This text for managers, personnel professionals and students brings together the complex detail of employment contract law with the wider agendas of modern management and EC influences. Contracts in their various forms are the key item that underpins all employment relationships and the capability to anticipate and endure changes, as well as avoiding disputes. If disputes arise, for example, over entitlements to holiday pay, or perhaps the application to a disciplinary penalty, the well-crafted and well-managed contract might itself provide the solution. The book covers topics such as - understanding employment contracts, making employment contracts, defining employment needs, contract terms, ending contracts, the new agenda, documenting employment contracts, contract types, managing and varying contracts. It is worth reflecting on the scale of the issue. At any given moment approximately 20 million workers in the UK will have contracts of employment, approximately 3.5 million will have contracts of self-employment of some sort. All these contractual relationships are ongoing, subject to change (relocation, pay restructuring, the introduction of prp). However, during any given year it is thought that approximately 3.5 million new contracts are entered into and perhaps 2 million contracts ended voluntarily or otherwise. Pat Leighton is the author of The Work Environment: The Law of Health, Safety and Welfare.