I. Some Features of Labour-Related Human Rights

It is important to consider precisely how we should understand what labour-related human rights imply that individuals are entitled to. Once again, according to the UDHR and the ICESCR, these rights include:

1. 1. The right to work;Footnote ²¹

2. 2. The right to just and favourable conditions of work;Footnote ²²

3. 3. The right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity;Footnote ²³

4. 4. The right to reasonable limitation of working hours;Footnote ²⁴

5. 5. The right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family.Footnote ²⁵

The most important thing to notice about these rights is that they are clearly rights the fulfilment of which requires that various opportunities, conditions and benefits are provided to all. For example, the right to work would be fulfilled only if everyone who would like to work has the opportunity to do so—that is, only if everyone who actively seeks a job can find one. Given the content of the other rights noted, the labour-related human rights would be jointly fulfilled only if everyone who seeks a job can find one that offers just and favourable conditions of work, and in particular reasonably limited working hours and pay that ensures an adequate standard of living and an existence worthy of human dignity. The labour-related human rights, then, are together what I will call opportunity and outcome-focused rights. Footnote ²⁶ What this means is that the fulfilment of the rights requires that a sufficient set of opportunities is made available to all, and that all of those who appropriately pursue those opportunities are ensured that certain outcomes obtain (for example, that their pay provides for an adequate standard of living, and that their work hours are reasonably limited).

A second thing to notice about these rights is that, apart from the right to work, they all specify thresholds that must be met in order for the rights to be fulfilled. Of course, the content of the rights leaves a great deal of room for debate about how to interpret the thresholds and attempt to determine when they are met. There can be reasonable disagreement about, for example, what is necessary in order for working conditions to be ‘just and favourable’, or for remuneration to ensure an existence worthy of human dignity. The formulation of the rights, however, makes clear that what they require should be understood in terms of thresholds, so that the rights of those who work in conditions that fall below the threshold are not fulfilled. This explains why, for example, we might plausibly think that the rights of sweatshop workers are not fulfilled—their jobs are characterized by working conditions that are clearly not just and favourable, by remuneration that is often less than what is plausibly required for an adequate standard of living for the workers and their families, and by hours that it would be difficult to accept as reasonably limited.

While I cannot offer a detailed defence of the claim that labour-related human rights are best understood, morally speaking, in the way that they are formulated in the documents—that is, as opportunity and outcome-focused, with the relevant outcomes consisting in certain thresholds being met—I will offer two important and related moral grounds for favouring this way of understanding these rights. The first is that it seems to effectively capture the kind of fundamental concern that we ought to have that everyone’s most basic interests are met, and more generally that everyone’s life goes at least decently well (at least as long as they are willing to contribute to society by working). A requirement that everyone is provided with at least enough opportunities and resources (perhaps subject to pursuing the relevant opportunities) to live a minimally decent life is widely accepted as a necessary minimum component of any plausible account of justice or humanitarianism.Footnote ²⁷ It seems reasonable, then, that we should understand the labour-related human rights in a way that entails a commitment to this requirement, since otherwise we would be committed to allowing that these rights could be fulfilled without what is widely regarded as the most minimal requirement that any plausible account of distributive justice must include being satisfied.

A second, related reason to favour understanding labour-related human rights in the way that I have described can be seen by first noting that we live in a world in which most people can only, or are at least expected to, acquire the resources necessary to ensure a decent standard of living via paid labour (or via the paid labour of others, such as close family members). In light of this fact, if we do not understand labour-related human rights in the opportunity and outcome-focused way that I have suggested, the content of the rights would likely imply that some, and perhaps many people, could lack effective access to the resources and opportunities necessary for an adequate standard of living without any of their rights being unfulfilled.Footnote ²⁸ While the expectation that those who are able to work either engage in paid labour or are provided for by others who do can be challenged (for example by those who support the implementation of a universal basic income),Footnote ²⁹ these challenges suggest that we ought to ensure that the outcomes that I have claimed we should take to be required by the labour-related human rights are guaranteed by policies that allow for labour to be, in effect, taken out of the equation. The success of this kind of challenge, then, would not provide us with grounds for rejecting the kind of opportunity and outcome-focused rights that I have suggested we interpret the labour-related rights to be, but instead would provide grounds for detaching these rights from labour to a much greater extent than they are in the existing documents, and in much public and scholarly thought. So long as we live in a world without a universal basic income (or some other policy that eliminates the need to labour in order to provide for a decent standard of living), however, and so long as the relevant documents articulate the relevant rights as connected to labour, we have strong reasons to understand the opportunities and outcomes that I have noted are widely regarded as minimal requirements of justice or humanitarianism as guaranteed by the labour-related rights.

