A Review of James A. Gross’s Shameful Business: The Case for Human Rights in the American Workplace and R. P. McIntyre’s Are Worker Rights Human Rights?

Abstract

The two books approach the problem of enhancing undervalued ‘Worker Rights’ from quite variant viewpoints, presenting an intriguing divergence of views on a very important question. For some time, many advocates for Labor rights have been trying to hitch their wagon to the star of “human rights”, as a way of stressing the fundamental importance and the universality of the rights-claims made, notwithstanding their serious neglect in recent U.S. labor history. The rights claims involved – the right to associate, to form unions, to bargain collectively, and to strike – are somewhat vaguely identified in Human Rights documents, but have not received much emphasis.