This essay suggest that attempts to create a transnational regime of labour regulation have been frustrated by a series of related and mutually reinforcing developments: the incapacity or unwillingness of states to intervene in labour markets; changes in those markets associated with globalization and post-­‐industrial capitalism; the decline of the “standard employment contract”; the demise of working class consciousness, solidarity and power; and the shift from “hard” to “soft” labour law. It concludes with a proposal for three-­‐part strategy of reinventing labour law in the new dispensation: by enlarging its intellectual ambition; expanding its clientele; and extending its spatial reach.