ABSTRACT
International labour standards are designed to establish minimum terms for employment wherever workers are engaged. As such they serve several functions. The first is social in that international labour standards are designed to promote social justice and to protect workers from exploitation, reflecting the claim that ‘labour is not a commodity’ (O’Higgins 1997). The second is economic in that they are designed to ensure that international trade does not take place on the basis of low wage competition. And the third is legal in that they are designed to ensure respect for and protection of human rights, which are designed in turn to be universal and indivisible. Although the case for international labour standards is as old as the industrial revolution, it is a case that has been renewed and enhanced by globalisation, as corporations move freely throughout the world looking for cheaper sources of labour. In this chapter we examine the way in which international labour standards are made and supervised by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and give an account of the international labour code. We also examine some of the emerging pressures – caused partly by globalisation – on the development and application of international labour standards, and examine the emergence of a range of different strategies adopted by governments, corporations and trade unions for the enforcement of these standards. The major problem, however, is that international labour standards are addressed mainly to governments, whereas the real wielders of power are often now transnational corporations over which national governments may have little control and over which international law has not yet developed effective forms of accountability.
