Studies in Employment and Social Policy

Several recent international legal documents explicitly recognise respect for human dignity as an overarching goal of labour law, thus bringing human rights law to bear on employment and working conditions. In this far-reaching book, prominent scholars and policymakers in international labour law demonstrate the ways in which many labour rights are in fact human rights, and collectively provide a comprehensive description of the tools and techniques that may be used to put the protection of the worker as a human being at the centre of labour law regulation and practice.

The contributors focus on such aspects as the following:

• moral foundations of extending human rights into the employment sphere;

  
  



• criteria for selecting which specific human rights should be respected by enterprises;

  
  



• how corporations can use contract clauses requiring their global business partners to align their conduct with human rights standards;

  
  



• recognising that the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike are necessary to compensate for the imbalance of power between employers and employees;

  
  



• role of voluntary corporate social responsibility; and

  
  



• promoting labour law reform in countries where domestic law may not reflect international standards.

  
  

Relevant national and international case law, including the extensive interpretation by the ECtHR of Articles 8 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, is fully attended to, as are techniques for applying the principles of the ILO Conventions that refer to or imply human rights.

In light of global value chains, a crucial challenge for labour law is that of affirming the effectiveness of human and social rights beyond the national borders where they have been traditionally recognised, a situation where the trade-off between economic efficiency goals and human rights comes to the fore. With this book, labour law policymakers, scholars, and practitioners will be enabled not only to ensure appropriate tools and techniques for implementing labour rights as human rights around the world but also to greatly increase the social value and persuasive force of human rights principles against the institutional inertia and resistance still present in our societies.