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Selected Works

Human rights

Human Rights Law

Lance A Compa

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Law

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 …


Should Labor Defend Worker Rights As Human Rights? A Debate, Jay Youngdahl, Lance A. Compa Jul 2009

Should Labor Defend Worker Rights As Human Rights? A Debate, Jay Youngdahl, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

The authors debate the relative merits and drawbacks of defining the labor movement under the umbrella of human rights, and the virtues of the rights of the individual versus the solidarity of the community.


Stop Sending Mixed Signals To General Pinochet, Lance A. Compa May 2009

Stop Sending Mixed Signals To General Pinochet, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] We should not apologize for U.S. enforcement of the new labor rights laws against Chile. Critics have attacked them as "backdoor protectionism" aimed at keeping out foreign products. U.S. unionists, though, report a genuine enthusiasm among their rank-and-file members, not for the prospect of shutting out foreign goods but the hope of better pay and working conditions for their foreign counterparts.


Corporate Social Responsibility And Workers’ Rights, Lance A. Compa Dec 2008

Corporate Social Responsibility And Workers’ Rights, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Corporate social responsibility (CSR) brings an important dimension to the global economy. CSR can enhance human rights, labor rights, and labor standards in the workplace by joining consumer power and socially responsible business leadership—not just leadership in Nike headquarters in Oregon or Levi Strauss headquarters in California, but leadership in trading house headquarters in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and leadership at the factory level in Dongguan and Shenzhen. Ten years ago, I would not have said this. I viewed corporate social responsibility and corporate codes of conduct as public relations maneuvers to pacify concerned consumers. Behind a facade of …