International Labor Law: Workers’ Rights in the Global Economy

Catalog description

This course examines international labor law through the rules, organizations and institutions that shape global governance of labor and explores the obstacles workers face in exercising internationally recognized labor rights. The International Labor Organization (ILO) is the United Nations organization mandated to design and supervise international labor rights; yet governments have plucked some of those rights out of the ILO governance system and dropped them into their own legal instruments, including their bilateral and multilateral trade agreements that are backed with economic sanctions. The course will also consider private governance initiatives that workers and labor organizations have sought to secure rights and corporate accountability where public governance efforts have failed.