Trade and sustainable development (TSD) chapters in international trade agreements include labour provisions with a view to prevent a “race to the bottom” and reaffirm the existing international labour commitments. When properly formulated and implemented, these provisions could have positive normative impacts on the international and domestic rule of law. This article provides a critical analysis of the evolution of labour standards in international trade agreements, particularly focusing on the European Union’s (EU) approach, in comparison with the approach in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). More specifically, it considers ways in which trade agreements contribute to the improvement of labour standards in domestic legal systems. While EU trade agreements embrace minimum standards under international labour law rather than higher standards that apply in the EU legal order, the article argues that there is at least a normative shift towards a more efficient implementation of labour rights through EU agreements, which could make a limited contribution to the rule of law.

This study explores labour market segmentation within the Turkish construction industry, in a developing country context characterised by refugee influxes and heightened earthquake risks. We apply statistical and regression analyses using 2002–2020 Household Labour Force Survey data to explore segmentation with a specific focus on payment, job type and social security enrolment. The findings reveal a segmented labour market where the progress in regular, permanent and registered employment in the 2000s failed to encompass most construction workers. Lower wages, and temporary and unregistered work are more common among the youngest and oldest workers, those with poor education and qualification levels, immigrants, and those employed by micro enterprises. The construction industry lags behind both manufacturing and services in terms of registered and permanent employment rates and average wages. The prevalence of workers in elementary jobs with little education highlights the ongoing challenge of ensuring a highly skilled workforce, while reconstruction activities in earthquake-prone zones and the demand for urban transformation in Türkiye are increasing. We argue that improvements in working conditions constitute an urgent restructuring component in the sector for elevating the status of construction jobs, addressing the shortage of skilled labour and ensuring a high-quality building stock that upholds the right to a secure life in Türkiye.

Commercial motor vehicle driving is one of the most dangerous occupations in the United States. The production of most trucking services takes places on public roadways, which makes commercial motor vehicle safety a topic of concern for industry stakeholders, supply chain operations, policy makers, and the general public. This study explores the relationship between new employee driver compensation and for-hire interstate truckload motor carrier crash incidence. The results suggest that, all else constant, higher benefits are associated with fewer crashes. While mileage pay rates predict crashes, we find that higher mileage rates can be correlated with either higher or lower crash frequency – depending on the carrier’s existing starting pay level. This may be due to pernicious incentives created by piece-rate pay structures, because drivers who have more unpaid non-driving work time may earn a slightly higher mileage pay rate, which only partially compensates them for unpaid labour time. Regardless, these results suggest that compensation is an important predictor of safety and the existing pay practices in the industry may be unsafe. It also suggests that the role of compensation in motor carrier safety performance deserves further exploration with better quality data–especially full documentation of hours of work and pay rates.

In the absence of government safety regulation in the field of nanotechnology, ISO standards are being used as the basis for establishing technical and management guidelines at an international level. There are more than 50 current ISO standards on nanotechnology. Some of these relate to the working environment and occupational risk management. In Latin America, entities that are members of ISO are enunciating national versions of the international standards. In this article, this context is analysed critically, starting from the Mexican standard on occupational risk management in the working environment. Even though risk management standards may guarantee better and safer working conditions, in the field of nanotechnology, they simultaneously unlock detrimental implications for workers and society. Reliance on such private and voluntary forms of industry self-regulation is identified as a by-product of global neoliberalism.

It is widely agreed that there is a crisis in labour/employment standards enforcement. A key issue is the role of deterrence measures that penalise violations. Employment standards enforcement in Ontario, like in most jurisdictions, is based mainly on a compliance framework promoting voluntary resolution of complaints and, if that fails, ordering restitution. Deterrence measures that penalise violations are rarely invoked. However, the Ontario government has recently increased the role of proactive inspections and tickets, a low-level deterrence measure which imposes fines of CAD295 plus victim surcharges. In examining the effectiveness of the use of tickets in inspections, we begin by looking at this development in the broader context of employment standards enforcement and its historical trajectory. Then, using administrative data from the Ministry of Labour, we examine when and why tickets are issued in the course of workplace inspections. After demonstrating that even when ticketable violations are detected, tickets are issued only rarely, we explore factors associated with an increased likelihood of an inspector issuing a ticket. Finally, we consider how the overall deterrent effect of workplace inspections is influenced by the use or non-use of deterrence tools.

The complex transition from convict to free labour influenced state intervention in the employment relationship, and initiated the first minimum labour standards in Australia in 1828. Since then, two principal sets of tensions have affected the enforcement of such standards: tensions between government and employers, and tensions between the major political parties over industrial and economic issues. This article argues that these tensions have resulted in a sustained legacy affecting minimum labour standards’ enforcement in Australia. The article outlines broad historical developments and contexts of minimum labour standards’ enforcement in Australia since 1828, with more contemporary exploration focusing specifically on enforcement practices and policies in the Australian federal industrial relations jurisdiction. Current enforcement practices are an outcome of this volatile history, and past influences remain strong.

The ‘gig economy’ uses digital platforms to bypass many of the regular responsibilities and costs of employment. Ambiguity as to whether gig-economy workers are independent contractors, dependent contractors or employees allows the undermining of traditional labour standards governing minimum wages and other legislated employment conditions. Labour law and institutions need to catch up to the new reality of this form of work and develop new tools to protect and enhance minimum standards for workers in digital platform businesses. Unions, business and government all have a role to play in the long term. Meanwhile, direct engagement between these new firms and workers’ advocates can also help to mitigate the risks posed to labour standards by digital business models, by addressing regulatory gaps. This article is a case study of innovative negotiations between one platform business (Airtasker) and Unions New South Wales, a peak trade unions body in New South Wales, Australia, in order to establish agreed minimum standards for engagements negotiated through this platform.

