Labour rights

In March 2020, the European Union (EU) was at the epicentre of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Case numbers of the novel virus were rising in many Member States at an alarming rate, overwhelming even the public health infrastructures of more developed States assumed better equipped to handle such threats. Simultaneously, lockdowns imposed by individual Member States to stem transmission meant acute labour shortages in key economic sectors. These included shortages in social and medical care, agriculture, industry, construction and transport, compounding difficulties in providing services to prevent and treat the spread of the virus. In the face of a mounting struggle to recruit local workers, many EU Member States decided that the most effective measure to ensure the continued provision of services in these sectors was to lift the temporary internal and external border controls imposed to curb the spread of the virus. 

The easing of travel restrictions to allow temporary workers to continue ‘essential’ activities not only laid bare the exploitative conditions these workers too often endure,  but also reinvigorated debate about the EU’s conflicting common market and social policy ambitions.  Within this broad group, posted workers are unique. These are ‘temporarily mobile’ workers – predominantly EU citizens – who are posted by their employers to a host State for an average duration of four months.  Rather than falling under the EU regulatory regime governing the free movement of labour, these workers are legally treated under the free movement of services.  As such, a different set of worker rights is activated.  As explained in Section Two, the general theory is that these workers largely maintain the rights provided by their home country when they are sent on assignment to another EU Member State. Although certain discretion is given to host States vis-à-vis posted workers in establishing certain aspects of working time, minimum annual holidays and rates of minimum pay, posted workers are more often than not barred from the typically higher standards in the host State. It is at this point that the workers can lose out. In a regulatory sense, they find themselves with a foot in two or more countries at risk of the worst of both worlds.

The collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory building in Bangladesh, which resulted in the loss of at least 1134 lives and injuries to hundreds more, exposed the brutality of a global production system in which labour rights have become privatised, circumscribed, and deterritorialised. Unprecedented for an incident of its kind, affected families received $30 million in "compensation" from global apparel companies through the Rana Plaza Arrangement, a voluntary initiative overseen by the International Labour Organization (ILO). This article situates the Arrangement in debates over labour rights in global supply chains, presenting it as a hybrid mechanism that recognises workers' right to compensation for injury or death but relies on the voluntarism of corporate social responsibility for funding. Exploring the complex role of neoliberal regulation in reproducing geographies of uneven development, I show how a transnational initiative can restrict labour rights even as it attempts to expand such rights.

En un contexto de búsqueda de acuerdos supranacionales para facilitar y proteger el comercio y las inversiones, el autor discute la escasa atención que se ha dado a los derechos laborales a nivel internacional y analiza la incorporación, en los últimos años, de una “cláusula social” en los tratados internacionales.

Paper Presentation at the Conference Transnational Labour Law in an Era of Rising Nationalism: A New Role of Public Institutions for Sustainable Market Practices? (Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, University of Bristol and University of Oslo/SMART June 2018)

The 2013 collapse of Rana Plaza, an eight-story garment factory in Savar, Bangladesh, killed over a thousand workers and injured hundreds more. This disaster exposed the brutal labor conditions of the global garment industry and revealed its failures as a competitive and self-regulating industry. Over the past thirty years, corporations have widely adopted labor codes on health and safety, yet too often in their working lives, garment workers across the globe encounter death, work-related injuries, and unhealthy factory environments. Disasters such as Rana Plaza notwithstanding , garment workers routinely work under conditions that not only escape public notice but also undermine workers' long-term physical health, mental well-being, and the very sustainability of their employment. Unmaking the Global Sweatshop gathers the work of leading anthropologists and ethnographers studying the global garment industry to examine the relationship between the politics of labor and initiativ...

