Globalisation and Labour Rights - Employment / Labour Law - Law

Home >
Law >
Employment / Labour Law >
Globalisation and Labour Rights

Description
Author
Reviews

Details

In a world of work that has changed dramatically over the last few years, states see themselves confronted with new actors and conflicting international legal obligations. This book examines the tensions between core labour rights as defined by the International Labour Organisation, and the interests of international economic institutions (e.g. WTO, IMF, World Bank, OECD). It provides an analysis of the legal interactions between international regulations and state policy with regard to potential regulatory conflicts, at both the horizontal and vertical level. The study suggests a model of multilevel consistency as a way of reconciling the highly specialised and fragmented legal systems of core labour rights on the one hand, and trade liberalisation on the other, to form the coherent framework of a consistent legal order. Its detailed analysis and recommendations are designed for both academic readers and practitioners in international organisations and governments.

Christine Kaufmann is Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Institute of International and Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Zurich.

This book by Christine Kaufmann is timely as it deals with 'core labour rights' and the effects of globalisation…Quite uncommon for lawyers, Kaufmann provides the economic rationale underlying national economic and social policies. She also provides a comprehensive outlook on the Swiss system relating to labour rights, which should be extremely helpful for students of comparative law…Her examination of social labelling programmes in the context of the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade and the Government Procurement Agreement is extremely interesting…The book is useful to students and scholars of international law. It is well-structured and one can follow the line of thought in an adequate manner... It would be fair to say that this book offers a solid and detailed inquiry into the conflicts between core labour rights and international economic law.
Rekha Oleschak Pillai
The Swiss Review of International Economic Relations
March 2008

...important and scholarly…
Bob Hepple
Industrial Law Journal
Vol. 36, No. 4, December 2007

Globalisation and Labour Rights can be unreservedly recommended to lawyers and economists alike, not least because of its comprehensive coverage..for economists and lawyers it provides a broad overview and shows that international commercial law can and must take account of labour law..
Johanna Felkl
European Journal of Labour Law
Vol. 3 2008

Kaufmann's book is a well-documented contribution, which presents an academically attractive thesis...Academic contributions such as Kaufmann's are of most interest in that they define strategies to reconcile international trade law with social values.
Julien Burda
Global Law Books
23rd October 2008