Full text of DOI:10.1111/j.1564-913X.2000.tb00406.x

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Work and rights
Amartya SEN*
his is a crucial moment in the history of working people across the world.
The first flush of globalization is nearing its completion, and we can
T
begin to take a scrutinized and integrated view of the challenges it poses as well
as the opportunities it offers. The process of economic globalization is seen as
a terrorizing prospect by many precariously placed individuals and communi-
ties, and yet it can be made efficacious and rewarding if we take an adequately
broad approach to the conditions that govern our lives and work. There is need
for well-deliberated action in support of social and political as well as econ-
omic changes that can transform a dreaded anticipation into a constructive
reality.
This is also a historic moment for the ILO as custodian of workers’ rights
within the United Nations system. Its new Director-General — the first from
outside the industrialized world — has chosen to lead the organization in a
concerted effort to achieve decent work for all women and men who seek it
across the globe (see ILO, 1999). My own close association with the ILO goes
back much more than a quarter of a century. In the seventies, I had the privilege
of advising the ILO, and doing some work for it (see, e.g., Sen, 1975, 1981).
But my first working association with the ILO was in 1963, when I was des-
patched to Cairo. Already in the 1970s I was trying to persuade the ILO to take
a broad approach to the idea of working rights — though admittedly what I did
then was rather crude and rough. I was trying to invoke ideas not only of rights
but also of metarights. So I do particularly welcome this new initiative of the
ILO to achieve decent work.
What, then, is the nature of this start, and where does all this fit into the
contemporary intellectual discourse on economic arrangements, social values
and political realities? I should like to identify four specific features of the
approach which may be especially important to examine. I shall have the op-
portunity of scrutinizing only two of these issues in any detail, but I shall
briefly comment on the other two distinctive features.
* Master, Trinity College, Cambridge, and Lamont University Professor Emeritus, Harvard
University. This article is based on his address to the 87th Session of the International Labour
Conference, Geneva, 15 June 1999.
Copyright © International Labour Organization 2000

120
International Labour Review
Objectives and goals
The first important feature in the new ILO vision is the articulation of its
goal: the promotion of “opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and
productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dig-
nity” (ILO, 1999, p. 3). The reach of this objective is indeed momentously
large: it includes all workers, wherever and in whatever sector they work; not
just workers in the organized sector, nor only wage workers, but also unregu-
lated wage workers, the self-employed, and the homeworkers. The ILO aims to
respond to the terrible fact that “the world is full of overworked and unem-
ployed people” (ILO, 1999, pp. 3, 4).
This universality of coverage, pervasiveness of concern and comprehen-
sive conception of goals is a well-chosen alternative to acting only in the inter-
est of some groups of workers, such as those in the organized sector, or those
already in employment, or those already covered by explicit rules and regula-
tions. Of course universality implies facing many difficult questions which
need not arise if the domain of concern is restricted to narrower groups, such as
workers in the organized sector (leaving out the unorganized sector), or even
all wage workers (leaving out homeworkers), or even all people actively in
work (leaving out the unemployed).
The case for choosing such a broad focus rests on the importance of a
comprehensive approach. There are different parts of the working population
whose fortunes do not always move together, and in furthering the interests and
demands of one group, it is easy to neglect the interests and demands of others.
Indeed, it has often been alleged that labour organizations sometimes confine
their advocacy to very narrow groups, such as unionized workers, and that
narrowness of the outlook can feed the neglect of legitimate concerns of other
groups and also of the costs imposed on them (unorganized labourers, or fam-
ily-based workers, or the long-term unemployed, for example). Similarly (on
the other side), by focusing specifically on the interests of workers in the infor-
mal sector, it is also possible to neglect the hard-earned gains of people in
organized industry, through an attempt — often recommended (if only implic-
itly) — to level them down to the predicament of unorganized and unprotected
workers.
Working people fall into distinct groups with their own specific concerns
and plights, and it behoves the ILO to pay attention simultaneously to the
diverse concerns that are involved. Given the massive levels of unemployment
that exist in many countries of the world today — indeed even in the rich
economies of western Europe — it is right that policy attention be focused on
expanding jobs and work opportunities. And yet the conditions of work are
important too. It is a question of placing the diverse concerns within a compre-
hensive assessment, so that the curing of unemployment is not treated as a
reason for doing away with reasonable conditions of work of those already
employed, nor is the protection of the already-employed workers used as an
excuse to keep the jobless in a state of social exclusion from the labour market
and employment. The need for trade-offs is often exaggerated and is typically