The essay provides an analysis of the content of ILO Convention no. 94, as interpreted by the CEACR, as well as of the relevant EU legal framework, in order to clarify if and to what extent international labour law obligations differ from those set by the EU norms that protect competition and economic freedoms. The EU legal framework is extremely complex and not free from uncertainties, fuelled by a controversial case law of the Court of Justice, which has addressed, several times, the compatibility of labour clauses with the freedom to provide services. Moreover, both Directive 2014/24 and Directive 96/71 ignore ILO Convention no. 94. Consequently, an evident problem arises, especially for those States that do not provide for generally binding collective agreements, and, hence, may easily incur in violations of the internal market principles.
The aim of the paper is to provide an interpretation of the founding principles of the internal market integration harmonious with the applicable international labour standards, implemented by numerous national laws. The solution is to be found in the proper application of Article 351 TFEU, which may prevent the risk of denouncing ILO Convention no. 94. In order to avoid an irreparable conflict between EU law and ILO sources, the authors try to avoid a shallow interpretation of the standards set by the latter. They rather opt for resolving ambiguities and uncertainties of the CJEU’s case law in a way that promotes the maximum employment standards in public procurement, precisely by promoting the ILO norms, as sources that concur to define the EU general principles on labour.

The 2013 collapse of Rana Plaza, an eight-story garment factory in Savar, Bangladesh, killed over a thousand workers and injured hundreds more. This disaster exposed the brutal labor conditions of the global garment industry and revealed its failures as a competitive and self-regulating industry. Over the past thirty years, corporations have widely adopted labor codes on health and safety, yet too often in their working lives, garment workers across the globe encounter death, work-related injuries, and unhealthy factory environments. Disasters such as Rana Plaza notwithstanding , garment workers routinely work under conditions that not only escape public notice but also undermine workers' long-term physical health, mental well-being, and the very sustainability of their employment. Unmaking the Global Sweatshop gathers the work of leading anthropologists and ethnographers studying the global garment industry to examine the relationship between the politics of labor and initiativ...

The 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building in Dhaka, Bangladesh was the most deadly disaster in garment manufacturing history, with at least 1,134 people killed and hundreds injured. In 2015, injured workers and the families of those killed received compensation from global apparel brands through a $30 million voluntary initiative known as the Rana Plaza Arrangement. Overseen by the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Rana Plaza Arrangement awarded payments to survivors using a pricing formula developed by a diverse team of 'stakeholders' that included labour groups, multinational apparel companies, representatives of the Bangladesh government and local employers, and ILO actuaries. This article draws from anthropological scholarship on the 'just price' to explore how a formula for pricing death and injury became both the means and form of a fragile political settlement in the wake of a shocking and widely publicised industrial disaster. By unpacking the complicated 'ethics of a formula' (Ballestero 2015), I demonstrate how the project of creating a just price involves not two sets of values (ethical and financial) but rather multiple, competing values. This article argues for recognition of the persistence and power of these competing values, showing how they variously strengthen and undermine the claim that justice was served by the Rana Plaza Arrangement. This analysis reveals the deficiencies of counterposing 'morality' and 'economy' in the study of price by reflecting upon all elements of price as situated within political economy and history.

Siegmann argues that as the ILO celebrates its centenary this year, ‘the international organisation for labour rights protection has yet to come out as an advocate for decent work for sex workers.’ This means that the organisation will have to change its perspective of seeing ‘sex work as an occupation that it considers harmful for children as well as involving a high risk of forced labour and HIV infection.’ For Siegmann, the ILO has to engage the various struggles by sex workers and activists who have demanded recognition of sex work as work, labour rights equal to workers in other industries, freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining.

SOMMARIO: 1. Lo sfruttamento nell'ordinamento italiano: una ricostruzione sistematica e genealogica.-1.1. Nuove norme: la lenta emersione di un reato autonomo di sfruttamento lavorativo.-1.2. Aggiornamento di norme cadute in desuetudine: il caso della schiavitù.-1.3. Prime con-clusioni.-2. Critica delle norme in materia di sfruttamento lavorativo (dei migranti).-2.1. Difetti di giustificazione.-2.2. Difetti di adegua-tezza.-2.3. Difetti di sistematicità.-2.4. Difetti di attuabilità.

