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ADVANCES IN HETERODOX ECONOMICS
Fred S. Lee, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Series Editor
Rob Garnett, Texas Christian University, Series Editor
Over the past two decades, the intellectual agendas of heterodox economists have
taken a decidedly pluralist turn. Leading thinkers have begun to move beyond the
established paradigms of Austrian, feminist, institutional-evolutionary, Marxian,
post-Keynesian, radical, social, and Sraffian economics—opening up new lines of
analysis, criticism, and dialogue among dissenting schools of thought. This cross-
fertiliezation of ideas is creating a new generation of scholarship in which novel
combinations of heterodox ideas are being brought to bear on important contem-
porary and historical problems.
Advances in Heterodox Economics aims to promote this new scholarship by
publishing innovative books in heterodox economic theory, policy, philosophy,
intellectual history, institutional history, and
pedagogy. Syntheses or critical engagements of two or more heterodox traditions
are especially encouraged.
The editor and associate editors work closely with individual authors to ensure
the quality of all published works.
Economics in Real Time: A Theoretical Reconstruction
John McDermott
Socialism after Hayek
Theodore A. Burczak
Future Directions for Heterodox Economics
John T. Harvey and Robert F. Garnett, Jr., editors
Are Worker Rights Human Rights?
Richard P. McIntyre
Are Worker Rights
Human Rights?
RICHARD P. MCINTYRE
The University of Michigan Press
Ann Arbor
Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2008
All rights reserved \
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
@ Printed on acid-free paper
2011 2010 2009 2008 A Vase wel
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or
otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McIntyre, Richard P., 1955—
Are worker rights human rights? / Richard P. McIntyre.
p. cm.— (Advances in heterodox economics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-472-07042-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-472-07042-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
iSBN-13: 978-0-472-05042-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-472-05042-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Employee rights. 2. Labor—Standards. 3. Labor laws and
legislation. 4. Human rights. I. Title.
HD6971.8.M38 2008
331.01'1—dc22 2008011490
CONTENTS
a“
Preface and Acknowledgments vil
CHAPTER 1. Class, Convention, and Worker Rights 1
CHAPTER 2. Class, Convention, and Economics 13
CHAPTER 3. Not Only Nike Is Doing It 33
CHAPTER 4. Are Worker Rights Human Rights
(and does it matter if they are)? 53
CHAPTER 5. The International Organization of
Worker Rights and Labor Standards 80
CHAPTER 6. The United States and Core Worker Rights:
Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining 103
CHAPTER 7. The New Factory Inspectors ~ 134
CHAPTER 8. Think Locally, Act Globally 162
Notes 179
References 195
Index 209
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PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
The controversy over labor standards is one of the central debates in the con-
temporary period of economic globalization. Economists have generally en-
tered this debate through cost-benefit analysis, but there are important ques-
tions of morality and class that do not fit easily within the orthodox approach.
In this book I draw on the Institutional and Marxist traditions in economics to
present an analysis of worker rights and labor standards that takes both moral
questions and class relations and interests seriously.
I argue that a prime and imminent tendency in the contemporary world
economy is the lengthening of commodity chains through which the ultimate
employer is able to wash his hands of moral responsibility for the conditions of
work. This is true in globalized production networks, such as those operated by
Nike and other global manufacturers, as well as in temporary and subcon-
tracted work situations in the United States and elsewhere.
Asserting the rights of workers against such practices may be a promising
strategy, but in failing to distinguish between the individual and collective
meaning of rights the supporters of such slogans as “worker rights are human
rights” may end up with something quite different from what they expected.
The antislavery movement indirectly created support for capitalist forms of ex-
ploitation, the push for individual employment equality in the 1960s and 1970s
contributed to the undermining of workers’ collective rights, and contemporary
corporate codes of conduct emphasize the rights of the individual but say little
about collective rights. The definition of rights is influenced by class interest in
ways that the supporters of such rights ignore at their own peril.
Recognizing that what constitutes a right is influenced by class relations
and interests, and that the assertion of rights will necessarily have contradictory
rather than simple effects, I examine the practices of the International Labor
Organization (JLO), the interaction between labor law and U.S. foreign policy,
and the activities of labor-based nongovernmental organizations in creating
worker rights and enforcing labor standards. I argue for the strengthening of
the ILO as an authoritative institution. Opponents of including labor standards
in trade agreements point to the ILO as the appropriate forum for dealing with
labor problems, though the organization has little enforcement power. Critics
Vill PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
of the ILO contend that its weakness is by design, and there is something to this.
But ofa ll the existing multilateral organizations the ILO comes closest to the
kind of global regulatory commission that could produce reasonable values by
bringing all interested parties to the table, and its( rather arbitrary) definition
of core labor standards is gaining widespread acceptance.
In the United States, workers have few legally guaranteed rights, and what
rights they do have eroded over the last generation. The United States has an
abysmal record in ratifying ILO conventions. Yet as the dominant economic ~
power, and with a self-image as a promoter of democracy and freedom, the U.S.
government sometimes puts itself in the vanguard of the international worker
rights movement. I argue that while the reasons generally given in the United
States for not adopting ILO conventions are specious, particularly those con-
cerning freedom of association and collective bargaining, the United States’ oc-
casional support for international labor standards could be leveraged to im-
prove worker rights domestically.
There is a long history of popular movements challenging the idea that
“human rights” are discarded once one enters the factory or office door. Over
the past decade a vigorous student movement demanding that university-lo-
goed apparel be made sweat free has developed across the United States. While
its goals are modest, I argue that this movement could have a large impact, to
the extent that it builds organizing capacity in the newly industrializing coun-
tries while potentially creating a desire for class justice at home.
The classical socialist dream of the common experience of proletarianiza-
tion and exploitation leading to working-class unity and revolutionary social-
ism was not realized. A desire for class justice must be cultivated; it does not
flow inevitably from capitalist relations of production. In thinking openly and
deeply about the constructed meaning of “worker rights as human rights” I
hope to contribute to a positive, pragmatic discussion of how to improve ma-
terial conditions and democratic participation for working people, not just to
critique economic orthodoxy or deconstruct one of the sacred cows of the po-
litical Left. A popular politics that is more theoretically sophisticated and con-
scious of class than what is generally on offer in the United States has a real
chance to make a concrete difference in twenty-first-century globalized labor
markets, and also in the homely setting of the college classroom, as I argue at
the end of this book.
My thanks go especially to Yngve Ramstad and Matthew Bodah with whom I
developed some of these ideas. | thank Michael Hillard and Patrick McHugh
