Labour courts in many European countries have a tripartite structure, with a professional judge sitting with employer and employee lay judges. This article focuses on employee judges, who face a potential conflict between their partisan role defending workers and their role as an impartial judge. Using cognitive dissonance as our theoretical framework and drawing on over a 100 interviews in three European countries, we found that many British and German interviewees said that they had not experienced any conflict of interests. Others, however, reported such conflict, especially initially, and demonstrated adaptation strategies that appeared consistent with cognitive dissonance theory. Moreover, there were national variations: conflict in France appeared more pervasive and enduring than in Britain or Germany.

欧洲许多国家/地区的劳动法院具有三方结构，由专业法官陪同雇主和雇员由专业法官陪同。本文重点介绍了雇员法官，他们在捍卫工人的党派角色和公正的法官角色之间可能会发生冲突。使用认知失调作为我们的理论框架，并在三个欧洲国家进行了100多次采访，我们发现许多英国和德国受访者说他们没有遇到任何利益冲突。然而，其他人则报道了这种冲突，尤其是最初的冲突，并证明了与认知失调理论相符的适应策略。此外，各国之间存在差异：与英国或德国相比，法国的冲突似乎更加普遍和持久。