This textbook aims to provide a comprehensive study guide for students in labour law or employment law courses. It is divided into twenty chapters, corresponding approximately to a full-year university course. It includes both a comprehensive discussion of collective labour law issues as well as individual employment law disputes. For shorter or more focused courses, teachers may prefer to concentrate on some of the chapters or parts of the book and will find that each chapter is largely self-contained. As well as providing a description and analysis of the law, in the spirit of the Law in Context series, the textbook offers criticisms of the law drawn from different perspectives and disciplines. Most chapters also include brief vignettes, often based on examples drawn from the news, which should provide a stimulus to classroom discussion.

Although the authors have written an earlier book on labour law together, this text is completely restructured and almost entirely new. Responsibility for the different chapters has been divided unevenly: Collins: Chapters 1, 3–7, 10, 11 and 18–20; Ewing: Chapters 2, 8 and 12–17; and McColgan: Chapter 9.