Throughout the English-speaking world, collective bargaining has commonly been considered to be an option for workers discontent with the default system of management-determined conditions of work. In this article it is argued that, as a universally acclaimed human right, collective bargaining should be considered a minimum condition for everyone employed under standardised conditions of work. The government policy of offering workers a choice to bargain or to refrain from bargaining, in effect in countries such as the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, does not meet that standard. Just as the equity goal of governments is the absence of inequality based on traits such as sex and colour, the government bargaining policy goal should be universal collective bargaining. Anything short of universality should be considered a social problem in search of a more effective policy solution.

There has been significant growth of precarious work in Britain over the past three decades. This article examines the strategies adopted by unions to counteract this trend. It uses Weil’s ‘strategic choice framework’ to assess the attempts of the Trades Union Congress to encourage affiliates to adopt innovative ways of reaching precarious workers and examines the extent to which these strategies have been implemented. Unfavourable external shifts have placed greater pressure on unions to develop appropriate internal strategies and structures to strengthen their capacity for reaching precarious workers. The Trades Union Congress has encouraged unions to use community unionism strategies to organise precarious workers outside of the workplace and sustainable sourcing strategies to regulate their conditions through procurement mechanisms. These strategies are relatively effective means of reaching precarious workers in the context of legal constraints on unions and changes in the organisation of work and production. The internal governance structures of the British union movement need to be reformed if these strategies are to be adopted more widely.

The employment relationship in a growing number of industries with large concentrations of low wage workers has become ‘fissured’, where the lead firms that collectively determine the product market conditions in which wages and conditions are set have become separated from the actual employment of the workers who provide goods or services. Instead, the direct employers of low wage workers operate in far more competitive markets that create conditions for non-compliance. We examine this evolution in employment and its implications for public policy in the US, discuss the factors driving fissured employment and sketch its main features and outcomes. We then look at the traditional methods used for labour standards enforcement in the US and discuss why they are poorly suited to address fissured workplaces. Finally, we survey how public policies might better address the realities of the modern workplace, including efforts in this regard by the Obama administration.

In the context of the working-class backlash against free trade represented by Brexit, the recent surge of right-wing political parties in Europe and the 2016 US presidential election, it is timely to take stock of the threats to jobs and wages posed by recent negotiations over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The European Commission selectively relied on econometric analyses, predicting a positive impact of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Its proposed legal text on ‘Trade and sustainable development’ fell short of the European Parliament’s negotiating guidelines, which themselves failed to ensure protection of labour standards. The activities of corporate lobbies threatened the effective protection of workers’ rights. Major risks to workers’ rights are posed by discrepancies between US and European Union labour and social law and labour standards. The most recent legal text lacks compliance monitoring provisions and sanction mechanisms against member states failing to ratify core labour conventions. The investment court system does not resolve the problems of the discredited investor-state dispute settlement mechanism for which it is the proposed replacement. The year 2016 has provided a foretaste of the dislocation likely from trade and investment regulation that sees social and environmental standards and labour rights simply as barriers to corporate profits.

Using an administrative dataset from the Ontario Ministry of Labour, we investigate three hypotheses about employment standards violations among franchised businesses: (1) franchisees have a higher probability of violating employment standards than other businesses, (2) franchisees have a higher probability of monetary/wage-related ES violations than other businesses, and (3) franchisees have a lower probability of repaying monetary/wage-related violations than other businesses. The results of our statistical models suggest that overall, franchisees are indeed more likely to violate ES, have a higher probability of monetary/wage-related violations, and are less likely to repay such violations. However, the results vary substantially by industry. While franchisees had only marginally higher probabilities of an ES violation in two of the seven industry-groups examined, five of the seven industries showed substantially higher probabilities of a monetary violation. The results also show that franchisees in three industry groups (retail, accommodation and food services, and education, public administration, healthcare and social services) are particularly prone to monetary violations.

The rapid liberalisation of trade policies since the 1990s has brought additional attention to the role of trade as an engine of economic growth. Although an abundant literature addresses the relationship between openness and economic growth, the real effect of trade liberalisation is still ambiguous and undetermined. Most previous studies have ignored the selection effects of strict labour regulations on international trade. The main objective of this study is to measure the role of labour regulations in moderating the contribution of trade to economic growth among 30 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries for the period 2006–2013. In doing so, we employ a one-step Generalised Method of Moments system estimation method. Our results reveal that openness to trade does not have a robust and significant effect on growth. However, the interaction of openness with strict labour regulations enhances the contributions of trade to growth.

In this paper we outline and critique legal approaches to poor mental health at work in the UK. We argue that the current legal framework is not ‘fit for purpose’. Overall, the existing framework promotes a problematic model that is ineffective because each element, individually and as part of the whole, fails to adequately engage with the nuanced realities of the relationship between undertaking paid work and suffering poor mental health. It is, we suggest, disjointed because it has evolved from a patchwork of provisions, each with different foundations, motivations, ambitions and flaws. The need for a re-focus, and what this might entail, is considered, and the capacity of a model centred on addressing workplace mental health as a manifestation of broader notions of vulnerability is explored.