A Rawlsian basis for core labor rights

The issue of labor rights has acquired increasing global salience as labor markets have been re-structured and global inequality has increased. It has, for example, been argued that a more developed, systematic and critical view of justice issues in labor management is required. It has also been suggested that even relatively developed national and regional legal approaches to labor rights based on versions of "voluntarism" are inadequate. Further, the currently inadequate philosophical underpinnings of labor rights deprives their advocates of depth of argument, which may in turn contribute to a loss of welfare for large numbers of workers. In responding to this third point, this article makes a modest attempt to link philosophy with labor rights by using Rawls' theory of justice and interpreting it in the light of employment relations research.