Are Worker Rights Human Rights? (review)

Beginning with two examples of on-the-job deaths of workers employed by sub-contractors, Richard McIntyre highlights the growth of the modern-day "sweating system," a system of sub-contracting in which "... the real employer takes no responsibility for the wages and working conditions of the employees." (1) The outsourcing and subsequent sub-contracting of production to low-wage countries, as well as the sub-contracting of what remains of the North American manufacturing industry, has had significant adverse effects on workers, their communities, and their unions. In response to the corporate strategy of "sweating," we have witnessed the rise of workers' rights as both a defensive tool and an alternative to neoliberal globalization. It is within this economic setting that McIntyre begins his investigation.

As the title suggests, the central research focus of McIntyre's book is a determination of whether or not worker rights are human rights. While this may seem like a basic question in an increasingly popular field of academic study, it represents an important and much needed contribution to the growing literature on the intersection of workers' rights and human rights. While considerable ink has been spilt on the broader topic, especially since the passage of the International Labour Organization's (ILO) Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work in 1998, few scholars in this area have provided any sort of theoretical background explaining why workers' rights should or should not be considered under the broader rubric of human rights. Despite the rise in construction of workers' rights as human rights, this fact has been assumed, but not fully explored. As McIntyre notes, "... merely reasserting the core labor rights of the ILO as basic human rights is not going to accomplish [a process of change]." (152) He chides many colleagues working in this field, arguing that "perhaps [they] believe that by designating something as a human right they are resting on a firmly established body of theory and research, but they are not." (152) As such, McIntyre pays considerable attention to basic, yet important, questions such as the formation of rights, the shape they take, their objectives, their effects, and their enforcement mechanisms.

Relying on heterodox economics, a theoretical approach which draws on elements of Keynesianism, feminism, Marxism, and institutional economics, McIntyre argues that "worker rights are best understood as the interactive result of convention and class." (6) More specifically, he draws from the Marxist and institutionalist traditions and, in so doing, "develop[s] [John] Commons' ideas directly and put[s] them into conversation ... with Marx who recognized that the institutions, norms, and traditions of each country must be taken into consideration when analyzing the possibility of eliminating exploitation." (6) This hybrid theoretical approach is described in the book's first chapter and is developed further in Chapter 2. Although the second chapter is largely theoretical, he suggests that "the policy oriented reader, impatient with intramural debates among social scientists, may want to skip ahead to the next chapter." (13) Despite this caveat, the chapter serves as a useful window from which to view the growth and limitations of constructing workers' rights as human rights.

However, McIntyre does not simply ask if workers' rights are human rights. In the event that it is determined that workers' rights are human rights, he subsequently asks in Chapter 4 whether or not it even matters. It is at this point that the formation and substance of human rights is developed in more detail. He notes that despite the growth of "rights talk" since World War II, rights are not self-evident and are instead "purely human creations." (54) Also, "recourse to the language of rights alone may not be any more successful than appeals to moral sympathy in promoting workers' well being." It is at this point that McIntyre begins to offer a less than optimistic view on the effects of constructing workers' rights as human rights. Viewed in this light, rights are not simply benevolent constructions, but are packed with overarching ideological beliefs. McIntyre asserts that there is...