Come è stato codificato lo sfruttamento lavorativo e, più precisa-mente, il suo divieto nell'ordinamento italiano? Per rispondere alla domanda propongo di svolgere una ricostruzione sistematica e genea-logica. Una simile strategia consente, da un lato, di analizzare l'insieme delle norme dedicate ai fenomeni di sfruttamento e, dall'altro, di studiare l'evoluzione e la stratificazione, la "logica" e il fine di tali norme. Sulla base di questa ricostruzione intendo sostenere due tesi. La prima tesi è che la nozione di sfruttamento ha fatto la sua esplicita apparizione e si è articolata nel diritto italiano contemporaneo in stretto rapporto con politiche dell'immigrazione declinate secondo un paradigma liberista e securitario, fondato sulla regolazione dei flussi in funzione del mercato del lavoro, sui controlli selettivi delle frontiere e sul contrasto delle migrazioni irregolari così prodotte. La seconda tesi è che questo nesso con l'immigrazione, oltre a suggerire l'immagine fuorviante che il lavoro sfruttato riguardi soprattutto se non esclusivamente i migranti, ha prodotto effetti problematici sul modo in cui i fenomeni di sfruttamento sono stati codificati.

On May 12, 1998, Nike's CEO and founder Mr. Phillip Knight spoke at the National Press Club in Washington, DC and made what were, in his words, "some fairly significant announcements" regarding Nike's policies on working conditions in its supplier factories. The announcements received favorable treatment from the press, with a New York Times editorial suggesting that Nike's new reforms "set a standard that other companies should match." Nike's critics were more cautious, expressing concern that Knight's promises represented an attempt to sideline their demands for decent wages and rigorous factory monitoring and replace them with a significantly weaker reform agenda. This report represents a comprehensive examination of Nike's labor performance in the three years after that speech was made. That performance is first assessed against the commitments Knight announced and is then compared with the human rights standards and independent monitoring practices labor rights organizations have demanded of the company.

This Responsible Management Audit, looks to determine whether Europe’s largest sportswear manufacturer, Adidas, endeavours to comply with the Ten Principles proposed by the United Nations Global Compact and takes meaningful steps to improve performance, or if the firm simply uses Corporate Social Responsibility Reports as a reputation management tool.

In recent years, India has seen a wide-ranging retrenchment of hard-won labour rights with serious consequences for working communities in general, and for the rights of women workers. The retrenchment of labour rights has occurred through a range of governance reforms and changes to labour laws at both central and state levels in the name of enabling the ‘ease of doing business’ through ‘labour flexibility’. A significant component of the labour law reforms at the central level have come through a heavily contested exercise to consolidate and simplify (what was eventually to be 29) labour laws into four Codes on Wages, Industrial Relations, Social Security, and Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions, which were enacted between August 2019 and September 2020, after the National Democratic Alliance government was returned to power.
This paper provides a gendered analysis of the four central Codes, particularly focusing on the effects of the Codes on informal women workers. It contextualises women’s work in India, as well as the wider relationship between labour laws and women’s work, including paid and unpaid work. To evaluate the import of the Codes, it also draws on the proposals made by the Second National Labour Commission (SNCL), which has formed the basis of the reforms, as well as the reports of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS), which have made several proposals for regulating the informal economy. Given the continued patchy and piecemeal recognition of the rights of informal women workers by the Codes that have also hollowed out labour rights for even those in the formal economy, the paper discusses the way forward for the labour rights of women in the informal economy.

