This volume provides a detailed legal analysis of the fourth pillar of the international maritime regulatory regime, the comprehensive Maritime Labour Convention, 2006, and its provisions to achieve decent work for seafarers and a level playing field for shipowners.
Not all labour law and industrial relations scholars agree on the efficacy of the comparative approach - that the analysis of measures adopted in other countries can play a constructive role in national and local policy-making. However, the case deserves to be heard, and no better such presentation has appeared than this remarkable book, the carefully considered work of over 40 well-known authorities in the field from a wide variety of countries including Australia, France, India, Israel, Peru, Poland, and South Africa. The volume contains papers delivered at a conference sponsored by the Marco Biagi Foundation at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in March 2008.
This original study examines the extent to which international labour issues have become issue of concern within the European Union, the ILO, the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), and the WTO (World Trade Organization).
In this book, leading international thinkers take up the demanding challenge to rethink our understanding of social justice at work and our means for achieving it – at a time when global forces are tearing the familiar fabric of our working lives and the laws regulating them. When fabric is torn we can see deeply into it, understand its structural weaknesses, and imagine alterations in the name of resilience and sustainability. Seizing that opportunity, the authoritative commentators examine the lessons revealed by the pandemic and other global shocks for our ideas about justice at work, and how to advance that cause in the world as we now find it. The chapters deliver critical re-assessments of our goals, explore our new challenges, and creatively re-imagine trajectories for progress on two global fronts - via international institutions and by a myriad of other transnational techniques. These forward-looking essays are in honour of Francis Maupain, whose international career and scholarly writing are inspiring models for those who, in a changing world, seize opportunities for creativity in the pursuit of global justice at work.
This comprehensive Handbook explores the complex and volatile debate over globalisation and labour standards. It offers key insights into the impact of globalisation on workers, the obligations of corporations and international legal bodies in protecting workers’ rights and maximising the opportunities offered by international trade and investment.
'There is much to commend in this collection of papers to those interested in both globalization per se as well as those interested in economic and social development in South-east Asia.' - David N. Ashton, Asia Pacific Business Review The impact of globalisation on social development is a critical issue for both developed and developing countries. In Globalisation and Social Development, leading experts investigate this from the perspective of European, and more specifically, Southeast Asian economies including Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.
Over the last two decades or so, a number of developing countries have become important suppliers of manufactured goods. A good deal of these goods are produced under extremely poor working conditions, incompatible with the fundamental rights and freedoms. However, WTO rules do not allow restrictions on imports of such goods, and the ILO hardly ever sanctions violations of international labor standards. On the one hand, this leaves exporting countries free to compromise on labor protection in order to enhance their competitiveness on foreign markets. On the other hand, importing countries are obliged to keep their markets open for goods produced under substandard labor conditions. This gives rise to the question of whether the rules of the multilateral trading system should be linked to international labor standards. This study argues that there are two trade-related reasons for establishing such a link. The first one is commonly referred to as social dumping. GATT rules enshrine the principles that should govern international trade: fairness and responsibility. These principles should also apply where trade meets labor protection. Exporting goods made under substandard labor conditions is unfair and distorts trade. It would therefore be consistent to make social dumping actionable. The other reason concerns the responsibility of importing countries. Increased imports of goods produced under substandard labor conditions are an incentive for the exporting country to produce more goods under the same labor conditions, and ship them to the same importing country. This results in a proliferation of violations of labor standards, for which the importing country shares the responsibility. There is a need to adopt a link between trade and labor standards enabling the importing country to cap imports in order to escape the blame.
This book is both breathtaking in its scope and impressive in its attention to legal and institutional detail in situating developing countries in the evolving body of international economic law. Essays in this volume canvas most important areas of international economic law, including international trade law, international financial regulation, the regulation of foreign direct investment and multinational corporations, foreign aid, the enforcement of human rights standards and core international labour standards on multinational corporations, international enforcement of anti-corruption conventions, international competition law, international intellectual property rights, and international environmental law. A pervasive theme, compellingly developed, in most of these papers is the asymmetric structure of international institutions that generate rules in these various areas, in which developing countries are mostly rule takers, rather than equal participants. The current global financial crisis may provide a welcome opportunity for re-evaluating these institutional asymmetries. In any such re-evaluation, this book will provide a veritable cornucopia of constructive new insights.
This brand new collection of articles looks at both traditional concerns in economic development such as aid, debt and the role of the IMF, but also at gender, brain drain, military expenditure and postcolonial theory.
‘Enabling Social Europe’ examines how the paradigm of the ‘enabling welfare state’ might offer a new perspective for European social policy in the decades to come. The ‘enabling’ concept is perceived as going beyond that of mere ‘activation’, thus also embracing policies aimed at increasing personal autonomy, individual responsibility and social inclusion by endowing individuals with the resources and capabilities needed to manage and balance their life courses in a better way. The study is distinguished by a unique collaboration of social and economic policy experts coming from a wide range of disciplines: economics, law, sociology, political science, and philosophy. The authors seek to shed new light on whether European social policy ought to play a role in the future and, if so, what sort of role that could be. They convincingly argue that despite an implicit normative consensus on the ‘European social model’, there is still room for a multifaceted world in which welfare regimes can maintain their own path-dependent ways of achieving a fair and just society with a high level of welfare for all. The empirical part of the book contains an appraisal of policies and reforms with a view to the ‘enabling welfare state’ approach in four important policy areas: health care, old-age security, family policy, and poverty prevention. Within each sector, the authors compare the policies and practices of two countries attributable to different regime types: Germany and the United Kingdom, Poland and Germany, Finland and Estonia, and Belgium and Denmark. This book is highly recommendable not only for scholars and policymakers active in this field, but also for students of welfare and labour economics, sociology, social policy, political science and law.