Laura Beke

Global Governance of Labour Rights

Stories and images of collapsed factories, burned down sweatshops, imprisoned migrant workers, child workers and many other violations of internationally recognized labour rights continue to spread across the globe. This highly topical book examines the different instruments which are intended to protect labour rights on a transnational scale, and asks whether they make a difference. With perspectives from law, management, sociology, political science and political economy, the topics discussed include the protection of international labour rights, the EU’s social dimensions and its external trade relations, Asian and US perspectives on labour rights under international trade agreements, and the transformative capacity of private fair labour agreements. Academics and advanced students from different disciplines will benefit from the up-to-date empirical material in this study. Policy-makers, NGOs and Unions will find the discussions of the instruments used to protect labour rights of great value to their work.

Protecting labour rights in a globalizing world: an introduction

Stories and images of collapsed factories, burned down sweatshops, imprisoned migrant workers, abused child workers, violent suppression of peaceful labour protests and many other violations of internationally recognized labour rights continue to spread across the globe. This is nothing new. Nor is the recognition that addressing these issues is not the sovereign and sole responsibility of a state. Many labour rights violations take place in the context of transnational and global economic transactions, and there has long been a widespread consensus that international action and coordination are necessary to address labour rights violations. International labour regulation, as a result, has a long history. Attempts to internationally coordinate the improvement of labour conditions date back from 1919, when the International Labour Organization (ILO) was established to develop international policies and norms on a range of labourrelated issues. Since its creation in 1919, The International Labour Organization (ILO) has introduced a system of international labour standards aimed at ‘promoting opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and dignity’.1 The basic idea, in 1919, was to prevent a deterioration of labour standards and promote their adoption in a world recovering from war, based on the principle of social justice as an ‘indispensable condition for universal and lasting peace’,2 whereby ‘the failure of any nation to adopt humane conditions of labour is an obstacle in the way of other nations which desire to improve the conditions in their own countries’.3 The latter specifically referred to the increase in volumes of trade and the resulting international