II. Sweatshop Labor, Exploitation and Labour-Related Human Rights

Workers employed in sweatshops endure at least some combination of pay that is too low to provide for an adequate standard of living or an existence worthy of human dignity, hours that are too long to qualify as reasonably limited, and/or conditions of work that cannot plausibly be claimed to be just and favourable. Many sweatshop workers’ jobs are characterized by all three of these conditions. It is uncontroversial, and indeed on many definitions it is (or is close to) a conceptual truth, that at least some of sweatshop workers’ labour-related human rights are not fulfilled.

It is widely believed that those who employ workers in sweatshop conditions and/or the multinational corporations that make it extremely difficult for employers in certain sectors to stay in business without subjecting workers to such conditions are guilty of wrongfully exploiting those workers.Footnote ³⁰ There are two main families of views regarding how we ought to understand the wrong of exploitation.Footnote ³¹ According to the first family of views, the wrong of exploitation consists in a kind of unfairness—specifically, the benefits of economic transactions, such as employment arrangements, are distributed among the parties to the transactions in ways that fail to meet a minimum standard of fairness.Footnote ³² On the second family of views, the wrong of exploitation consists in a kind of degradation or disrespect—specifically, the treatment of exploited workers by their employers (or, perhaps, by other agents, such as multinational firms that source products from their employers) is objectionably degrading or disrespectful.Footnote ³³

Proponents of fairness-based accounts tend to rely, at least implicitly, on a principle according to which when multiple parties engage in economic cooperation that generates benefits, each of the contributing parties is entitled to a share of the benefits that at least meets whatever the appropriate minimum standard of fairness requires.Footnote ³⁴ They then claim that when employing workers in sweatshop conditions is wrong (as most claim it at least usually is), this is because those workers do not receive a share of the benefits that is at least minimally fair—instead, their employers and/or the multinational firms that source products from their employers use their greater bargaining power to extract an unfairly large proportion of the benefits for themselves. While this type of account of the wrong of exploitation seems potentially best suited to explain why the low wages that are typical of sweatshop employment are wrongfully exploitative, facts about the burdens of long hours and poor working conditions can at least play a role in explaining why considerations of fairness suggest that sweatshop workers’ pay is typically objectionably low. In addition, in principle proponents of this kind of view could argue that economic cooperation is unfair, and therefore exploitative, when the burdens that must be endured in order to produce the benefits of the cooperative activity are distributed unfairly, and not only when the benefits are distributed unfairly. They could then argue that, at least typically, when some workers are expected to work unreasonably long hours and/or work in poor conditions, the relevant burdens are in fact distributed unfairly.Footnote ³⁵

Proponents of respect-based accountsFootnote ³⁶ claim that sweatshop employers (and/or the firms that source products from them) exhibit or express disrespect for their employees when they pay them low wages, require them to work long hours, and/or require them to work in poor conditions. These accounts must, of course, rely on claims about the conditions that must be met in order for economic cooperation between those with greater resources and bargaining power and those with less to avoid charges of disrespect or degradation on the part of the more powerful party. There is debate about precisely how we should understand these conditions, but, unsurprisingly, proponents of respect-based accounts all hold that sweatshop employment fails to meet the conditions. In addition, unlike proponents of fairness-based accounts, they do not seem to face the challenge that it is more difficult to see how some of the conditions of sweatshop labour that are typically thought to be objectionable can be explained to be so by their account. It is, for example, no more mysterious how it can be claimed that requiring people to work long hours or to work in poor conditions is disrespectful or degrading, than how it can be claimed that paying people very low wages is disrespectful or degrading. The unified explanatory potential of the view is quite clear.