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based on very rudimentary reasoning. Further, even when trade-offs have to be
faced, they can be more reasonably — and more justly — addressed by taking
an inclusive approach, which balances competing concerns, than by simply
giving full priority to just one group over another.
The aged and the unemployed
The need for a broad and inclusive approach can be well illustrated by
referring to another issue — that of ageing and the dependency ratio — which
is often juxtaposed, in an unexamined way, to the problem of unemployment
and availability of work. There are two principles in some tension with each
other that are frequently invoked simultaneously in dealing with these different
issues in an intellectually autarchic way.
Addressing the growing proportion of the aged population, it is often
lamented that since old people cannot work, they have to be supported by those
who are young enough to work. This leads inescapably to a sharp increase in
the so-called dependency ratio. As it happens, this fact itself demands more
scrutiny. There is, in fact, considerable evidence that the increase in longevity
that has resulted from medical achievements has also elongated the disability-
free length of working lives over which a person can work (see, for example,
Manton, Corder and Stallard, 1997). The possibility of elongating working
lives is further reinforced by the nature of technical progress that makes less
demand on physical strength.
This being the case, it is natural to suggest that one way of reducing the
burden of dependency related to ageing is to raise the retirement age — or at
least give people in good health the option to go on working. In resisting this
proposal, it is frequently argued that if this were done, then the aged will
replace the younger workers and there will be more unemployment among the
young. But this argument is in real tension with the previous claim that the root
of the problem lies in the fact that old people cannot work, and the young who
can work have to support the old.
If health and working ability ultimately determine how much work can
potentially be done (and certainly social and economic arrangements can be
geared to make sure that to a great extent the potential is realized), then surely
the trade-off with youthful unemployment is a real non sequitur. The absolute
size of the working population does not, in itself, cause more unemployment;
for example, it is not the case that countries with a larger working population
typically have a larger proportion of unemployment (consider the United States
compared to France or Italy or Spain or Belgium). There are many big issues to
be faced in scrutinizing proposals for revising the retirement age, but linking
unemployment to the absolute size of the working population does not enrich
this discussion. Indeed, we see here a messy argument based on combining two
mutually contrary gut reactions: (i) the gut reaction that the source of the prob-
lem related to an ageing population is that the old cannot work and the young
must support them; and (ii) the gut reaction that the young must lose jobs if
the older people do work. The combination of these unscrutinized feelings is

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to produce a hopeless impasse which rides just on unexamined possibilities,
based on a simple presumption of conflict that may or may not actually exist.
The practice of being driven by imagined conflicts and being led by par-
tisan solutions is as counterproductive in dealing with issues of ageing and
employment as it is in addressing the problem of working conditions on one
hand and the need for employment on the other. Conflicts cannot be made to go
away by simply ignoring them on behalf of one group or another. Nor need
conflicts invariably arise merely because some elementary textbook reasoning
suggests that they might conceivably exist, under certain hypothesized condi-
tions. There is a need for facing empirical possibilities with open-mindedness.
There is also a need for openly addressing ethical issues involving conflict,
when it does arise, through balancing the interests of groups with contrary
interests, rather than giving total priority to the interests of one group against
another.
Child labour and its prevention
Similar questions arise in dealing with the difficult problem of child
labour. It is often claimed that the abolition of child labour will harm the
interests of the children themselves since they may end up starving because of
a lack of family income and also because of increased neglect. It is certainly
right that the fact of family poverty must be considered in dealing with this
issue. But it is not at all clear why it must be presumed that the abolition of
child labour will lead only to a reduction of family income and further neglect
of children, without any other economic or social or educational adjustment. In
fact, that would be a particularly unlikely scenario for “the worst forms of
child labour” (slavery, bondage, prostitution, trafficking) which are the focus
of the recently adopted Convention concerning the prohibition and immediate
action for the elimination of the worst forms of child labour (Convention
No. 182 (1999)).
The case for a broader and more inclusive economic analysis and ethical
examination is very strong in all these cases. One mustnot fall prey to unexamined
prejudices or premature pessimism.
Rights of the working people
The second conceptual feature that needs to be stressed is the idea
of rights. Along with the formulation of overall objectives, the domain of prac-
tical reasoning extends beyond the aggregative objectives to the recognition of
rights of workers.
What makes this rights-based formulation particularly significant is that
the rights covered are not confined only to established labour legislation, nor
only to the task — important as it is — of establishing new legal rights through
fresh legislation. Rather, the evaluative framework begins with acknowledging
certain basic rights, whether or not they are legislated, as being a part of a