El artículo aborda las principales aristas de la impunidad con la que las actividades ETN están causando violaciones de derechos humanos; a continuación se acomete un doble análisis. En primer lugar, van a señalarse de manera breve algunos ejemplos de normas o iniciativas que, en el ámbito estatal, regional e
internacional pretenden incidir sobre la cuestión, con especial incidencia en el ámbito de Naciones Unidas y en la insuficiencia del marco actual, es decir los
Principios Rectores; en segundo lugar, se dedicará el último epígrafe a sostener la necesidad de un Instrumento internacional jurídicamente vinculante sobre empresas transnacionales y derechos humanos, como el que se está elaborando por el Grupo de Trabajo Intergubernamental de Composición Abierta, presidido
por el Ecuador en el marco de la Resolución 26/9.

The oil palm plantation sector has been one of the front-runners in the Indonesian agriculture sector. The development of the oil palm plantation is aimed at employment creation, poverty alleviation, and rural development. The market of Indonesian palm oil has been substantially growing nationally and internationally. Such development is, however, criticised for causing environmental degradations and having adverse socio-economic impacts by bringing about land conflicts. Based on a field research on oil palm plantations in Riau province in 2012, this chapter reveals decent work deficits on oil palm plantations, contributing to the discussions on socio-economic implications of Indonesian palm oil sector development. The chapter particularly focuses on the attempt in measuring decent work deficit in the agriculture sector, particularly on oil palm plantations. To this end, the discussions start with a brief profile of the Indonesian oil palm plantation sector. The concept of decent work is then discussed, including criticisms and challenges in measuring decent work deficits in the agriculture sector.

This report considers 12 international sports brands — adidas, ASICS, FILA, Kappa, Lotto, Mizuno, New Balance, Nike, Puma, Reebok, Speedo and Umbro — and examines the steps they take to ensure their suppliers in Asia allow workers to organise trade unions and bargain collectively for better wages and conditions. It concludes that all sportswear companies need to take a more serious approach to workers’ right to freedom of association. Some companies — notably Reebok, Puma, adidas, Nike, ASICS and Umbro — are involved in positive initiatives which have led to improved conditions in some factories, but their overall approach to trade union rights has been inconsistent and at times contradictory. FILA, owned by Sports Brands International (SBI), has taken the least action to improve respect for trade union rights in its Asian supplier factories. FILA has failed to adequately address serious labour rights abuses when they have been brought to the company’s attention and since February 2005 has ignored multiple attempts by labour rights groups and trade unions to communicate with the company about labour issues.

Asian sportswear workers who want to form unions and bargain collectively frequently face discrimination, harassment, threats of dismissal and, in some cases, violent intimidation. Two of the cases researched for this report — one in Sri Lanka and the other in Indonesia — involved violent assaults on workers who were attempting to form unions in sportswear factories. Women, who make up 80% of the global workforce in the sportswear sector, face particular barriers to participating in trade unions due to gender discrimination within their workplaces, their societies and within workers’ organisations. Transnational corporations (TNCs) in sportswear and other industries cannot, on their own, create the conditions where trade union rights are fully respected. Governments have a responsibility to ensure that labour rights are protected by properly enforced state legislation. However, governments in developing countries are frequently wary of regulating the behaviour of TNCs for fear that they will lose production and investment to other countries. In this context sportswear TNCs can play an important role in ensuring that trade union rights are properly respected in their own supply chains, thereby reducing pressure on governments to erode state protection for these rights.

This article examines labour protection in the US and EU FTAs. It shows that the US and the EU have different approaches to labour issues in FTAs, which can be measured in three main aspects: (i) scope of labour commitments; (ii) institutional arrangements for implementation and (iii) enforcement mechanisms. While the interests of state actors are different, social partners have the same preferences toward labour protection through trade in the US and the EU. However, this research finds that trade unions in the US have been more influential than those in the EU. The findings of this research show the different linkages, interactions, and influence of social partners on state actors when developing labour provisions in US and EU FTAs.

The system of exploitation and violation of labour rights does not come from poor system of state regulation alone. It is embedded in the very structure of export led development which requires informalisation of labour, nonregulation, and low cost of production to sustain a global order riddled with glaring inequalities.

