What Is Decent Work? A Review of the Literature

This chapter reviews the literature surrounding the concept of decent work, beginning in 1999 with the International Labour Organization's (ILO's) decision to adopt the term as its primary goal, bringing together ‘four strategic objectives: the promotion of rights at work; employment; social protection; and social dialogue’ (Somavia, 1999, p. 6). Historical perspectives contrast decent work with ‘dignified work’, championed by more radical voices (Spooner & Waterman, 2015; Standing, 2008), but remind us that the organization's capacity to advance a radical agenda has always been constrained by its tripartite nature (Moore, Dannreuther, & Mollmann, 2015). Whilst some have critiqued decent work as lacking methodological precision (Burchell, Sehnbruch, Piasna, & Agloni, 2014), feminist scholars welcome its breadth, arguing that this has made space on the ILO's agenda for the protection of informal forms of employment where women workers are often over-represented (Prugl, 1999; Vosko, 2002). Psychologists argue that the ILO's concept of decent work can be enhanced by a focus on the lived experience of the individual worker, maintaining that the meaning and purpose of work are also important issues to consider. Their critique of the ILO's approach highlights the breadth of the concept and the challenges operationalising it, particularly across very different contexts (Di Fabio & Blustein, 2016). The term decent work also appears in the extensive political economy/international development literature analyzing the expansion of global value chains and their more nuanced re-versioning as global production networks. This body of work highlights the link between decent work (or its absence), the rise of transnational corporations and corresponding hollowing out of labour conditions along global supply chains, leading to increasing flexibilization/precarity as companies seek to maintain competitiveness (See, for example, Gereffi, Humphrey, Kaplinsky, and Sturgeon (2001). The chapter also includes a brief introduction to some of the attempts by the ILO and others to enable more of the world's workforce to access decent work – themes which will be expanded further in later chapters of this book.