Are these families of views about the wrong of exploitation compatible with the UNGPs view that corporations are obligated to respect human rights, but are not obligated to contribute to the protection or fulfilment of those rights? In order to defend their compatibility, proponents of each type of view must argue that employing workers in sweatshop conditions constitutes a failure to respect some of the labour-related human rights, such as the right to just and favourable working conditions, the right that work hours are reasonably limited, and/or the right to just and favourable remuneration. In addition, they must argue that the grounds for holding that employing workers in sweatshop conditions constitutes a failure to respect human rights do not also commit us to accepting that corporations have at least some obligations to contribute to the protection or fulfilment of human rights.

In the case of fairness-based views, the claim must be, at least roughly,Footnote ³⁷ that employing people in conditions in which they receive an unfairly low share of the benefits of economic cooperation (and/or shoulder an unfairly high proportion of the relevant burdens), and in which at least some of their labour-related human rights are unfulfilled, constitutes a failure to respect their human rights. In effect, the view is that what respecting labour-related human rights requires is that employers satisfy a conditional obligation,Footnote ³⁸ the content of which is, roughly, the following: If an agent (e.g., a corporation) employs someone, then (if they can) that agent must ensure that the employee’s labour-related human rights are fulfilled. In this view, respecting human rights requires fulfilling those rights, but only on the condition that the employer in question is engaged in economic cooperation with others whose labour-related rights will be fulfilled if (and often only if) the employer fulfils them.

The relevant claim will have at least a fairly similar structure on respect-based views. For proponents of this kind of view, the key idea must be that employing people in conditions that, for independent moral reasons, count as disrespectful or degrading, and in which at least some of their labour-related human rights are unfulfilled, constitutes a failure to respect their human rights. And just as on the fairness-based view, the obligation to fulfil the human rights of those who are employed will be conditional—that is, it applies only when and because an employment relationship is actually in place.

Views of this kind, on which the wrong of exploitation and the failure to respect the labour-related human rights consist in the failure to satisfy a conditional obligation, appear to have the potential to explain, and potentially vindicate, the UNGPs view that corporations are obligated to respect human rights, but not obligated to contribute to the protection or fulfilment of those rights. This is because they suggest a particular way of making sense of the otherwise potentially puzzling thought that the corporate obligation to respect labour-related human rights is, in the relevant sense, analogous to the obligation to respect other human rights, such that it is unmysterious how there could be an obligation to respect the rights in the absence of an obligation to contribute to their protection or fulfilment. The way to make sense of this, on these views, is to think that when, and only when, corporations employ people in sweatshop conditions, they are violating the labour-related human rights of their employees, in a way that is analogous, in the relevant sense, to the way that an agent violates another’s human right to lifeFootnote ³⁹ by killing her. In the case of the human right to life, it is at least plausible that all agents are required not to violate others’ rights, while at the same time, some agents are not, at least as a general matter, in the ordinary course of everyday life, obligated to contribute to the protection or fulfilment of the right.Footnote ⁴⁰ Ordinary citizens are not, for example, obligated to spend any time patrolling their neighbourhoods, ready to intervene if anyone’s right to life is threatened, whereas states are, on most views, obligated to operate police forces in order to protect individuals’ rights to life.

