Open normen en het arbeidsrecht : een juridisch onderzoek naar verborgen patronen in arbeidsrelaties

The research starts from the assumption that Belgian individual employment law is evolving: firstly because there are many changes occurring at the macro level of the labor market; secondly because - at the micro level of the individual employment relationship - there is a stronger awareness of the dynamic and relational nature of that relationship. The Belgian individual employment law, with its tight, fixed and a priori given standard rules, cannot fully absorb the dynamics that are taking place both on the macro level and the micro level. Its traditional techniques are often formulated too rigid or general to weigh the interests of the individual employee and employer against each other. Starting from its traditional one-sided focus on the protection of the 'weak(er)' employee and its emphasis on legally certain solutions, Belgian employment law does not always seem to carry out that assessment - or not always in an equally explicit and transparent way. That finding is all the more noticeable in the so-called 'hard cases' of individual employment law, in which the traditional techniques of Belgian employment law - in light of the functions, goals and principles of labour law - can or do not provide a suitable and sufficiently clear solution for the dispute. The research therefore raises the suggestion that open-textured norms and standards, such as the standard of 'good faith' or the prohibition of 'abuse of rights', provide opportunities to solve these hard cases of individual employment law in a way that respects the functions, goals and principles of labour law. Belgian individual employment law, however, distrusts the transparent use of - even their own - open norms and standards. The use of open norms would lead to legal uncertainty and judicial arbitrariness at the expense of the 'weak(er)' employee. In contrast, this research departs from the idea that thanks to their open texture and ad hoc implementation, open norms and standards offer opportunities to grasp the dynamic reality of the employment relationship and the therein hidden patterns. It assesses whether open norms can also fulfil their in general contract law acknowledged role as corrective mechanism in the context of the individual employment relationship. Meanwhile, it examines the extent to which open norms allow the labour judge to, on the one hand, adapt individual employment law to the developments on the labour market and to do justice to the (hidden) patterns and the complexity o