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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 October 2011
There has been little examination of the possible negative effects on labor's interests when those interests are asserted as rights. It is as if proclaiming “workers' rights are human rights” can only cause good things to happen. Joseph McCartin's essay contributes to a more balanced and sophisticated discussion of the effects of rights talk for labor. He uses George McGovern's critique of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) to illustrate the more general point that prolabor rights arguments invite antilabor rights arguments even from friends of labor, and that in the current conjuncture appeals to rights are more likely to empower neoliberals and libertarians than workers. Indeed, the very name of the proposed act, emphasizing freedom and choice, is part of the problem, as the union idea involves definite limits on individual freedom in the interest of the betterment of the group. The titling of EFCA indicates unwillingness on the part of Labor and its allies to face this.
1. This section summarizes and develops arguments made in McIntyre, Richard, Are Workers Rights Human Rights? (Ann Arbor, 2008), especially 53–79Google Scholar.
2. Waldron, Jeremy, Nonsense Upon Stilts: Bentham, Burke, and Marx on the Rights of Man (New York, 2007), 44Google Scholar.
3. Antiracist and postcolonial struggles were the other ground for the spread of rights talk in the postwar period.
4. Ignatieff, Michael, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (Princeton, 2001)Google Scholar.
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12. McIntyre, Are Worker Rights Human Rights?, 80–102, 134–61.
13. See, for instance, Steiny, Julia, “It's Time to Put an End to Forced Unionism,” Providence Sunday Journal, March 6, 2011Google Scholar.
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18. I provide a more detailed summary of the extent of worker appropriation in the United States and internationally and of the philosophical arguments for a right to worker appropriation in “Worker Appropriation as Responsibility and Right,” forthcoming, Employee Rights and Responsibilities Journal.
19. Geoghegan, Thomas, “Consider the Germans,” Harper's, March 2010, 7–9Google Scholar.
20. On the first point, see Wolff, Rick, “Taking Over the Enterprise: A New Strategy for Labor and the Left,” New Labor Forum 19 (2010): 8–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on the second, see Gillespie, John and Zweig, David, Money for Nothing: How the Failure of Corporate Leaders Is Ruining American Business and Costing Us Trillions (New York, 2010)Google Scholar.
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