This way of attempting to make sense of the view that corporations are obligated to respect labour-related human rights, but not obligated to contribute to their protection or fulfilment, depends on the claim that respect for these rights consists of refraining from violating them, and on the claim that violating them consists in employing people on terms that leave their rights unfulfilled. While these claims do not seem obviously correct, they are not clearly implausible either. In addition, we might think that their compatibility with the UNGPs view, and with the most commonly accepted views about what the wrong of exploitation consists of, provides some reason for accepting them. Nonetheless, it is important to consider some ways in which they can be challenged. In the remaining two sections of this paper, I will argue that, despite the reasons for finding them appealing, we cannot plausibly accept both of them, and therefore should not accept the UNGPs view about the nature and limits of corporations’ obligations.

III. Rights Violations, Contributions to Rights Fulfilment and Obligations

I argued in Section I that, as they are formulated in the UDHR and ICESCR, at least many of the labour-related human rights are opportunity and outcome-focused. In addition, I suggested that there are significant moral reasons to favour understanding these rights in this way. If we understand the rights in this way, then, at least as a rough approximation, they are fulfilled when, and only when, all individuals who would like a job can find one, and all of the jobs that individuals hold are characterized by just and favourable conditions, reasonably limited hours, and pay that is sufficient for a decent standard of living and a life worthy of human dignity for the workers and their families.Footnote ⁴¹

As I have suggested these rights are characterized, and as they ought to be understood, their fulfilment consists in various thresholds being met. The relevant thresholds are, for example, at least some jobs being available to those who seek employment, and, conditional on that requirement being met, at least some of the available jobs including working conditions that are above a threshold of decency, required hours that are below a threshold of reasonableness, and pay that is above a threshold of ensuring a decent living. The fairness-based and respect-based accounts of the wrong of exploitation rely, at least implicitly, on the claim that there are similarly structured thresholds that have to be met in order for an employment relationship to be non-exploitative. For example, on fairness-based views, the benefits and burdens, including pay (on the benefits side), working hours (on the burdens side), and working conditions (also on the burdens side, at least in sweatshops and other typical cases in which there are concerns about exploitation), must be distributed in a way that meets a minimum standard of fairness (i.e., a threshold). And on respect-based views, the employment conditions must meet a minimum standard such that they are not disrespectful or degrading.

One important feature of thresholds is that when outcomes fail to meet them, they can fall short to varying degrees. Sometimes it does not matter, morally speaking, whether an outcome falls short by more or by less. For example, if an individual in excruciating pain needs US$100 in order to buy a pain reliever that will ease the pain, so that no less than that amount will do her any good whatsoever, it makes no moral difference whether she receives US$99 or nothing at all. US$100 constitutes a morally relevant threshold, and any outcome in which she receives an amount below that threshold is of equal moral value—namely none at all.

In other cases, however, differences below a morally important threshold do matter morally, sometimes quite a bit. For example, if the individual in excruciating pain can eliminate the pain with US$100 worth of the pain reliever, but can also alleviate it to varying degrees with lower doses of the drug, then if the drug can be purchased in, for example, US$5 increments, differences below the threshold will matter a great deal. The individual will, for example, be much better off receiving US$80 than she would be if she received only US$20. She may have a right to the US$100 she needs to fully alleviate the pain, but the threshold specified in the content of the right is not all that matters. In this case, the very moral considerations that explain why she has the right (i.e., the moral importance of eliminating her pain) also provide grounds for thinking that differences below the threshold matter. Indeed, they not only provide grounds for thinking that these differences matter—they also provide grounds for holding that her right is closer to being fulfilled when she receives US$80 than it would be if she received only US$20.

We must ask, then, whether the labour-related human rights are the kinds of rights on which differences below the threshold matter morally, and on which, therefore, they are closer to being fulfilled in some sub-threshold outcomes than in other sub-threshold outcomes. And the answer here seems, quite clearly, to be that they are the kind of rights on which differences below the threshold matter. Some people whose pay falls short of the threshold for a decent living and a life worthy of human dignity are paid more than others, and their being closer to being paid enough for a decent living means that their right is closer to being fulfilled than the rights of those who are paid less. Similarly, some people who are required by their employers to work hours that are not reasonably limited are required to work longer than others. Those whose unreasonably long hours are nonetheless shorter than the even more unreasonably long hours of others are closer to having their right to reasonably limited hours fulfilled.

