Structural Injustice and Workers' Rights

This book challenges the traditional view of exploitation in workplaces and argues that state-mediated structural injustice at work is a more accurate phenomenon. It uses examples such as migrant workers, captive workers, and people under welfare conditionality schemes to show how the law creates structures of exploitation that entrench long-term, standard, and routine exploitation. It also assesses these examples against human rights principles and argues that these structures routinely lead to workers' exploitation, which may give rise to state responsibility for human rights violations. The book calls for reform.

Format: Hardback
Length: 208 pages
Publication date: 10 March 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Governments often employ a rhetoric of personal responsibility when addressing exploitation in workplaces. They focus on employers who take advantage of workers or on workers who choose non-standard, precarious work arrangements. According to this perspective, the responsibility of the state is to address the harm inflicted by private actors. This book challenges that approach and introduces the concept of state-mediated structural injustice at work. This phenomenon occurs when legislation appears legitimate but has detrimental effects on many people, leading to structures of exploitation in the workplace.

Through a series of examples, such as migrant workers, captive workers, individuals under welfare conditionality schemes, and other precarious workers, Mantouvalou demonstrates how the law creates these structures of injustice. She also assesses these examples against human rights principles, including civil, political, economic, and social rights. The ultimate aim of the work is to show that these structures routinely lead to workers' exploitation, which may in turn give rise to state responsibility for human rights violations. It argues that there is a pressing need for reform.

Weight: 454g
Dimension: 163 x 241 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780192857156