Unacceptable forms of work (UFW) have been identified as an "area of critical importance" for the ILO as it approaches its centenary. Yet there is currently no comprehensive elaboration of the dimensions, causes or manifestations of UFW. This article reports on a research project that has proposed such a framework. The article first investigates and reconceptualizes key discourses on contemporary work to identify their contribution to an analytically rigorous conception of UFW. It then outlines a novel Multidimensional Model that has been designed for use by local policy actors in identifying and targeting UFW in countries across a range of income levels.

Since 2007, Indonesia has been the world’s largest producer of crude palm oil (CPO), overtaking Malaysia (Richter 2009: 3). For the country, the sector is not only an important source for foreign reserves, but is also a main instrument for poverty alleviation and rural economic development (Rist et al. 2010; Susila 2004). This impressive picture of the Indonesian palm oil sector is, however, blemished by environmental degradation, so-called land grabbing (Casson 1999; Surambo 2010; Colchester et al. 2006), and a decent work deficit. This chapter focuses on the situation of workers on the oil palm plantations. It is based on extensive field research in Riau, Indonesia, a province with the largest oil palm plantations in the country. I interviewed workers, independent smallholders, and estate representatives, representatives from trade unions and representatives of NGOs in the year 2012.

The US has customarily conveyed an image of Mexico using blatant lies or manipulated facts that can only elicit disdain or hatred among US citizens. In this narrative, succinctly, Mexico is a perennially poor country with lots of violence and corruption that puts it on the brink of becoming a failed state, which is having a negative social and economic impact on the US. Yet the US has deliberately plundered Mexican socioeconomic structures and destroyed Mexico’s social fabric. This has been performed through a closely-concerted connivance with Mexico’s corrupt elites as part of the US so-called national interest: global imperialism. Through this evidently perverse and corrupt partnership the US has unambiguously and unrelentingly played a major role in the Machiavellian crafting of the root causes explaining Mexico’s disastrous situation. This has resulted in an increase of inequality, corruption and violence. However, the US narrative plays it as if Mexico’s northern neighbour has had nothing to do with this. Now Trump has vitriolically defamed Mexico by trying to exponentially exploit the worst and least sustainable stereotypes of Mexico and its people. This paper will debunk all the deliberately malicious myths advanced by the US’ equally-corrupt elites with a vested interest in denigrating its southern neighbour and present the true facts behind the lies.

The importance of oil palm sector for Indonesia is inevitable as the country currently serves as the world's largest producer of crude palm oil. This paper focuses on the situation of workers on Indonesian oil palm plantations. It attempts to investigate whether the remarkable development of the sector is followed by employment opportunities and income generation for workers. This question is posed within the theoretical framework on the link between trade liberalisation and labour rights, particularly in a labour-intensive and low--skilled sector. Based on extensive field research in Riau, this paper confirms that despite the rapid development of the oil palm plantation sector in Indonesia, the situations of workers in the sector remain deplorable, particularly their employment status and income. This also attests that trade liberalisation in the sector adversely affects labour rights. The poor working conditions also have ramifications for food security at the micro level.

Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM) refers to the activities involved in removing waste from cities (street sweeping, household waste, etc.) and treating it in order to prevent it from harming citizens’ health and the environment. Though historically provided by local governments, a number of public services – including MSWM – were delegated to private companies. It is particularly true in the case of Latin America during the 1980s, where Structural Adjustment Plans (SAPs) pushed for privatization.

Meanwhile, urban poverty in Latin America increased by 50% between 1980 and 1986 according to ILO research , and it is argued that “the main single cause of increases in poverty and inequality during the 1980s and 1990s was the retreat of the state”  pushed by SAPs. In any case, this surge combined with employment scarcity implies that a significant number of citizens had to resort to the informal realm to make a living. Scavenging or waste picking is an activity usually performed by very underprivileged populations; hence we can infer that a percentage of the new urban poor turned to this profession to survive.

