Labor Rights

Contributors to Human Rights, Labor Rights, and International Trade provide the first comprehensive view of labor rights in the international trade system and the avenues open to worker rights claims in the global economy under international human rights instruments, U.S. trade laws, free trade agreements, labor rights litigation, and corporate codes of conduct. They address worker rights from the standpoints of human rights concerns, trade and development policy, and labor law principles. Developments in the global economy - including the European Union and the ILO; NAFTA; GATT and the new WTO; and the Japanese organization of the Pacific Rim - create issues regarding migration patterns, resource conservation and environmental protection, foreign policy, and labor. Combining the rarefied atmosphere of human rights theory with the nitty-gritty details of worker organizing, this book addresses the issue of distinguishing which worker and trade union rights are fundamental human rights and which are really assertions of privileges or claims for benefits.

With growing international competition, American firms have been faced with increasing pressures to produce better products, cut costs, and improve efficiency. As a result, American employers have changed many of their long-standing labor priorities. With this large reorganization of work forces and priorities, Americans are again faced with the significant question of what rights workers have--and should have--in the workplace.

This book, containing contributions by outstanding scholars and practitioners in the fields of communication, organizational psychology and management, law, personnel, and industrial and labor relations, addresses the issues involved in communicating employee responsiblities and rights. Equally important is achieving an understanding of the evolving workplace practices these rights mandate. Employer and employee understanding of these considerations offers enormous potential for avoiding situations that provoke and escalate conflicts in the contemporary workplace. At the heart of all of this is the need for clear, consistent, and effective communication in the modern organization.

Ethics and Values in Industrial-Organizational Psychology is one of the first books to integrate work from the fields of moral philosophy, moral psychology, IO Psychology and political and social economy, as well as business. It sets out to provide a "framework for moral action" and presents practical models for ethical decision making. It can serve as a textbook for ethics courses, at the graduate and doctoral level, in organizational psychology, organizational behavior, marketing, and human resource management. It is a resource to anyone interested in ethics and standards in psychology and business.