Employment relations matters is a ten chapter text with the double intention reflected in its title: to bring people up to date with the matters that the study of employment relations deals with and to explain why they matter. It has two main audiences in mind. The first are those who teach and study in the area. The second are practitioners and policy makers, helping to explain why it has extended chapter summaries and is not over-burdened with academic debates.

Employment relations matters is available, to download in PDF format, on the internet under a Creative Commons’ Attribution/Non-commercial/Share-alike Licence. This means that, as well as being free to make use of the text for teaching and research, anyone will be able to adapt, extend and improve it, helping to create the cross-national framework the subject needs for further development. As of September 2020, Chapter 1, 2 ,3 and 10 have been revised and updated.