The story is often told as follows: the privatization of municipal solid waste management lead to social conflicts between public actors, informal recyclers and private companies over the contentious issue of who owns waste, as exemplified by the Bogota 2012 waste crisis – which we will analyse later on.
Indeed, while private companies’ performance is assessed based on their collection rates, waste pickers make a living off finding and selling waste; therefore their diversion of waste reduces the quality of the company’s service delivery. However waste pickers have long been denied access to waste, and often point to this being a difficulty even when the service is being delivered by public authorities.

Therefore this struggle does not begin with the privatization of waste management (though it might worsen it) but I believe that it gives otherwise scattered workers a cause to unite against. Labor activist Vinod Shetty indeed stated that waste pickers in Bombay were very individualistic and were competing against one another in their search for valuable waste rather than trying to organise.
I thus argue that the privatization of public services is not the cause of the social conflicts, but rather that it was the external shock that provided a window of opportunity for informal waste pickers to organize and demand policy change. The literature on informal waste management is dominated by pro-labour advocacy and anti-neoliberal transformations: it is therefore necessary to acknowledge this considerable influence on the way the issue is framed if we wish to analyse it.

The organization of work through production networks undermines the application of labour law to a growing proportion of workers. Protections put in place by labour law, specifically devised to apply within the hierarchical and bilateral structure of the employer/employee relationship, are ill-fitted to tackle the multilateral structure of network production in which market and hierarchical relationships are entangled. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) appears to some as a possible answer to these challenges. The author develops a normative and functional framework to assess the promise and limits of CSR as a regulatory tool. The framework is grounded in human dignity, as conceptualized by human rights law and political philosophy. A holistic understanding of human dignity highlights the interdependency of labour law's basic functions: providing minimum working conditions, ensuring employer accountability for working hazards, and enabling workers' collective action. The author then applies the human dignity framework to codes of conduct, as described and analyzed in current literature on the subject. She concludes that CSR codes and their implementation often fall short of what is required in the workplace by the human dignity principle.

¿De qué muere México?

Junto a las miserias modernas, nos agobia toda una serie de miserias heredadas, fruto de la supervivencia de tipos de producción antiquísimos y ya caducos, con todo su séquito de relaciones políticas y sociales anacrónicas. No sólo nos atormentan los vivos, sino también los muertos. (Marx, 1867)

Si tuviésemos la oportunidad de mirar a México desde algún punto del futuro, seguramente nos estremeceríamos al ver el remolino de contingencias en el que se hunde, y con dolorosa urgencia nos preguntaríamos ¿por qué ocurrió así?

Pero, hoy, el problema es comprender nuestra situación desde el punto de vista que nos es accesible: el presente. Y, desde este punto de vista, lo cierto es no sólo que nuestros días se encuentran tensados por la pobreza, el desempleo y la violencia, sino más todavía, que desde la perspectiva ciudadana parecería no haber solución si no nos dotamos de otra clase política: la actual carece de entereza moral, de inteligencia estratégica, de responsabilidad y vocación pública para sacar al país del hundimiento.

“México frente a la escoria ladrona” es un estudio sobre la indignante situación que padece nuestro país. Se trata de las ilegalidades sistemáticas efectuadas por los gobernantes en contra invariablemente de sus ciudadanías. Se trata de un entramado institucional que establece los privilegios depredatorios para la coalición gobernante. Se trata, inequívocamente, de una “isla despótica” que mantiene, acentuadas, todas las lacras autoritarias e ilegales del Estado mexicano, con efectos profundamente lesivos para el bienestar público. Como si su reloj histórico se hubiese detenido antes de ajustarse con el de Occidente, y la hora de la modernidad quedara en una inalcanzable promesa.

