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This article examines the development of the ILO’s Global Strategy on Occupational Safety and Health through the lens of social exclusion. Social exclusion is a transversal concept across the social sciences. The article integrates the study of exclusion as an essential element of institutional analysis in industrial relations. After discussing the treatment of the study of exclusion in labour and employment relations scholarship, it presents an analytic frame using four mechanisms of exclusion taken from sociology: 1- encoding; 2- framing pathways; 3- non-decision making; and 4- mining actualities. Observations are presented from a qualitative study of 125 preparatory and legal texts created through the development of the Global Strategy between 2000 and 2015. The method of analysis is a socio-historic interpretation following the principles of analysis of primary source documents outlined by Marc Trachtenberg in his book The Craft of International History: A Guide to Method. Exclusionary dynamics are observed in three areas: 1- managing the meaning of OSH policy integration; 2- shaping the role of collective labour rights in OSH policy; and 3- sidestepping the development of specific OSH hazard protections. Comparisons are made at key points with recent normative work by UN human rights bodies, including the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and their General Comment No. 23 on the human right to just and favourable conditions of work. The result is a Global OSH Strategy with promotional strengths, but also neoliberal values interwoven in its policy framework. // Cet article examine le développement de la Stratégie globale en matière de sécurité et de santé au travail de l’Organisation internationale du Travail (OIT) à travers le prisme de l’exclusion sociale. L’exclusion sociale est un concept transversal dans les sciences sociales. L’article intègre l’étude de l’exclusion comme une composante essentielle d’une analyse institutionnelle en relations industrielles. Il présente un cadre analytique en utilisant quatre mécanismes d’exclusion repris de la sociologie : 1- l’encodage ; 2- les voies encadrant ; 3- la non-prise de décision ; et 4- les actualités minées. Les observations sont présentées à partir d’une étude qualitative de 125 textes juridiques préparatoires rédigés dans le cadre du développement de la Stratégie globale entre 2000 et 2015. Notre méthode s’avère être une interprétation socio-historique suivant les principes de l’analyse des documents primaires articulés par Marc Trachtenberg dans son livre The Craft of International History : A Guide to Method. Des dynamiques d’exclusion furent observées dans trois domaines : 1- la gestion du sens de l’intégration des politiques en matière de SST ; 2- l’élaboration du rôle des droits collectifs du travail dans la politique en matière de SST ; et 3- le développement des protections spécifiques de danger en matière de SST. Le résultat a donné une Stratégie globale en matière de SST avec des forces de promotion, mais aussi des valeurs néolibérales entrelacées dans le cadre de sa politique.

Today, hazardous work kills 2.3 million people each year and injures millions more. Among the most compelling yet controversial forms of legal protection for workers is the right to refuse unsafe work. The rise of globalization, precarious work, neoliberal politics, attacks on unions, and the idea of individual employment rights have challenged the protection of occupational health and safety for workers worldwide. This book presents the protection of refusal rights as a moral and a human rights question. The book finds that the protection of the right to refuse unsafe work, as constituted under international labor standards, is a failure and calls for a reexamination of worker health and safety policy from the ground up. The current model of protection follows an individual employment rights framework, which fails to protect workers against the inherent social inequalities within the employment relationship. To adequately protect the right to refuse as a human right, both in North America and around the world, the book argues that a broader protection must be granted under a freedom of association framework.

The future of worker health and safety as a fundamental human right is dependent upon revitalizing labor rights in the working environment. A new global direction is needed to move the international norms and in turn national labor policy models away from market voluntarism and towards models that protect human rights in the working environment as first principles. What is needed is a foundational dialog on the boundaries of labor rights as they relate to the working environment because the current international labor and human rights jurisprudence is lacking. --From author's conclusion

Article 23(4) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states ‘Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.’ This article documents the global legislative history of Article 23(4) trade union rights from its original drafting to interpretation by international labour standards. The history includes debates on the fundamental principles of trade union rights, the decision by ECOSOC to ignore a call to establish a permanent UN Commission on Trade Union Rights, the devolution of authority from the United Nations to the International Labour Organization, how ILO international law experts framed trade union rights as a subset of the freedom of association, and the treatment of labour relations policy, including compulsory union membership, that resulted under international human rights norms. The history is discussed as one that confines standards of policy on labour rights in the global political economy and has particular implications for the discourse on labour rights as human rights.

The Ontario Network of Injured Workers’ Groups in Canada is leading a multiyear campaign called Workers’ Comp is a Right to reform the provincial workers’ injury compensation system and to fight back against regressive changes made to the system over several decades. At their Annual General Meeting in Toronto held in June 2019, delegates voted unanimously to make this submission to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as a part of the regular supervisory process under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The subject is income deeming “phantom jobs” to injured worker claimants with income replacement benefits. The document illustrates how Canadian injured worker groups have activated a human rights lens and references international labor and human rights standards concerning social insurance and income replacement benefits for work-related injury and illness.

The article reviews the book, "A Field in Flux: Sixty Years of Industrial Relations," by Robert B. McKersie.

Background: This article introduces the idea of human rights to the topic of workers' compensation in the United States. It discusses what constitutes a human rights approach and explains how this approach conflicts with those policy ideas that have provided the foundation historically for workers' compensation in the United States. Methods: Using legal and historical research, key international labor and human rights standards on employment injury benefits and influential writings in the development of the U.S. workers' compensation system are cited. Results Workers' injury and illness compensation in the United States does not conform to basic international human rights norms. Conclusions: A comprehensive review of the U.S. workers' compensation system under international human rights standards is needed. Examples of policy changes are highlighted that would begin the process of moving workers' compensation into conformity with human rights standards.

Working conditions have been an ongoing topic of scholarship and government for more than a century, yet the understanding that workers’ health and safety are human rights has a short history and has until recently not been a significant justification for industrial and labor relations policy. In this chapter I respond to this gap, challenging industrial relations and labor economics to examine the scope and nature of the problem and articulate a framework of workers’ health and safety as human rights concerns. The field of industrial relations has historically characterized workers’ health and safety as less than fundamental human rights. This paper is an exploration of the human rights framework and a response to critics in an effort to establish a new foundation for industrial relations scholarship and in turn build the human rights foundation for labor policy. --Author's introduction