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decent society.1 The practical implications that emanate from this acknowl-
edgement can go beyond new legislation to other types of social, political and
economic actions.
The framework of rights-based thinking extends to ethical claims that
transcend legal recognition. This is strongly in line with what is becoming
increasingly the United Nations’ general approach to practical policy through
rights-based reasoning. The framework of rights-based thinking is thus ex-
tended from the pure domain of legality to the broader arena of social ethics.
These rights can thus be seen as being prior (rather than posterior) to legal
recognition. Indeed, social acknowledgement of these rights can be taken to be
an invitation to the State to catch up with social ethics. But the invitation is not
merely to produce fresh legislation — important as it is — since the realization
of rights can also be helped by other developments, such as creation of new
institutions, better working of existing ones and, last but not the least, by a
general societal commitment to work for appropriate functioning of social,
political and economic arrangements to facilitate widely recognized rights.2
There are really two contrasts here: one between legal rights and socially
accepted principles of justice, and another between rights-based reasoning and
goal-based formulations of social ethics. In scrutinizing the approach, we have
to ask how well rights-based reasoning integrates with goal-based program-
ming. These two basic precepts have sometimes been seen, especially by legal
theorists, as providing alternative ethical outlooks that are in some tension with
each other (see, for example, Dworkin, 1977). Are we to be guided, in case of
a conflict, by the primacy of our social goals, or by the priority of individual
rights? Can the two perspectives be simultaneously invoked without running
into an internal contradiction? I believe that the two approaches are not really
in tension with each other, provided they are appropriately formulated. How-
ever, the underlying methodological question has to be addressed, and I shall
briefly examine the reasons for thinking that there is no deep conflict here.3
Rights and goals
The question that has to be faced is this: why cannot the fulfilment of
rights be among the goals to be pursued? The presumption that there must be a
conflict here has indeed been asserted, but the question iswhy we should accept
this claim. There will quite possibly be a real impasse here if we want to make
the fulfilment of each right a matter of absolute adherence (with no room for
give and take and no possibility of acceptable trade-offs), as some libertarians
do. But most rights-based reasoning in political debates, for example on human
rights, need not — and indeed does not — take that form.
1 A key instrument that reflects this is the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and
Rights at Work. For the full text of that 1998 Declaration and for helpful discussion, see the
special issue of the International Labour Review on “Labour Rights, Human Rights” (Vol. 137
(1998), No. 2, pp. 253-257 and pp. 223-227 respectively).
2 This and related issues are discussed in Sen, 1999a.
3 I have discussed these issues in Sen, 1982a, 1985 and forthcoming.

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If the formulation is carefully done to allow trade-offs that have to be
faced, then it is indeed possible to value the realization of rights as well as the
fulfilment of other objectives and goals. The rights at work can be broadly
integrated within the same overall framework which also demands opportuni-
ties for women and men to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of
freedom, equity, security and human dignity. To pay attention to any of these
demands does not require us to ignore — or override — all other concerns. For
example, the rights of those at work can be considered along with — and not
instead of — the interests of the unemployed.
Rights and obligations
There is a different type of question that is sometimes raised, focusing on
the relation between rights and duties. Some have taken the view that rights can
be sensibly formulated only in combination with correlated duties. Those who
insist on that binary linkage tend to be very critical, in general, of any discus-
sion of rights (for example, invoking the rhetoric of “human rights”) without
specification of responsible agents and their duties to bring about the fulfilment
of these rights. Demands for human rights are then seen just as loose talk. And
similar scepticism is aimed at such statements as “all those who work have
rights at work”.
A basic concern that motivates some of this scepticism is: how can we be
sure that rights are, in fact, realizable unless they are matched by corresponding
duties? Indeed, some do not see any sense in a right unless it is balanced by
what Immanuel Kant called a “perfect obligation” — a specific duty of a par-
ticular agent for the actual realization of that right (Kant, 1788).
This presumption can be the basis of rejection of rights-based thinking in
many areas of practical reason. Indeed, aside from general scepticism that tends
to come from many lawyers, there are also distinguished philosophers who
have argued in favour of the binary linkage between rights and exact duties of
specified individuals or agencies (see, for example, O’Neill, 1996).
We can, however, ask: why this insistence? Why demand the absolute
necessity of a co-specified perfect obligation for a potential right to qualify as
a real right? Certainly, a perfect obligation would help a great deal towards the
realization of rights, but why cannot there be unrealized rights? We do not, in
any obvious sense, contradict ourselves by saying: “These people had all these
rights, but alas they were not realized, because they were not institutionally
grounded.” Something else has to be invoked to jump from pessimism about
the fulfilment of rights, all the way to the denial of the rights themselves.
This distinction may appear to be partly a matter of language, and it might
be thought that the rejection can be based on how the term “rights” functions in
common discourse. But in public debates and discussion the term “rights” is
used much more widely than would be permitted by the insistence on strict
binary relations. Perhaps the perceived problem arises from an implicit attempt
to see the use of rights in political or moral discourse through a close analogy
with rights in a legal system, with its demand for specification of correlated

