Continuing Struggle to Realize Worker and other Economic Rights

An impressive array of laws on both the national, regional and international level have been drafted and passed to protect workers that articulate a range of rights from free association, the right to strike to healthy work conditions. Yet, the struggle to concretely realize these rights goes on.

Poverty continues to be widespread, and there are an estimated two billion people today living on the equivalent of less than two US dollars. Effective monitoring and implementation is an enormous challenge as seen in the increase in global human trafficking estimated at 27 million people today (Bales 2007). Bales points out that while modern slavery, including debt bondage as the most common form of modern slavery, and human trafficking are outlawed in most countries, the practices continue to exist, and the largest numbers of people in forced labor today live in Asia. He points to how human trafficking today consists of “disposable people” who are part of a global network of cheap laborers. The debate continues over whether globalization increases exploitation by heightened competition, lowering wages and forced migration or produces more opportunities for workers short or long range.

Recent initiatives to recognize the right to development, the right to food, and to a healthy environment underline the importance of addressing not only the symptoms of hunger, poor health and unemployment but their underlying causes and the crucial place of economic rights. Internal migration and forced displacement as well as movements across borders are also ongoing challenges. Hence, human rights agencies and advocates recognize that labor and other economic rights remain a crucial goal for achieving a more equitable, just society and the fulfillment of the promise of the modern human rights revolution.

Source:

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/mediamosaic/thepriceoffashion/pdf/apsel-joyce.pdf