The concept of human rights at work has advanced significantly in the last decade. The authors of the essays in Human Rights in Labor and Employment Relations focus in various ways on how the promotion and protection of human rights at workplaces here and around the world posit a new set of values and approaches that challenge every orthodoxy in the employment relations field, every practice and rule based in that orthodoxy, and even the underlying premises and intellectual foundations of contemporary labor and employment systems.

The authors constitute a diverse and accomplished group of human rights activists, practitioners, and scholars. Implementing the theme of the volume, they address a wide range of important subjects: worker health and safety, child labor, worker freedom of association, migrant and forced labor, the human rights obligations of employers, workplace discrimination, and workers with disabilities. The authors also discuss the implications of their findings for labor and employment research and, where relevant, make pragmatic proposals for change.

Contributors: Susanne M. Bruyere, Cornell University; Lance Compa, Cornell University; James A. Gross, Cornell University; Jeffrey Hilgert, Cornell University; Barbara Murray, International Labour Organization; Tonia Novitz, University of Bristol; Maria L. Ontiveros, University of San Francisco Law School; Edward E. Potter, Director of Global Workplace Rights, Coca-Cola Company and U.S. Employer Delegate, International Labour Organization Conference; Marika McCauley Sine, Global Stakeholder Engagement Manager, Coca-Cola Company; Rebecca Smith, National Employment Law Project; Burns H. Weston, University of Iowa"

We are not shy about reporting human rights abuses around the globe. We are much more reluctant to recognize them at home. This book exposes the violations of human rights witnessed daily in workplaces across our country. Based on detailed case studies in a variety of sectors, it reveals an "unfair advantage" in U.S. law and practice that allows employers to fire or otherwise punish thousands of workers as they seek to exercise their rights of association and to exclude millions more from laws that protect their rights to bargain and to organize.Unfair Advantage approaches workers' use of organizing, collective bargaining, and strikes as an exercise of basic rights where workers are autonomous actors, not objects of unions' or employers' institutional interests. Both historical experience and a review of current conditions around the world indicate that strong, independent, democratic trade unions are vital for societies where human rights are respected. In Lance Compa's view, human rights cannot flourish where workers' rights are not enforced. While researching workers' exercise of these rights in different industries, occupations, and regions of the United States, Human Rights Watch found that freedom of association is under severe, often buckling pressure when workers in the United States try to exercise it. Cornell University Press is making this valuable report, originally published in August 2000, available again as a paperback with a new introduction and conclusion that bring the story up-to-date.

This monograph was originally developed as a direct response to the claim made by members of the 'Employers Group' at the 2012 International Labour Conference, namely that the right to strike is not protected in international law, and in particular by ILO Convention 87 on the right to freedom of association. The group's apparent aim was to sow sufficient doubt as to the existence of an internationally protected right so that governments might seek to limit or prohibit the right to strike at the national level while still claiming compliance with their international obligations. In consequence, some governments have seized on the employers' arguments to justify new limitations on that right. The Right to Strike in International Law not merely refutes this claim but is the only complete and exhaustive analysis on this subject. Based on deep legal research, it finds that there is simply no credible basis for the claim that the right to strike does not enjoy the protection of international law; indeed, the authors demonstrate that it has attained the status of customary international law.

This monograph was originally developed as a direct response to the claim made by members of the 'Employers Group' at the 2012 International Labour Conference, namely that the right to strike is not protected in international law, and in particular by ILO Convention 87 on the right to freedom of association. The group's apparent aim was to sow sufficient doubt as to the existence of an internationally protected right so that governments might seek to limit or prohibit the right to strike at the national level while still claiming compliance with their international obligations. In consequence, some governments have seized on the employers' arguments to justify new limitations on that right. The Right to Strike in International Law not merely refutes this claim but is the only complete and exhaustive analysis on this subject. Based on deep legal research, it finds that there is simply no credible basis for the claim that the right to strike does not enjoy the protection of international law; indeed, the authors demonstrate that it has attained the status of customary international law.