- From the US Department of Labor: What Are Workers' Rights?
There is no single definition or definitive list of workers' rights. The International Labor Organization (ILO) identifies what it calls "fundamental principles and rights at work" that all ILO Members have an obligation to respect and promote, which are:
freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;
effective abolition of child labor;
elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation;
and a safe and healthy working environment.
The ILO has adopted – and supervises the application of – international labor conventions in each of these areas. Other important ILO standards deal with conditions of work, including wages and hours of work, but these standards are not considered "fundamental" or "core" conventions.
United States trade law adds “acceptable conditions of work” with respect to minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health to that list, calling them "internationally recognized labor rights."
- From Wikipedia: Labor Rights.
Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights influence working conditions in relations of employment. One of the most prominent is the right to freedom of association, otherwise known as the right to organize. Workers organized in trade unions exercise the right to collective bargaining to improve working conditions.
- NLRA and the Right to Strike.
Section 7 of the Act states in part, “Employees shall have the right. . . to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.” Strikes are included among the concerted activities protected for employees by this section. Section 13 also concerns the right to strike. It reads as follows:
Nothing in this Act, except as specifically provided for herein, shall be construed so as either to interfere with or impede or diminish in any way the right to strike, or to affect the limitations or qualifications on that right.
It is clear from a reading of these two provisions that: the law not only guarantees the right of employees to strike, but also places limitations and qualifications on the exercise of that right.
- How American Workers Lost the Right the Lost the Right to Strike, and Other Tales.
To paraphrase a veteran labor scholar, if you want to know where
the corpses are buried in labor law, look for the "of course"
statements in court opinions.1 By "of course" statements, he meant
propositions that are announced as if they were self-evident, requiring
no justification. Each year, thousands of law students read such
statements in labor law casebooks. And each year, they duly ask
themselves - prodded sometimes by the casebook's notes - how
these conclusions could be justified in legal terms. But often there
seems to be no answer, and the mystery continues.
This Essay recounts the origins of five such "of course" statements,
each of which has had a devastating impact on the American labor
movement.
The five statements are:
1) Of course, workers have no right of self-defense against
employers that commit unfair labor practices.2
2) Of course, employers enjoy the right to permanently
replace economic strikers. 3
3) Of course, the National Labor Relations Board has no
power to deter unfair labor practices.4
4) Of course, employers may exclude union organizers
from their property.5
5) Of course, employers may close operations out of "spite" against workers who choose to unionize.6
These statements all share one puzzling feature. In the accepted
hierarchy of laws, only the United States Constitution can trump
federal statutes.7 Yet each of these statements elevates the state
common-law rights of employers over the federal statutory rights of
workers.
