Clyde W. Summers
James Gross's introduction provides an excellent frame for discussion of workers' rights. He points out the present-day need to defend workers' rights and places the issue in a civil-rights context.
January 2004 Choice
The place of human rights in US labor policy is the subject of this volume, whose dominant theme is that economic rights are as important and as universal as political rights and worthy of the same protections.... Summing Up: Recommended. Comprehensive labor studies collections, upper-division undergraduate and up.
Future Survey 25:10
"Gross supplies background by explaining that the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act) established democratic procedures for participation of workers in determining their wages, hours, and working conditions. Although not using the term human rights, 'the Wagner Act was far ahead of its time in applying human rights principles to US workplaces.'."
Robert J. Flanagan
This book provides as clear an introduction to the arguments for linking human rights to worker rights as one is likely to find. It also forces thought on what evidence would be necessary to accept the human rights approach as the most effective method for improving labor conditions.
Sheldon Friedman
If you don't understand why the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively is, and should be, a fundamental human right—which the United States fails miserably to protect—then please read this important book.
Julius Getman
Workers' rights are crucial to human rights. Where the former are not existent or are weak, the latter are inevitably in jeopardy. This fine and long overdue book reveals the shameful distance between pretense and reality in respect to worker rights in the United States.
Future Survey 25:10
Gross supplies background by explaining that the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act) established democratic procedures for participation of workers in determining their wages, hours, and working conditions. Although not using the term human rights, 'the Wagner Act was far ahead of its time in applying human rights principles to US workplaces.'.
Jon Bekken
The first book-length exploration I am aware of to take seriously the notion that workers have fundamental rights which might be protected under international law.... Several well-documented chapters outline relevant provisions in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the treaties and standards adapted by the International Labour Organization that guarantee workers' rights to form and join unions of their choice, and to engage in activity in defense of their economic and political interests. These rights are not restricted to officially certified or recognized unions—indeed, a strong case can be made that imposing such structures is itself a violation of international law. Rather, it is quite clear that the right to form unions was meant to be inalienable, covering minorities as well as majorities. And, indeed, in most of the world unions have the right to represent their members, even if those members make up but a small portion of the total workforce.