Importantly, it is morally good, all else being equal, to act in ways that make it the case that people’s opportunity and outcome-focused rights are closer to being fulfilled than they otherwise would be.Footnote ⁴² If I contribute US$60 to the person in excruciating pain and thereby bring the total that she receives from US$20 to US$80, I have done something morally good, and have made it the case that her right is closer to being fulfilled than it otherwise would be (though I have not made it the case that her right is fully fulfilled).

This is important for thinking about whether we can accept that corporations are obligated to respect labour-related human rights, but not obligated to contribute to their fulfilment, where respecting those rights consists in not violating them, and violating them consists, at least for corporations, primarily in employing people on terms that leave their rights unfulfilled. The cases that present the central challenge for this view are cases in which corporations employ people on terms that leave their labour-related rights unfulfilled, but nonetheless make it the case that those rights are closer to being fulfilled than they otherwise would be. It is widely accepted that at least some sweatshop jobs meet this condition—for example, they pay more than alternative forms of employment to which the workers have access, and/or involve shorter working hours than at least some workers would otherwise have to work, and/or provide better working conditions than the available alternative employment opportunities.Footnote ⁴³

If we accept that respecting labour-related human rights consists, for corporations, in not violating them, and that violating them consists in employing people on terms that leave those rights unfulfilled, then while we can make sense of the intuition that corporations that employ people in sweatshops are failing to satisfy their human rights-based obligations, we face a serious challenge if we also want to accept the UNGPs view about the limits of corporate obligations. The challenge arises because, on the one hand, there are, on this view, two ways that corporations can avoid violating the labour-related human rights of potential sweatshop workers: first, they can employ those workers, but pay them enough to ensure a decent standard of living, require only reasonably limited work hours, and provide just and favourable working conditions; or, second, they could avoid employing those workers at all. On the other hand, however, the second way of avoiding violating these rights will often leave those rights further from being fulfilled than they would be if the corporations in question violated them by employing the workers on sub-threshold terms that would nonetheless leave them better off in terms of pay, hours, and/or working conditions. And it is difficult to see why we would accept a view of corporations’ human rights-based obligations that would imply that it is morally preferable to leave peoples’ human rights further from being fulfilled than it is to employ them (on terms to which they voluntarily consent) in ways that make it the case that their rights are closer to being fulfilled. The fundamental grounds on which we accept the rights and their importance, namely concern for individuals’ interests and dignity, which are promoted by their having access to work with decent pay, reasonable hours, and decent conditions, seem clearly to count in favour of preferring that corporations employ them in sweatshops rather than not employing them at all, when their doing so would make it the case that their rights are closer to being fulfilled than they would otherwise be.

In the debate about how to understand the wrong of exploitation, a thought roughly like this lies behind appeals to the ‘nonworseness claim’ by those who defend the permissibility of at least some sweatshop employment.Footnote ⁴⁴ The claim, in its most general form, is that it cannot be morally worse for one agent to engage in a voluntary and mutually beneficial transaction with another agent, than it is for the first agent to refrain from transacting with the second agent altogether.Footnote ⁴⁵ The claim is widely rejected by critics of sweatshop employment,Footnote ⁴⁶ and there are several difficult and complex issues related to it that I cannot discuss here.Footnote ⁴⁷ Defenders of the permissibility of employing people in sweatshops appeal to the claim, in combination with the widely accepted claim that corporations are not obligated to employ people living in such dire conditions that they would voluntarily accept a sweatshop job at all.Footnote ⁴⁸ They argue that because it is permissible for corporations to refrain from employing anyone who is badly off enough that they would accept a sweatshop job, it cannot be wrong to employ those who voluntarily accept sweatshop jobs and are made better off than they would otherwise be in virtue of having them.

