Aligning Rights and Interests: Why, When and How to Uphold Labor Standards

Abstract

A job can mean little more than the wages that cover food and shelter, but it can also be a means to a better life for the worker or her children. The returns from labor can be purely individual, or they can have positive consequences for a larger community. Jobs that combine individual and aggregate benefits are more likely to be transformational, raising living standards of those who work and stimulating economic development throughout the whole polity. Economic growth and progress generally requires the abolition of jobs that are detrimental to health and safety and that violate generally held and internationally acknowledged norms of decency. The principal aim of paper is to identify the factors that align actors’ incentives with the collective good.

Citation

Levi, M.; Adolph, C.; Berliner, D.; Erlich, A.; Greenleaf, A.; Lake, M.; Noveck, J. Aligning Rights and Interests: Why, When and How to Uphold Labor Standards. The World Bank, Washington DC, USA (2012) 38 pp.

Aligning Rights and Interests: Why, When and How to Uphold Labor Standards

Published 1 January 2012