Fundamental Labour Rights And The Constitution

Labour law has long been upheld by the ILO as an essential pillar of development and peace, within member States, as well as between States. This book offers valuable insight on the application of the ILO's international labour standards.

Abstract.

Inquisitive and diverse, this innovative Research Handbook explores the ways in which human rights apply to people at work, through national constitutional provisions, judicial decisions and the application of rights expressed in supranational instruments. Key topics include evaluation of the role of the ILO in developing and promoting internationally recognized labour rights, and the examination of the meaning of the obligation of business to respect human rights, considering the evolution from international soft law to incorporation in codes of conduct and the emerging requirement of due diligence.

First published in 1999. This ongoing series, Controversies in Constitutional Law, provides teachers, scholars, and students convenient access to the debates and scholarly literature surrounding major questions of constitutional law. In the structure of government in the United States the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and other Amendments - especially the Fourteenth Amendment - are the primary referential points to locate, protect, and enhance our fundamental political freedoms. The intersections between Labor Law and Constitutional Law occasionally synergize, but perhaps more often obviate the tensions among, several fundamental freedoms. This first volume will situate and examine the intersections among labor, religion, and speech, the two latter among our most fundamental First Amendment rights.

Are efforts to protect workers' rights compatible with the forces of globalization? How can minimum standards designed to protect labour rights be implemented in a world in which national labour law is more and more at the mercy of international forces beyond its control? And does it makeany difference if we see rights such as the right to freedom of association, to non-discrimination in the workplace, to freedom from child labour, and to safe and healthy working conditions in terms of international human rights law? Or are they more appropriately seen as 'principles' to bepromoted as and where appropriate?The contributors to this volume argue that international agreements and institutions are of central importance if labour rights are to be protected in a globalized economy. But the report cards they give to the World Trade Organization, the European Union, NAFTA, and the Free Trade Agreement of theAmericas are generally very critical. While there is a strong rhetorical commitment to labour rights, at least on the part of the US and the EU, the substance of what has been achieved to date is hardly impressive. The role of the International Labour Organization is central and the authorsexplore some of the options that are open to governments, civil society, and the labour movement in the years ahead.

"This book reflects on constitutional balancing from the perspective of fundamental labour rights. It draws on neo-constitutional theories and builds on the assumption that fundamental labour rights, understood as rights aimed at protecting workers during their working life or after retirement, are the normative expression of founding values and can be balanced against equally axiological constitutional principles. The balancing of constitutional labour rights can be conducted by various institutional actors and by applying different techniques. This volume reviews the theoretical debates on judicial balancing and the approaches adopted by the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights, to proceed with a closer assessment of Italian and Spanish judicial traditions. In particular, it addresses the main profiles of the case law of the Italian and Spanish Constitutional Courts on labour and social law reforms adopted in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, where balancing takes place between labour rights and economic principles. The analysis is focused on four main aspects: the fundamental labour rights in the balance; the role of the Courts; the technique applied by the Judges; and the constitutional interests subject to the balancing. It ultimately reveals that the axiological nature of fundamental labour rights is preserved and the economic and financial contingencies confirm their factual character, although they are occasionally recognised a prominent role in the ratio decidendi. The book will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers working in the areas of labour law, social security law, legal theory and constitutional law"--

The entrenchment of a Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Canadian constitution raises a host of fundamental issues, both theoretical and practical. As the American experience makes abundantly clear, expanding the focus of judicial review means that the symbiosis between law and politics will become more intimate and interwined than ever before. Putting the Charter to Work David Beatty investigates the extent to which judicial review offers a means to the enhancement of social justice in our community.

Labour law has traditionally aimed to protect the employee under a hierarchy built on constitutional provisions, statutory law, collective agreements at various levels, and the employment contract, in that order. However, in employment regulation in recent years, ‘flexibility’ has come to dominate the world of work – a set of policies that reshuffle the relationship among the fundamental pillars of labour law and inevitably lead to degrading the protection of employees. This book, the first-ever to consider the sources of labour law from a comparative perspective, details the ways in which the traditional hierarchy of sources has been altered, presenting an international view on major cross-cutting issues followed by fifteen country reports. The authors’ analysis of the changing hierarchy of labour law sources in the light of recent trends includes such elements as the following: the constitutional dimension of labour rights; the normative intervention by the State; the regulatory function of collective bargaining and agreements; the hierarchical organization of labour law sources and the ‘principle of favour’; the role played by case law in both common law and civil law countries; the impact of the European Economic Governance; decentralization of collective bargaining; employment conditions as key components of global competitive strategies; statutory schemes that allow employees to sign away their rights. National reports – Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States – describe the structure of labour law regulations in each legal system with emphasis on the current state of affairs. The authors, all distinguished labour law scholars in their countries, thus collectively provide a thorough and comprehensive commentary on labour law regulation and recent tendencies in national labour laws in various corners of the globe. With its definitive analysis of such crucial matters as the decentralization of collective bargaining and how individual employment contracts can deviate from collective agreements and statutory law, and its comparison of representative national labour law systems, this highly informative book will prove of inestimable value to all professionals concerned with employment relations, labour disputes, or labour market policy, especially in the context of multinational workforces.