The thought that I expressed above, namely that it is difficult to see why we might accept a view on which corporations violate their human rights-based obligations by employing people in sweatshops, but do not violate those obligations when, by refraining from employing them, they leave their labour-related human rights further from being fulfilled, is similar to the one that drives the arguments that appeal to the nonworseness claim. The framing of the issue in terms of human rights that are opportunity and outcome-focused, however, changes the shape of the debate in a way that makes it in one way more challenging for defenders of the UNGPs view than it is for defenders of, in particular, fairness-based accounts of the wrong of exploitation,Footnote ⁴⁹ but in another way leaves open a line of objection that is not available to critics of sweatshops on grounds of wrongful exploitation. The way in which it is more challenging for defenders of the UNGPs view is that this view is explicitly concerned, at a fundamental level, with the fulfilment of labour-related human rights. Because that concern is fundamental, it is especially implausible that the relevant rights-based obligations could imply that, even holding all else equal, some conduct that makes it the case that the rights are closer to being fulfilled is objectionable, while conduct that leaves the rights further from being fulfilled is acceptable. Defenders of fairness-based accounts of the wrong of exploitation, on the other hand, can claim that their fundamental concerns include fairness in the distribution of the benefits of economic cooperation, in addition to, for example, well-being improvements for the badly off and/or greater fulfilment of human rights. And they can claim that, at least sometimes, considerations of fairness take priority over these other, potentially competing considerations.Footnote ⁵⁰

The way in which the human rights-based framing leaves open a line of objection that can be made by defenders of the UNGPs view is that, unlike the exploitation framing, which at least tends to limit the scope of the inquiry to the obligations of corporations,Footnote ⁵¹ the human rights framing explicitly requires that we consider the possibility that accepting that other agents have obligations to contribute to the protection and fulfilment of human rights, or even to ensure their protection and/or fulfilment, can make the view that corporations lack these obligations more plausible than it would seem when considered in isolation.

Before considering whether this line of defence of the UNGPs view can succeed, it is worth briefly noting why a different response does not succeed. Some might think that the UNGPs view can be defended by adjusting the account of what respecting labour-related human rights consists in. Specifically, they might suggest that in light of the argument in this section thus far, we should think that refraining from employing people in sweatshops is not sufficient for respecting those rights, and that instead corporations respect the rights only if, insofar as they can, and to a reasonable extent, they offer employment opportunities on terms that at least meet the thresholds set by the labour-related human rights to people whose rights would otherwise be unfulfilled. The reason that this does not amount to a defence of the UNGPs view is that it defines away the distinction between respecting rights and contributing to their fulfilment. If corporations that can provide employment opportunities to people whose rights would otherwise be unfulfilled are obligated to do so, then they simply are obligated to contribute to the fulfilment of the rights. The view that respecting rights might sometimes require contributing to their fulfilment is not, in my view, implausible. However, it is not a view that is available to defenders of the UNGPs account of corporations’ obligations.

A line of defence of the UNGPs account that might seem more promising appeals to the claim, which is also made in the UNGPs, that, unlike corporations, states do have the obligation to protect and fulfil labour-related human rights.Footnote ⁵² A minimum condition that would need to be met in order for this defence to succeed is that the actions that states might be thought obligated to take in order to fulfil the rights would be sufficient for them to be fulfilled for everyone. This is because it cannot be the case that everyone has the right if it is not also the case that there exist obligations that are such that their being satisfied would ensure that the rights are fulfilled. There are, however, reasons to think that it is not the case that states could ensure that labour-related human rights are fulfilled for everyone regardless of what corporations do within the constraints that state action and policy designed to promote the fulfilment of those rights would set.

