10.6092/issn.1561-8048/11333
application/pdf
1561-8048
11333
1
en
Emanuele Menegatti
Italian Labour Law e-Journal
Book Review: Research Handbook on Labour, Business and Human Rights Law
Text.Serial.Journal
https://illej.unibo.it/
13
Reviews
2020-07-20
2020-07-09
2020-07-20
2020-09-15
187-188
ILLeJ
Emanuele Menegatti
2020/07/20
10.6092/issn.1561-8048/11333
187
Università di Bologna
1561-8048
1
en
188
Book Review: Research Handbook on Labour, Business and Human Rights Law
https://illej.unibo.it/article/download/11333/11368
13
Emanuele Menegatti                                                           Italian Labour Law e-Journal
e.menegatti@unibo.it                                                                Issue 1, Vol. 13 (2020)
                                                                                          ISSN 1561-8048
                                                           https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1561-8048/11333




                                           Book Review

     Research Handbook on Labour, Business and Human Rights
      Law, Edited by Janice R. Bellace and Beryl ter Haar
               (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019)


                             Reviewed by Emanuele Menegatti


     A century has passed since the Treaty of Versailles stated that labour should not be
 regarded as a commodity and more than sixty years since the Philadelphia declaration revived
 the principle. Nonetheless, as recalled by the editors quoting Alain Supiot, human beings are
 still treated “as human capital at the disposal of the economy”.
     The book is about labour still looking for a dignity. The role that human rights can play
 in the scenario of global capitalism is the trait d’union of its different parts and chapters. The
 underlying aim, as pointed out by Janice Bellace and Beryl ter Haar in the first part of the
 book, is to contribute in moving past the deep-rooted tradition of legal scholarship,
 considering labour as an economic transaction regulated by labour law, which has little to do
 with human rights.
     Actually, the analysis carried out in the different contributions shows as the attitude of
 national jurisdictions toward the nature of labour rights is quite variegate. In western Europe
 civil law countries labour rights are often recognised as constitutional fundamental rights,
 whereas in common law jurisdictions, with the notable exception of South Africa,
 constitutions tend to ignore labour rights, more focused on individual rights, especially
 property rights. This is particularly true for the US, where the employment at will doctrine
 goes hand in hand with the narrow attitude of the Courts toward the application of Human
 Rights to the employment relationship. Broadly speaking, neo-liberal business friendly
 policies have been enacted by many economies, including those coming from socialist
 models and the so-called Asian tigers, in the throes of a race to the bottom involving
 employment conditions.
     Thus, the human right status of labour rights turns out to be very useful in those cases
 where rights do not find an effective recognition in national constitutions and where
 employers’ economic freedoms are in a much higher position than labour rights.
     These arguments are developed in the book through an interesting structure.


 
     Professor of Labour Law, University of Bologna.
Emanuele Menegatti                                                      Italian Labour Law e-Journal
                                                                               Issue 1, Vol. 13 (2020)
                                                                                              Reviews


    The topic of law, business and human rights is addressed in the second part of the book
from the perspective of national laws. The various chapters give here account of the extent
to which national labour law is shaped and influenced by fundamental rights: ranging from
the important role played by constitutional rules in civil law countries, to the more variegate
situation of common law countries, where the activism of New Zealand stands out compared
to the persistently neo-liberal approach of the US, and finally to the ambiguous and multi-
faceted situation of Russian and Chinese transition economies.
    The concept of human rights at work is explored in the third part of the book. It opens
with a detailed analysis of three core labour standards (freedom of association, freedom from
child labour, workplace gender equality), moving then to a more “macro” angle, considering
the approach to labour rights of the International Labour Organisation, the European
Convention on Human Rights and the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human
rights. It finally explores the legal challenges involved in the expansion of fundamental rights
to atypical workers, including platform workers.
    The last part of the book is dedicated to the corporate responsibility to respect of workers’
human rights, especially as for multinational enterprises. In this regard, the conclusive four
chapters elaborate on the OECD Guidelines for multinational enterprises, ILO declaration
of fundamental principles and right at work, UN global compact, EU’s Corporate social
responsibility policy.
    The final outcome is a very rich and an innovative book, taking the debate on the
relevance of human rights for people at work under a totally new light. The editors’ choice
of including the contributions of different generations scholars, from countries belonging to
different families of law, has contributed much to the achievement of this result.




Copyright © 2020 Emanuele Menegatti. This article is released under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License.




https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1561-8048/11333                                                        188
