Empowering Workers: a Trade Union Certificate in Labour Law and the Labour Movement

About The Course

Labour Law courses generally focus on imparting to students what the law is. This is, of course, useful for the union activist or community organiser by providing a set of potential weapons to add to her armoury when defending or seeking to advance the interests of her constituency. But labour law is only one element of that armoury which covers industrial, political, negotiating, campaigning, historicising, thinking, and organising modes. To decide strategy or tactics to achieve the goal of defending and advancing the interests of her constituents, it is not only necessary to have a grasp of these elements but also to understand their interaction, their limits and utility.

This course examines labour law and labour movements as well as their history in the multi-faceted context of the struggle between social justice and market forces, for the improvement of the lives of workers, and seeks to provide insight into how and why the law operates as it does.

This unique approach will equip students with the skills and knowledge they need to make a difference through empowering workers.

In addition to the attended sessions, there are some great online learning materials that are included in the course, which can be accessed anytime.

The price includes accommodation for the residential session at Quorn Grange Hotel, as well as food, and course materials for all of the sessions outlined overleaf.

19 March 2026

Venue: Birbeck School of Law

• Ways of organising, mobilising, and negotiating.
• Working rights in times of crisis: how can we respond?

26 March 2026

Venue: Birbeck School of Law

• Fairness, social justice and the law.
• Labour strategy and legal mobilisation. Labour, artificial intelligence and the law.

6 – 7 July 2026

Venue: Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, London

• Unions and communities: linking struggles.
• Strike action, action short of strike action, balloting, campaigning, disobedience and protest.
• Boardrooms, works councils, votes at work and other forms of struggle

Course Accreditation

This course is accredited by Birkbeck School of Law as a short course.

Course Tutors

We have very deliberately established this as a blended programme with a mixture of residential and one-day in person sessions. Teaching is led by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Professor of Human Rights and Political Philosophy at Birkbeck School of Law, together with Lord John Hendy KC, former Thompsons CEO Geoff Shears, and Prof. Keith Ewing of the Institute of Employment Rights.

The programme is supplemented with contributions from several visiting speakers who have extensive experience of labour law, at senior levels in the trade union movement, in academia or as legal professionals.

Requirements for study

This course is designed to be accessible to trade union activists and no prior qualifications are necessary to enrol. Whilst some experience of trade union negotiations and campaigning are assumed, there is no expectation of legal understanding or prior legal knowledge in order to undertake this course.

The course is aimed at senior activists and aspiring senior activists in the trade union movement and we hope will provide a firm foundation in the history and politics of labour law and the labour movement for future trade union leaders.