What might we think states are obligated to do in order to ensure that labour-related human rights are fulfilled? Perhaps the natural first thought is that states should adopt regulations, including minimum wage laws, workplace safety requirements, and limitations on the working hours that can be required of employees. As is widely known, however, corporations can respond to these kinds of regulations being imposed in a particular state by deciding to employ people in a different state in which the regulations are absent or weaker. This risk of jobs being moved threatens not just efforts by states to fulfil labour-related human rights via the policies mentioned, but at least virtually any effort by states to use policy mechanisms to ensure that the labour-related human rights are fulfilled. This is especially true in poorer states, in which certain policies that richer states might be able, in principle, to adopt to try to ensure the fulfilment of the rights are not genuinely available due to resource constraints. For example, while richer states might be able to adopt a policy of providing anyone who cannot find a job that would ensure the satisfaction of their rights with a state-sponsored job, many poorer states simply lack the resources to do this, and therefore must rely on private firms to provide employment opportunities to their citizens.

Perhaps the next natural thought is that states are obligated to coordinate in order to, in effect, implement a minimum wage and workplace safety requirements, along with a maximum required hours policy, at the global level. Even if we think that this is something that states are obligated to do, however, a view on which states have this obligation does not satisfy the condition that if states all do what they are required to do, the fulfilment of everyone’s labour-related human rights will be guaranteed. This is because even with this kind of global policy in place, firms could still decide (and might be fairly likely to decide) to locate more jobs in high and middle-income countries and fewer in poorer countries. And this would, of course, leave many people in poorer countries in circumstances in which their rights would remain unfulfilled.

It might be suggested, in response to this point, that firms could only temporarily choose to locate jobs in higher-income countries in response to a globally coordinated effort among states to require employment conditions that ensure that the labour-related human rights of all of those who are legally employed are fulfilled.Footnote ⁵³ Once everyone in the higher-income countries who would like a job is employed, and therefore everyone’s labour-related human rights in those countries are fulfilled, employers would have no alternative to employing people in poorer countries. So, while it might be unfortunate that the rights of those in poorer countries would likely be fulfilled later than the rights of those in wealthier countries, a globally coordinated effort among states to ensure that the labour-related human rights of those who are employed are satisfied would, at least over time, guarantee the fulfilment of everyone’s rights.

It is important to recognize, however, that state coordination around the relevant requirements on employers cannot guarantee that enough jobs are made available globally to ensure that everyone who would like a job can obtain one. Corporations may, for example, choose to scale back hiring in order to reduce labour costs, and the requirements might lead to reductions in investment that would generate employment opportunities. It is an empirical question whether the result of state coordination around rights-fulfilling employment conditions would, over time, lead to full employment globally. Only in combination with choices by corporations (and other agents) that would be left open by the relevant state policies would the fulfilment of everyone’s labour-related human rights result. And this means that in order to be consistent with understanding the labour-related human rights in opportunity and outcome-based terms, we cannot avoid assigning obligations beyond respecting human rights to corporations.

It might be suggested that states could supplement the requirements on employers with other policies that, with proper coordination at the global level, would guarantee the fulfilment of the labour-related human rights for all. There are, however, strong reasons to doubt that this is the case. The most important reason is that any set of policies that would actually guarantee the fulfilment of the rights, independent of the choices that other agents make within the constraints set by the policies, would surely be unjustly coercive. For example, states could adopt policies that not only mandate certain conditions regarding wages, working conditions, and hours for those whom corporations choose to employ, but also legally require employers to maintain certain levels of employment, and/or to employ people whom they would not independently choose to employ. Such policies would likely need to be combined with other highly coercive and intrusive policies regulating internal corporate decision-making in order to effectively guarantee that everyone’s labour-related human rights would be fulfilled. Policies of this kind, however, would themselves be objectionable—there are constraints on how states may permissibly aim to ensure the fulfilment of labour-related human rights.Footnote ⁵⁴

The general lesson here is that there is no minimally realistic set of policies that states could adopt, either individually or collectively, that would guarantee that everyone’s labour-related human rights are fulfilled while being consistent with plausible justice-based limitations on state coercion. Whether those rights are fulfilled will always depend, at least to a significant extent, on what corporations and other non-state actors do within the constraints set by acceptable state policy.

