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This paper considers the interaction of legal norms and social norms in the regulation of work and working relations, observing that, with the contraction of collective bargaining, this is a matter that no longer attracts the attention that it deserves. Drawing upon two concepts from sociology-Max Weber's 'labour constitution' and Seymour Martin Lipset's 'occupational community'-it focuses on possibilities for the emergence, within groups of workers, of shared normative beliefs concerning 'industrial justice' (Selznick); for collective solidarity and agency; for the transformation of shared beliefs into legally binding norms; and for the enforcement of those norms. If labour law is currently in 'crisis', then a promising route out of the crisis, we argue, is for the law to recover its procedural focus, facilitating and encouraging these processes.

Drawing on a series of interviews with key actors including representatives of the main trade unions, this paper considers the response of unions in the UK to the emergence and growth of platform work. Comparing the partly different strategies adopted by traditional and alternative unions in respect of the representation of platform workers’ interests, it demonstrates that the unions’ choices have been shaped by the characteristics and resources of the unions themselves, by prevailing political conditions and, perhaps above all, by the restrictive legal framework that excludes many platform workers from the scope of employment legislation. Without recourse to either a legally protected freedom to take industrial action or the statutory recognition procedure, unions have only exceptionally been able to negotiate collective agreements on behalf of platform workers. Instead, traditional unions have focussed on broader political strategies to fight precariousness, including wielding an influence on policymaking, especially through their relations with the Labour Party. Alternative unions have channelled resources into organising and mobilising platform workers and supporting them in campaigning, protesting and bringing strategic litigation.

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Hugo Sinzheimer and his one‐time student Otto Kahn‐Freund are widely regarded as the founding fathers of German and British labour law respectively. While, at first glance, the two scholars might appear to have advocated rather different approaches to the regulation of employment relations, a review of their work reveals that both argued, in essence, for the ‘constitutionalization’ of those relations. Both argued, in other words, for the removal from the economic sphere of the otherwise inequitable consequences of the functioning of private law, so that collectivized labour might participate with capital, on a parity basis, in the autonomous regulation of the economy.