Documents ILO Declaration 25 results

"This article focuses on the effects on labour of the United States-Chile Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The author makes a brief introductory reference to the origins of international labour law and the new developments in worker protection in times of globalization, highlighting the social clause, among other mechanisms. The social clause in Chapter 18 of the United States-Chile FTA is examined, basically identifying four types of standards: Labour commitments, labour obligations, cooperation, and procedures. Since labour commitments constitute soft law guidelines, their practical efficacy is equivalent to that of a policy statement. On the other hand, a breach of Labour Obligations can result in financial penalties for the offender. However, these Labour Obligations are limited to monitoring the enforcement of each Member State's existing labour laws. The social clause is, therefore, fairly sterile, and the author concludes that the worker protection mechanisms in this type of FTA are in need of reformulation."

"What makes a right fundamental, and how does it achieve this status? This article critically examines these questions through a detailed analysis of the 2022 amendment to the 1998 ILO Declaration, which recognised the right to a safe and healthy working environment as a fifth fundamental right. This inquiry is framed by the concepts of fundamentalisation (the process through which a right gains such status) and fundamentality (the normative status of a right). It makes three key contributions. First, it employs the 2022 amendment as a case study of fundamentalisation, analysing how internal and external actors and factors, including COVID-19, shaped the outcome. Second, it identifies the predominance of constitutional-textual and rights-based sets of justifications of the amendment while observing that its formulation was informed primarily by ILO Conventions. Third, it traces the emergence of a flexible ‘amendment formula', potentially lowering the bar for future rights to be added. Revisiting the earlier debate between Alston, Langille and Maupain on fundamentality in the Declaration, the article argues that the 2022 amendment makes accounts of fundamental rights under the 1998 Declaration as ‘procedural' or ‘enabling' untenable. Hence the implications of the amendment may be more radical than currently appreciated."

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"The globalization of supply chains and the need to secure decent working conditions along global production lines has for some years been gaining in importance for the ILO's Decent Work Agenda, and it is encouraging that the International Labour Conference will discuss the issue at its 105th Session in June 2016. While the ILO's classic means of action in relation to conditions of work in multinational enterprises has been to provide guidance through its supervisory mechanisms, more limited action has been devoted to promoting the ILO Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy (MNE Declaration), adopted in 1977. This article argues that after a thorough review of both the text and the follow-up mechanism, the MNE Declaration should be included in the future “package” of initiatives established by the Organization to respond to the decent work challenges in global production systems."