Darcy was admitted as an attorney in 1974 after completing his law degree at the University of Cape Town. He obtained a doctorate in law at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 1979 and joined the Law Faculty at the University of the Western Cape in 1991. From 1997 to 2001 he served as Dean of the Faculty and from 2001 to 2017 as a senior panellist of the Motor Industry Bargaining Council.
After his retirement from the University in 2011 Darcy joined BCHC as a consultant, while remaining an Emeritus Professor involved in a number of academic projects relating to work in the 4th industrial revolution. These include his role as coordinator of the Labour Law 4.0 niche area at UWC Law Faculty and as co-investigator of an international research project, FAIRWORK in the Platform Economy in the Global South, based at Oxford University in the UK.
Internationally, he has served inter alia as a Vice-President of the International Society for Labour and Social Security Law and member of the advisory board of the European Labour Law Network. He is also an honorary life member of the SA Society for Labour Law (SASLAW).
Darcy’s publications include articles and chapters in books dealing with employment equity, strike law, workplace democratisation, domestic work (contributing to the adoption of ILO Convention 189 of 2011 on domestic workers) and more recently on digital platform work.
He is also the author, editor or co-author of a number of books on labour law, including Labour Relations Law (now in its 6th edition) and Labour Law Through the Cases (now in its 34th edition).