Abstract

The author analyses the progressive and/or regressive phases of labour law, contextualising them in its historical evolution. This approach allows to get rid of stereotypes that since long time have afflicted labour law scholarship, as the ritual and obsessive references to terms as "crisis" and "flexibility". This approach allows as well to deny the "innovative" character arbitrarily given in the last years to a series of issues and interventions (e.g. on autonomy and subordination, dismissal, collective bargaining and right to strike) that on the contrary have a clearly regressive character and bring labour law back to solutions adopted at the beginning of industrialism, i.e. at the "origin" of modern labour legislation. Starting from these observations, the author reflects on the real innovations and challenges that labour law has to face in the current post-modern global phase, underlining the strong cultural autonomy required by labour law scholarship to approach these innovations and challenges.