Putting Human Rights to Work: Labour Law, the ECHR, and the Employment Relation

Abstract

It is no exaggeration to say that labour law as a discipline in recent years has experienced something of a crisis of confidence.1 Once standing tall and proud, seemingly impervious to potshots and blows to its status originating from outside its hallowed halls, in the past 40 years or so, it has undergone a series of sustained attacks from a number of directions. In Putting Human Rights to Work, Philippa Collins asks whether the adoption of a ‘rights turn’, and in particular, the recasting of human rights law and fundamental rights as labour rights and/or the incorporation of human/fundamental rights norms into existing labour laws, could be the solution to labour law’s existing woes (pp 35–37). Citing Tarunabh Khaitan’s work on discrimination law, Collins refers to work and the workplace as ‘the enabling opportunity’ (p 25), ie, the most obvious arena in life where individuals can establish social, financial and psychological security, extend their opportunity sets and realise human flourishing.2 Collins goes on to make a persuasive case in favour of a draft Bill of Human Rights for Workers (Ch 9), having charted the poverty of imagination displayed by the judiciary regarding the infusion of human rights concepts and norms into the content and scope of common law employment rights and the process of interpretation of statutory employment rights. The point is made that the opportunity to marshal the worker-progressive potential of human rights as a means of expanding the protective capacity and range of employment rights, has been largely wasted.