Professor U. Drobnig of the University of Hamburg is one of the directors of Max-Planck-Institute for Foreign and International Private Law. Dr H.-J. Puttfarken is one of the senior experts of that Institute. Both are well-known learned writers. Their book, being always of a great practical and scientific interest, deals with a modern and repeatedly occurring scenario, a labour dispute arising on board a foreign flag vessel while being in a German port. However, it is not a book of interest for a German reader only. The conflict of law aspects dealt with apply to other European law as well. For they have a common basis in the European Convention on the Law Applicable to Contractual Obligations of 1980. Moreover, the conflict of law aspect is of general interest. The Bundesarbeitsgericht (the highest labour court in Germany) once applied English labour law in the case of an employee serving in a German flag ferry (IPRax 1991, 407). The conflict of law aspect is also of interest for accidents to seamen doing service on board vessels flying a flag of convenience (see, e.g., the case discussed by P. Bonnassies in [1993] D.M.F. 24). Finally, the topic dealt with by the two learned writers is of interest in the European context (cf. in this respect R. R. Churchill, “European Community Law and the Nationality of Ships and Crews” [1991] E.T.L. 591).

The authors, in the first part of the book, investigate the international law of labour disputes on board vessels. Thus, they deal with those sets of rules which regulate which national substantive law applies in such a case. After a thorough discussion of jurisprudence and learned literature, they present the following comprehensive formula: a labour conflict on board a ship is subject to the law of the country of the flag. If there is a common closer relation of the parties to a different law, in particular if their contracts of employment are subject to a law different from that of the flag or if a collective agreement between the parties is subject to a different law, the labour conflict is subject to such different law. If, however, the law applicable as mentioned before is not—or not in time if a preliminary injunction is requested—proven, the court will apply its own law.

In the second part of the book, the question is answered as to whether the change of the vessel’s flag brings about a transfer of the employer’s undertaking. As an implementation of a European Community Directive the German Civil Code, in its § 613a, contains a provision that upon contractual transfer of a business the new employer enters into the rights and obligations of the existing employment contracts. The question arises as to whether the German law on collective labour disputes remains applicable if a ship is transferred to a foreign register. Unlike the European Community Directive, German law in this respect does not exclude sea-going vessels from its application. Certainly BGB § 613a does not apply if a single ship is sold. But it does if a shipowner sells his whole business as such. In this case, if a ship’s business is sold abroad, German law generally does not continue to apply but is replaced by the law of the new seat of the business. After a thorough analysis, the authors come to the conclusion that the German (and other countries’) provision on the continued terms of employment cannot be said to change this result. “The main reason is sheer impracticability” (p. 113).