IV. Conclusion: Labour-Related Human Rights and Corporate Obligations

Once we recognize the inconsistency between the labour-related human rights, understood as opportunity and outcome-based rights, and the UNGPs view that limits corporations’ obligations to respecting human rights, we have two options. The first is that we can reject the view that labour-related human rights should be understood in opportunity and outcome-based terms, and instead hold that they should be understood in a way that is consistent with the view that, for corporations, respecting human rights consists in not violating them, and violating them consists in employing people on terms that leave their rights unfulfilled. On this kind of view, those who are employed on terms that do not provide pay sufficient for a decent standard of living, decent enough working conditions, and reasonably limited hours have labour-related rights that are unfulfilled and violated, but those who cannot find work despite wanting a job may not have their rights unfulfilled or violated at all.Footnote ⁵⁵ This view may have appeal to some, and in particular those who seek an account of labour-related human rights that is consistent with the fairness and/or respect-based accounts of the wrong of exploitation, on which the wrong consists in a failure to satisfy a conditional obligation to provide terms of employment above the relevant thresholds if and only if the agent in question chooses to employ people who would be willing to accept sub-threshold conditions.

In my view, this way of resolving the inconsistency is implausible, and should be rejected. What we ought to care about, at the most fundamental level, is that everyone who would like a job has the opportunity to obtain one, and that everyone willing to work has a decent standard of living, reasonably limited working hours, and decent enough working conditions. It is not enough that those who are fortunate enough to obtain employment enjoy conditions above these thresholds, while those who are not fortunate enough to obtain employment are, in at least many cases, even worse off than they would be with a sweatshop job. We simply cannot plausibly accept that a world in which millions are involuntarily unemployed and live below the threshold of income necessary for a decent standard of living and a life worthy of human dignity, could be a world in which there are no unfulfilled labour-related human rights.

We should, then, accept the second option, which is to hold that corporations have at least some obligations to contribute to the fulfilment of labour-related human rights.Footnote ⁵⁶ It is only by accepting this view that we can maintain the essential opportunity and outcome-based account of the content of labour-related human rights.

While I cannot offer a detailed account of how we should understand these obligations here, I will conclude by noting what seem to me to be a few plausible candidate obligations to contribute to the fulfilment of the labour-related human rights that we might ascribe to corporations. First, we might think that corporations that can, consistent with their expected long-term thriving, provide employment opportunities to people living below the thresholds set by the rights that would make it the case that their rights are either fulfilled or closer to being fulfilled are obligated to do so, at least so long as the costs that they would incur by doing so (in terms of, for example, less than maximal profits, or competitive advantage in their markets) are not too high. Second, we might think that when corporations do satisfy this first obligation by employing people who would be willing to accept sub-threshold terms of employment, they are obligated to refrain from bargaining down their wages and working conditions, and requiring the maximal number of hours that they would accept, and instead provide conditions that either ensure that their labour-related human rights are fulfilled, or, if that is incompatible with staying in business and remaining competitive, provide conditions that are as good as they can, even if they remain below the thresholds. Finally, we might think that corporations are, in general, obligated to adopt policies that, to at least a reasonable extent, and within the constraints set by market and competitive forces, can be expected to improve the lives of people living below the thresholds in ways that are relevant to the fulfilment of their labour-related human rights. For example, even if it is not going to employ people living below the threshold itself, a corporation might adopt a policy that is somewhat more costly than available alternatives because doing so makes it much more likely that a different firm will choose to employ people living below the thresholds on terms that make it the case that their rights are fulfilled, or at least closer to being fulfilled.

These are merely examples of the kinds of obligations that we might have reason to ascribe to corporations in order to maintain that labour-related human rights really do require that everyone has access to employment opportunities and conditions of work that meet the minimum standards noted in the content of the rights. Making proper sense of these rights requires accepting a more demanding account of corporations’ obligations than that embodied in the UNGPs. We should not shy away from this, given that the only alternative is to accept a watered-down and implausibly limited account of the content of the rights.