Labor Procedural Principles around the World

This book is a praiseworthy initiative that considers the current challenges of preserving and improving dispute resolution systems involving labor rights worldwide.

The progress in the development of the proper mechanisms and specialized institutions for resolving labor disputes was achieved through a long process of Labor Law and Labor Procedure autonomy. After consolidating a system of principles and rules that adequately regulated labor disputes, this model inspired other branches of law to adopt the same framework for solving disputes in relationships with asymmetrical bargaining power. The current system, which has been adopted by various legal branches, no longer poses a threat to the vulnerable parties in the dispute resolution process because these vulnerable parties are better protected through the use of an open dialogue. However, attacks against Labor Law and Labor Procedure have been generalized, not because those specialized branches have become unnecessary, but because they have demonstrated their capacity to transform unequal relationships.

In almost all spheres of life, the invasion of market supremacy challenges the basic standard imparted in the Declaration of Philadelphia, and incorporated in the International Labor Organization Constitution, that “labour is not a commodity.” The market sets the price of everything, aiming at reducing costs in order to increase profits. Companies are able to cut costs through normative flexibility, deregulation, and the dismantlement of the mechanisms and institutions responsible for resolving labor disputes. These costcutting measures result in precarious working conditions and violent work environments, associated with the growth of poverty and social and economic inequalities, while concentrating profits in the hands of a few companies.

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