The 2015 Marco Biagi Award

The winner of the 2015 Marco Biagi Award is Uladzislau Belavusau (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands) for a paper entitled A Penalty Card for Homophobia from EU Labor Law: Comment on Asociaţia ACCEPT (C-81/12). In the paper, the author provides a detailed analysis of Asociaţia ACCEPT, an important case from the Court of Justice of the European Union on sexual orientation discrimination. The Court held (1) that an employer could be found liable for the discriminatory statement of a person who is publicly perceived as playing a leading role for the employer, even though the person does not have the legal capacity to bind the employer and (2) that national rules prohibiting such discrimination must be effective, proportionate, and dissuasive. Professor Belavusau evaluates the case as an example of cause lawyering that could be used as a model of legal mobilization for LGBT advocates and for other social movements.

 The International Association of Labor Law Journals sponsors the Marco Biagi Award in honor of one of the founders of the Association: Marco Biagi, a distinguished labor lawyer and a victim of terrorism because of his commitment to social justice. A list of the member journals of the International Association can be found at http://www.labourlawjournals.com.

This year’s winner was chosen by an academic jury composed of Frank Hendrickx (Belgium), Alan Neal (UK), and György Kiss (Hungary).

Prior winners of the Marco Biagi Award were:

2014    Lilach Lurie (Bar-Ilan University, Israel), Do Unions Promote Gender Equality?

 Specially Noted  ̶   Isabelle Martin (University of Montreal, Canada), Corporate Social Rsponsibility as Work Law? A Critical Assessment in the Light of the Principle of Human Dignity

 2013    Aline Van Bever (University of Leuven, Belgium), The Fiduciary Nature of the Employment Relationship

 2012    Diego Marcelo Ledesma Iturbide (Buenos Aires University, Argentina), Una propuesta para la reformulación de la conceptualización tradicional de la relación de trabajo a partir del relevamiento de su especificidad jurídica

 Specially Noted  ̶  Apoorva Sharma (National Law University, India), Towards an Effective Definition of Forced Labor

2011    Beryl Ter Haar (Universiteit Leiden, the Netherlands), Attila Kun (Károli Gáspár University, Hungary) & Manuel Antonio Garcia-Muñoz Alhambra (University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain), Soft On The Inside; Hard For the Outside.An Analysis of the Legal Nature of New Forms of International Labour Law  

Specially Noted  ̶  Mimi Zou (Oxford University, Great Britain), Labour Relations With “Chinese  Characteristics”? Chinese Labour  Law at an Historic Crossroad 

2010    Virginie Yanpelda, (Université de Douala, Cameroun), Travail décent et diversité des rapports de travail

 Specially Noted  ̶  Marco Peruzzi (University of Verona, Italy), Autonomy in the European social dialogue.

2009    Orsola Razzolini (Bocconi University, Italy), The Need to Go Beyond the Contract:  “Economic” and “Bureaucratic” Dependence in Personal Work Relations

 CAS