An American Perspective on Fundamental Labor Rights
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Description
As a general matter, the American perspective on labour market issues can hardly be said to get too little attention these days. That perspective is closely identified with the ascendancy of the market and a receding role for state regulation in an increasingly global economy. It is hailed by some as a stimulant to economic growth and expanding employment, and it is decried by others as a licence for increasing economic inequality and insecurity. So on the question of fundamental labour rights—which I take to mean rights grounded in some legal source such as a constitution that is not changeable through ordinary national legislation—the American perspective might seem predictably and numbingly negative. I hope to convince you that, quite to the contrary, the American perspective on fundamental labour rights is interestingly and complicatedly negative. I will mostly forego what may be the expected comparison between a market-centred and a rights-centred approach to employment, though I will return to it briefly at the conclusion of this chapter. And I will mostly resist any imagined invitation to offer an American view of British or European developments. Instead I will focus primarily on the American experience with workplace rights and some institutional questions about their location and degree of entrenchment: just how fundamental are American labour rights, and how did they get that way?
Source Publication
Social and Labour Rights in a Global Context: International and Comparative Perspectives
Source Editors/Authors
Bob Hepple
Publication Date
2002
Recommended Citation
Estlund, Cynthia, "An American Perspective on Fundamental Labor Rights" (2002). Faculty Chapters. 444.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/444
