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Regulating work with people and 'nature' in mind : feminist reflections
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Zbyszewska, Ania (2018) Regulating work with people and 'nature' in mind : feminist reflections. Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal, 40 (1). ISSN 1095-6654.
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Official URL: https://cllpj.law.illinois.edu/archive/vol_40/
Abstract
Whether labor law should deal with the issues of socio-ecological sustainability, and how it might do so, have been questions rarely considered in the many important debates on labor law’s normative foundations, boundaries, and goals. ‘Nature’ is not, after all, labor law’s domain. But work – which is labor law’s domain, though what counts as work and which work relations ought to fall under law’s protective umbrella remain live questions – is both, implicated in the contemporary socio-ecological crisis and features prominently in various policy proposals on how to address this crisis and its uneven impacts on people and the biosphere. With the discourse of sustainability espoused by all major policy actors, including the International Labor Organization (ILO) , ecological thinking is making its way into human resources lexicons , and the ‘green’ banner being increasingly taken up by the labor movement, it might be time also for labor lawyers to reflect on how we can contribute to this conversation. This is especially important in light of the fact that the mainstream engagement with sustainability – as its critics alert us – is far from trouble-free. On the one hand, while the ILO matches its ‘green’ agenda with the one on decent work and a ‘just transition’, most mainstream commitments to ecomodernization of the economy and the premise of ‘green jobs’ are still predicated on acceptance of the logics growth and efficiency, albeit of a modified kind. Their implications for workers are neither clear nor unproblematic, not least in light of uneven global development. On the other hand, the rejection of the currently proposed recipe for a ‘green transition’, as exemplified by Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States (US) from the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change and his electoral promise to revitalize mining, bring back industrial jobs, and restore American working class pride, is even more troubling, especially in light of its contemptuous instrumentalization of the very people it claims to empower. Either way, work, work systems, and working people are very much integral to, and implicated in, these contradictory narratives and events as they are currently unfolding. And labor law or work regulation more broadly will eventually play a role in them too.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor K Law [Moys] > KM Common Law, Public Law |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Law | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Labor laws and legislation, Human ecology, Sustainability, Nature -- Social aspects, Social ecology | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal | ||||||
Publisher: | University of Illinois College of Law | ||||||
ISSN: | 1095-6654 | ||||||
Official Date: | September 2018 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 40 | ||||||
Number: | 1 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
Copyright Holders: | The Author(s) | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 13 September 2018 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 13 September 2018 | ||||||
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