Abstract
“Dignity” is often evoked in the pursuit of better labor standards, and labor exploitation is often found to entail a loss of human dignity. In a bid to understand what dignity means in the context of labor, this chapter examines and compares the threshold between acceptable labor conditions and labor exploitation from the perspectives of the International Labour Organization (ILO) as international standard-setter, of selected NGOs as international monitors, and of a field-study of Fairtrade laborers as subjects of international labor standards. The distinction between the material and the immaterial elements of the labor relationship emerges as a key to all three perspectives, with the ILO demonstrating a prevailing tendency to link dignity with the immaterial elements of the labor relationship. In response, this chapter asks whether it is enough to consider dignity as contingent on the immaterial elements of the employment relationship or whether dignity in labor does not also require the satisfaction of certain material needs of the laborer.
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Notes
- 1.
Preamble ILO Constitution 1919.
- 2.
To be precise: (i) Freedom of Association features in Article 23(4) Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and Article 22 International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (and also included as an economic and social right, the right to form and join trade unions is included in Article 8 International Covenant of Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)); (ii) The right to be free from forced or compulsory labor can be interpreted from Article 4 UDHR: “the right not to be held in slavery or servitude” and Article 23 UDHR: “everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment […]”; also Article 8 ICCPR: “No one shall be held in slavery; slavery and the slave-trade in all their forms shall be prohibited; No one shall be held in servitude; No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour (except in the conditions of imprisonment)”; (iii) The effective abolition of child labor is contained in Article 3 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (1989): “the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation”; (iv) is provided by Article 7 UDHR, Article 26 ICCPR and features in almost every human rights document (although some instruments contain a right not to be discriminated against which applies only to the human rights contained in the instrument itself). Beyond this, just and favorable conditions of work are included under Article 7 ICESCR and Article 24 UDHR. The right to work is included in UDHR (Article 23(1)) and ICESCR (Article 6); Article 23 states that everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. EU provisions go farther regarding protection of dignity: Article 26 EU Charter protects the right to dignity at work, and applies both to sexual harassment and to other forms of bullying. The EU Charter contains a general reference to working conditions which protect a workers dignity (Article 31). (See generally Davies 2004).
- 3.
For a good summary of the opposing viewpoint see Hepple (2005: 22), the principal argument being that much of the labor rights agenda are desirable social goals but to call them human rights is to devalue the importance of basic civil and political rights. Hepple also makes the points that: “Rights to decent working conditions and fair pay depend upon the level of socio-economic development in a particular country and they generally presuppose economic growth and expanding social welfare. Secondly there is a contradiction between the inequality of class in the market place and the democratic element of citizenship and equal rights in the political sphere” (Hepple 2005: 265).
- 4.
ILO Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No 29) Article 2(1).
- 5.
ILO Abolition of Forced Labour Convention 1957 (No 105).
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- 9.
Besides main indicators, the ILO report also considers additional indicators, context indicators, indicators which are candidates for future inclusion, indicators which are candidates for exclusion, and indicators of a legal nature (ILO Report 2008).
- 10.
For the purpose of this study only campaigns that are specifically concerned with the improvement of labor conditions are presented, as opposed to those campaigns which advocate alternatives to trade liberalization. Moreover, it is worth noting that many major international NGOs, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International amongst them, have often explained their hesitancy to include economic and social rights in their mandate due to the absence of specific international standards of measurement, amongst other reasons.
- 11.
Recent successful campaigns include a campaign for the introduction of new laws against slavery in Niger in 2003 and against bonded labor in Nepal in 2002 following Anti-Slavery International reporting and lobbying.
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
Subsequently shortened to the “The International Labor Rights Fund” and in 2007 changed again to the “International Labor Rights Forum”.
- 15.
The extent to which perceptions of consent in employment contracts may be inaccurate is the subject of on-going research by the author.
- 16.
16These findings are intended to be anecdotal in nature and are limited to this unique case study Further conclusive findings would require further field trips.
- 17.
In the context of South Africa, “farm-workers” on wine estates in the Western Cape are almost without exception landless and of black or “Coloured” descent. The South African Human Rights Commission uses the term “farm-dwellers” to describe the workers and their families.
- 18.
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Shields, K. (2011). Labor Exploitation. In: Kaufmann, P., Kuch, H., Neuhaeuser, C., Webster, E. (eds) Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 24. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_13
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