Globalisation And Labour Rights

This comprehensive Handbook explores the complex and volatile debate over globalisation and labour standards. It offers key insights into the impact of globalisation on workers, the obligations of corporations and international legal bodies in protecting workers’ rights and maximising the opportunities offered by international trade and investment.

In a world of work that has changed dramatically over the last few years, states see themselves confronted with new actors and conflicting international legal obligations. This book examines the tensions between core labour rights as defined by the International Labour Organisation, and the interests of international economic institutions (e.g. WTO, IMF, World Bank, OECD). It provides an analysis of the legal interactions between international regulations and state policy with regard to potential regulatory conflicts, at both the horizontal and vertical level. The study suggests a model of multilevel consistency as a way of reconciling the highly specialised and fragmented legal systems of core labour rights on the one hand, and trade liberalisation on the other, to form the coherent framework of a consistent legal order. Its detailed analysis and recommendations are designed for both academic readers and practitioners in international organisations and governments.

How are national and international labour laws responding to the challenge of globalization as it re-shapes the workplaces of the world? This collection of essays by leading legal scholars and lawyers from Europe and the Americas was first published in 2006. It addresses the implications of globalization for the legal regulation of the workplace. It examines the role of international labour standards and the contribution of the International Labour Organization, and assesses the success of the European experiment with continental employment standards. It explores the prospects for hemispheric co-operation on labour standards in the Americas, and deals with the impact of international labour standards on the rights of women and migrant workers. As the nature and organization of work around the world is being decisively transformed, new regional and international institutions are emerging that may provide the platform for new labour standards, and for protecting existing ones.

Throughout the industrial world, the discipline of labor law has fallen into deep philosophical and policy crisis, at the same time as new theoretical approaches make it a field of considerable intellectual ferment. Modern labor law evolved in a symbiotic relationship with a postwar institutional and policy agenda, the social, economic and political underpinnings of which have gradually eroded in the context of accelerating international economic integration and wage-competition. These essays--which are the product of a transnational comparative dialog among academics and practitioners in labor law and related legal fields, including social security, immigration, trade, and development--identify, analyze, and respond to some of the conceptual and policy challenges posed by globalization.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the new methods of transnational labour regulation that are emerging in response to globalisation.

This book explains how three major mechanisms of globalization international trade, international migration, and the activities of multinational companies have altered working conditions and labor rights around the world during the late 20th century. Drawing on analyses of a database on international labor conditions assembled for this project and a growing research literature on globalization and labor conditions, the book finds that trade, migration, and multinational companies are associated with improvements in world labor conditions.

"Do core labour standards exist in today's global economy? If so, what are they? And most important how effective are they?" "In this book two labour law scholars answer these questions in a definitive manner. In detail they demonstrate that, although insufficiently legally binding instruments governing employment and labour exist beyond the national level, a significant body of international soft law has developed that does in fact carry great weight. Blanpain and Colucci identity four major sources of this soft law - the UN Global Compact of 1999, the ILO Tripartite Declaration of Principles, the North American Agreement on Labour Cooperation and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises - and show how the principles these instruments enunciate act as a countervailing power to the international economic decision-making of multinational corporations." "The authors cite relevant cases and highlight emerging trends in this important area of labour law. Annexes reprint all four of the instruments. The Globalization of Labour Standards will be welcomed by all sectors of the labour and employment law community as a fully realized analysis of what is currently available to those who would like to ensure economic and social progress in a world dominated by multinational corporations."--BOOK JACKET.

This book explores the impact of neoliberal globalization on labour markets and the state in the developed and developing world. It focuses especially on the United States and the economies of Asia – in particular, India. Liberalized trade and investment are thought by neoliberals to be the best levers for raising labour standards, provided labour market flexibility and capital market restructuring accompany them. Labour market flexibility and capital market restructuring, at a first glance, appear to be complementary and symmetric policies. In practice, however, they might have very asymmetric consequences. This book addresses these issues, and it presents a comprehensive analysis of the key questions such as: How far is globalization a ‘real’ threat to the conventional systems of wage fixation, employment pattern, and basic rights at work in both developed, as well as underdeveloped countries? Are casualization and informalization of the workforce direct outcomes of deregulation? How do labour organizations cope with the volatility of the labour market? Are the existing labour market conditions and forms of labour organizations misfits in the globalized business world? Is it at all feasible to choose a high road that combines some degree of labour market flexibility with better labour standards? This book will be of interest to academics working on International Development, Development Economics, Political Economy, Comparative Labour Studies and Asian Studies.