Este libro describe la expoliación sistemática y paralizante con la que se enfrenta la sociedad mexicana. Sin embargo, para su autor, Álvaro de Regil, pensar el problema de México sólo como una cuestión de orden moral equivale a considerar que los expoliadores, la escoria ladrona, tendrían que humanizar su trato hacia los ciudadanos y ser honestos con la cosa pública. Esto es, en efecto, ir en contra de la naturaleza del actual régimen el querer inyectarle moralidad. Además, una estrategia de este tipo no acaba con la ingobernabilidad y el desgobierno, porque la expoliación se ha recrudecido y reproducido bajo su pervertida modalidad
estatalizada.

De Regil tematiza amplia y críticamente este sistema institucional y su incapacidad para procesar los desafíos planteados por el entorno. Más aún, el autor lleva su reflexión allende la mera crítica de los efectos perversos del neoliberalismo, y explora un terreno escabroso y silenciado: las tareas pendientes de la ciudadanía. En este campo, puntualiza las notas del concepto moderno reclamando sus condiciones fundamentales: participación, derechos y pertenencia. Esto es, somos lo que somos, en virtud de nuestra participación (activa o pasiva) en la vida general de nuestra sociedad. De ahí que su propuesta final sea un
llamado a la acción para desprendernos como ciudadanos de las miserias heredadas, como diría Marx, que mantienen a México en agonía.

En afinidad con ello, “México frente a la escoria ladrona” reconstruye dimensiones reveladoras sobre el trasfondo de los procesos políticos y su significación en el debate nacional e internacional. Comprender el carácter y el “telos” de esta situación en la que está atrapado el país nos permitirá evaluar nuestro ser ciudadano y saber hacia dónde nos dirigimos.

Guadalupe Lizárraga
Periodista y escritora independiente


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What is Mexico dying of?

Next to the miseries of modernity, a whole series of inherited miseries distress us, a by-product of the resilience of ancient forms of production already outdated, with all their entourage of anachronistic political and social relations. Not only those alive besiege us, but also the dead. (Marx, 1867)

If we had the chance to look at Mexico from a point in the future, surely we would shudder at seeing the whirlwind of contingencies in which it sinks, and with painful urgency we would ask ourselves, why did it happen this way?

Yet today the problem is to understand our situation from the point of view that we have access to: the present. And, from this vision, the truth is not only that daily we are stressed out by poverty, unemployment and violence, but, all the more, by, from the citizen’s perspective, the lack of solutions, unless we endow ourselves with another political class: for the current one lacks moral stature, strategic intelligence, public responsibility and vocation to lift the country from its sinking.

"Mexico vis-à-vis the Robber Scum" is an assessment of the outrageous situation endured by our country. It is about the systemic illegalities executed by those in government invariably against the citizenry. It is about an institutional edifice that establishes predatory privileges for the coalition in power. It is about, unequivocally, a “despotic island” that maintains, exacerbated, all the authoritarian and illegal depravities of the Mexican State, with repercussions deeply damaging of our social wellbeing; as if its historical clock had stopped before adjusting to the West, and the time of modernity remained an unreachable promise.

This book describes the systematic and paralysing plundering that Mexican society is facing up to. Nonetheless, for its author, Álvaro de Regil, to think about Mexico’s problems just as a matter of moral order is tantamount considering the predators, the robber scum, would need to humanise how they deal with the citizenry and be upright with the public matter. For this, to infuse morality, is indeed to go against the nature of the current regime. Moreover, a strategy of this kind does not end with the ungovernability and misgovernment, for the plundering has been exacerbated by the institutionalisation of a perverse method.

De Regil compartmentalises comprehensively and critically the institutional system and its incapacity to process the challenges posed by today’s environs. Even more, the author ponders beyond the mere critique of the perverse effects of neoliberalism, and explores a grim and subdued terrain: the pending responsibilities of the citizenry. In this area, he underscores the issues of the modern concept of democracy, demanding the fundamental conditions: participation, rights and empowerment. That is, we are what we are, by virtue of our participation (active or passive) in the public life of our society. Hence his final proposal is a call to action to get rid of, as citizens, the inherited miseries, as Marx would say, that keep Mexico in agony.

