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A Structural Approach to Workers’ Rights

Political Theory
Social Justice
International
Elizabeth Kahn
Durham University
Elizabeth Kahn
Durham University

Abstract

Research by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and Non-Governmental Organisations suggests that a substantial number of workers world-wide endure long hours, toil in unhealthy and unsafe conditions, receive low pay and/or have no free time or paid days off in which to pursue their own interests (2013, 2005, 2011, 2012b). This Paper begins from the assumption that these workers are having their human right to just working conditions violated. The Paper investigates how the right to just working conditions should be understood. In answering this question it draws on the concept of social structure to propose that we should understand the basic rights of these workers as violated ‘structurally’. The Paper uses Young’s account of social structure, however it differs from Young’s own discussions of labour justice by identifying the structural approach as a way of understanding rights. The approach outlined here also offers a different account of the obligations agents have with regard to labour injustice (drawing on collectivization duties rather than essentially shared responsibilities). The account that results differs from Pogge’s institutional approach to human rights by identifying how rights can be violated by the cumulative effect of human actions and not just by coercively imposed institutional orders that agents support and contribute to. The Paper introduces the structural approach by showing how it can better deal with workers’ rights than interactional ‘employer as responsible’ model. The Paper then discusses how the structural approach differs from an interactional approach according to which human rights are direct claims to action or forbearance from other agents. How these rights can play a significant normative role without being direct claims to action or forbearance that guarantee the substance of the right is then explored. Section one outlines the right to just working conditions and details current violations of the right. Section two introduces the idea that the right should be understood as a claim right. Section three discusses the idea that the right makes a direct claim on employers and explores problems with this approach. Section four proposes the right is not a claim to action or forbearance by others but is in fact a claim concerning how social structures should be as a matter of fundamental justice. Section five briefly outlines an account of the duties agents have with regards to the structural violation of a worker’s rights in order to show the normative role rights play and the article concludes by recapping the proposed account and giving an example of the sort of collectivization it recommends.