Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Labor Relations Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Worker rights

Human Rights Law

Publication Year
File Type

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations

Solidarity And Rights: Two To Tango: A Response To Joseph A. Mccartin, Lance Compa Oct 2013

Solidarity And Rights: Two To Tango: A Response To Joseph A. Mccartin, Lance Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Thanks to Joseph McCartin for advancing this debate with an insightful critique of the workers’-rights-as-human-rights framework and for his generous treatment of the series of Human Rights Watch reports in which I had a hand. McCartin so fairly presents the human rights case, even while disagreeing with it, that it’s hard to respond without simply borrowing from his framing of my own views. But I’ll try.


Free Trade, Fair Trade, And The Battle For Labor Rights, Lance A. Compa Feb 2011

Free Trade, Fair Trade, And The Battle For Labor Rights, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Labor rights advocacy is the most direct challenge to the primacy of a marketplace ideology in which efficiency and profit are the highest values. Labor rights advocates promote values of fairness, justice, and solidarity in global commerce. The battle to achieve enforceable hard law that protects workers' rights in the global economy is an important contribution to the labor movement's revitalization. Can a beleaguered movement take on multinational companies and the governments that appease them on these varied international grounds when there is so much still to do on organizing, collective bargaining, and domestic political action? There really is …


International Labor Rights And The Sovereignty Question: Nafta And Guatemala, Two Case Studies, Lance A. Compa Nov 2010

International Labor Rights And The Sovereignty Question: Nafta And Guatemala, Two Case Studies, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Labor rights advocates in the United States and allied organizations abroad attempting to establish international fair labor standards run up against traditional notions of sovereignty in formulating national labor policies and development strategies. In the same way that entrenched sovereignty principles gradually yielded to international human rights claims after World War E, sovereignty is now being challenged by claims of international laborrights in the field of employment standards and industrial relations. This Article seeks to illuminate this challenge to sovereignty in two case studies of labor rights advocacy. Part I sets the stage with an overview of the growing …