In sync with this vision, "Mexico vis-à-vis the Robber Scum" puts together quite revealing dimensions of the undertones of the political process and their meaning in the national and international debate. To grasp the character and the motives of this agony in which Mexico is trapped will allow us to assess our life as citizens and to know where we are heading.

Guadalupe Lizárraga

Independent journalist and writer

Pakistan has been having a range of social protection measures since long but unsystematic and sporadic - at times exploited by the incumbent governments for their political gains. With poor regulatory measures, neo-liberal economic and trade model is not helping the poor the way it was expected to. Income poverty affects directly to no less than one-third population of the country while the count for multi-dimensional poverty hovers around 40 percent of the population . A sizeable proportion of the people - the poorer sections of society in particular – fails to effectively participate and invest their labour potential in socioeconomic activities, the consequences are not only harmful for their dignity and social justice but have been having negative impact on the economic development of the country as well. It is a wide-ranging conceptual framework combining social security programmes, social safety nets and systematic cash transfers. Adequate social protection measures promote social cohesion.

Carefully designed, economically integrated and realistically targeted social protection policies and programmes save people from economic shocks and contingencies, reduce unemployment and loss of human capital and prevent many from falling into vicious cycle of poverty. Social protection programmes protect people’s rights, guard the poor and marginalized segments of society, financially assist them and attempt to improve their livelihood potential and living standard, and most importantly promote economic growth in general. The paper suggests, how and through which political and socio-economic measures Pakistan can transform its social protection provisions into rights-based supports and services and not as political obligations.

The European Union (EU) includes clauses on labor rights in free trade agreements with partner countries. One of these clauses was added to the Free Trade Agreement between the EU and South Korea. This article looks at the clause as an attempt of the EU to include labor rights in international trade law. The argument of the article is that the labor clause does include several innovative features which entrench the presence of labor law in international trade agreements. However, the clause remains mainly about political cooperation and struggles to define enforceable legal obligations on states. This is so because of the exceptions in the first part of the clause, the vagueness of the labor rights obligations and the lack of an enforcement mechanism. Keywords labor rights – free trade agreements – WTO – ILO – sustainable development

Beginning in the early 1990s, Ethiopia has been experiencing a major ground swell of social, economic, cultural and political changes. Notwithstanding the remarkable successes, formidable challenges prevail as state institutions often are burdened by counter-productive incentives and constraints that outweigh or outlast efforts to ameliorate them, among which the justice system is generally characterised by pitfalls in the dispensation of justice and law enforcement. While a growing array of qualitative and quantitative research suggests that legal empowerment has helped advance good governance and development, in numerous countries, law-oriented development aid goes mainly to a narrow range of state institutions, whereas the legal priorities of the poor often rest elsewhere; hence, a need for a paradigm shift in how to integrate law and development. In addition African legal regimes are carbon copy of European laws that do not augur in local aspirations, values and mission of societies.

I believe that creating a common catalogue of labour and social protection rights for people who work in the Platform Economy, regardless of the legal classification of their relationship with the platform, is a key proposal to reduce precariousness and improve working conditions.

Landmark Amnesty International report I authored for the first time uncovering labour abuse on a Qatar 2022 World Cup site. Migrant workers on Khalifa International Stadium and the surrounding Aspire Zone, one of the main venues for the 2022 World Cup, have been subjected to a range of exploitative practices. This includes high recruitment fees for which many took out loans; false promises about the pay and type of work on offer; passport confiscation; dirty and cramped accommodation; and threats for complaining about their conditions. Some were subjected to forced labour.

Il contributo analizza criticamente l'articolo 4 della legge n. 81/2017, in materia di diritti sulle invenzioni e sugli apporti originali del lavoratore autonomo. Vengono in particolare messi in luce i (pochi) profili innovativi della nuova disposizione e le aporie ancora esistenti nella materia