: This study did not generate any new data.Domestic workers, who work in private households carrying out tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and care for children and the elderly, are overwhelmingly women and often from migrant and/ or ethnic minority backgrounds. This article examines a stark example of domestic workers’ exclusion from labour law protection, regulation 57(3) of the National Minimum Wage Regulations, which exempts employers from paying the minimum wage where a worker lives in their employer’s family home and is treated ‘as a member of the family’ in relation to accommodation, meals, tasks and leisure activities. Drawing on feminist theory on the divisions between ‘productive’ work outside the home versus ‘reproductive’ work within it, it argues that the exemption’s application has reflected gendered devaluation of domestic labour, stemming from its conflation with work normally performed for free by women in the ‘private sphere’ of the home. Focusing on the December 2020 Employment Tribunal (ET) judgment in Puthenveettil v Alexander & ors, which held that the exemption was unlawful and indirectly discriminatory on the grounds of sex, the article provides timely and in-depth analysis of the prospects for challenging the devaluation of domestic work in light of the limitations of legal protections for domestic workers in the UK

Domestic Work and the Gig Economy

The provision of cleaning, childcare and other housework through online platforms is an increasingly important sector. This chapter identifies key challenges domestic work in the gig economy creates for workers' rights protections and proposes an agenda for future research. It argues that well-documented risks of the gig economy model such as lack of security and denial of employment rights tend to exacerbate pre-existing shortcomings in the regulation of domestic work, while platforms provide new mechanisms for the surveillance and control of workers. The longstanding devaluation of domestic work as manifested in the gig economy is then analysed, with reference to uncertain hours and segmentation of women into low-paid roles. The chapter further considers constraints on collective bargaining in domestic work and the gig economy, discussing two rare examples of collective agreements with domestic work platforms and highlighting the importance of universalist legal protection of workers' rights and freedom of association