Workers’ Rights as Human Rights?
Workers’ Rights as Human Rights?
Solidarity Campaigns and the Anti-Sweatshop Movement
This chapter examines the public debate surrounding sweatshops within a “human rights” frame. Using existing ethnographies and archival data from ten anti-sweatshop campaigns that center on Central America's apparel industry, the chapter analyzes the consequences that have flowed from the convergence of human rights and workers' movements. It first outlines the main distinctions between human rights and workers' rights movements before considering the tensions that have emerged among the forms of leadership, strategies, and goals embraced by human rights and labor movement activists, and how such tensions have been addressed by solidarity movements. It then explores the consequences that arise when human rights orientations are infused into anti-sweatshop movements. It suggests that solidarity campaigns foster worker empowerment on the shop floor.
Keywords: sweatshops, human rights, Central America, apparel industry, human rights movements, workers' movements, solidarity movements, anti-sweatshop movements, solidarity campaigns
NYU Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