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duties. In contrast, in normative discussions rights are often championed as
entitlements or powers or immunities which it would be good for people to
have. Human rights are seen as rights shared by all — irrespective of citizen-
ship — advantages that everyone should have. The claims are addressed gener-
ally (and as Kant might say, “imperfectly”) to anyone who can help, even
though no particular person or agency may be charged to bring about
singlehandedly the fulfilment of the rights involved. Even if it is not feasible
that everyone can have the fulfilment of their rights in this sense (if, for exam-
ple, it is not yet possible to eliminate undernourishment altogether), credit can
still be taken for the extent to which these alleged rights are fulfilled. The
recognition of such claims as rights may not only be an ethically important
statement, it can also help to focus attention on these matters, making their
fulfilment that much more likely — or quicker.
This is indeed the form in which many major champions of rights-based
thinking have tried to use the idea of rights, going back all the way to Tom
Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft.4 The invoking of the idea of rights is neither in
tension with a broadly goal-based ethical framework, nor ruled out by some
presumed necessity of perfect obligations allegedly needed to make sense of the
idea of rights. The broad approach can be defended not just in terms of good
commonsense appeal, but also in terms of capturing the variety of values and
concerns that tend to arise in public discussions and demands.
Social and political broadening
Another distinguishing feature of the approach is that it situates condi-
tions of work and employment within a broad economic, political and social
framework. It addresses, for example, not merely the requirements of labour
legislation and practice, but also the need for an open society and the promo-
tion of social dialogue. The lives of working people are, of course, directly
affected by the rules and conventions that govern their employment and work,
but they are also influenced, ultimately, by their freedoms as citizens with a
voice who can influence policies and even institutional choices.
In fact, it can be shown that “protection against vulnerability and contin-
gency” is, to a great extent, conditional on the working of democratic partici-
pation and the operation of political incentives. I have argued elsewhere that it
is a remarkable fact in the history of famines that famines do not occur in
democracies. Indeed, no substantial famine has ever occurred in a democratic
country — no matter how poor.5 This is because famines are, in fact, extremely
easy to prevent if the government tries to prevent them, and a government in a
multi-party democracy with elections and a free media has strong political
incentives to undertake famine prevention. This would indicate that political
4 Tom Paine’s Rights of man and Mary Wollstonecraft’s A vindication of the rights of
woman were both published in 1792.
5 I have discussed this in Sen, 1982b and 1984; and jointly with Jean Drèze in Drèze and
Sen, 1989.

International Labour Review
126
freedom in the form of democratic arrangements helps to safeguard economic
freedom (especially from extreme starvation) and the freedom to survive (against
famine mortality).
The security provided by democracy may not be sorely missed when a
country is lucky enough to be facing no serious calamity, when everything is
running along smoothly. But the danger of insecurity arising from changes in
economic or other circumstances (or from uncorrected mistakes of policy) can
lurk solidly behind what looks like a healthy state. This is an important connec-
tion to bear in mind in examining the political aspects of the recent “Asian
economic crisis”.
The problems of some of the east and south-east Asian economies bring
out, among other things, the penalty of undemocratic governance. This is so in
two striking respects, involving the neglect of two crucial instrumental freedoms,
viz. “protective security” (what we have been just discussing) and “transpar-
ency guarantee” (an issue that is closely linked with the provision of adequate
incentives to economic and political agents). Both relate directly or indirectly
to safeguarding decent work and to promoting decent lives.6
Taking the latter issue first, the development of the financial crisis in
some of these economies was closely linked with the lack of transparency in
business, in particular the lack of public participation in reviewing financial
and business arrangements. The absence of an effective democratic forum has
been consequential in this failing. The opportunity that would have been pro-
vided by democratic processes to challenge the hold of selected families or
groups — in several of these countries — could have made a big difference.
The discipline of financial reform that the International Monetary Fund
tried to impose on the economies in default was, to a great extent, necessitated
by the lack of openness and disclosure, and the involvement of unscrupulous
business linkages, that were characteristic in parts of these economies. The
point here is not to comment on whether the IMF’s management of the crises
was exactly right, or whether the insistence on immediate reforms could have
been sensibly postponed until financial confidence had returned in these econo-
mies. No matter how these adjustments would have been best done, the contri-
bution of the lack of transparency and freedom in predisposing these econo-
mies to economic crises cannot be easily doubted.
The pattern of risk and improper investments, especially by politically
influential families, could have been placed under much greater scrutiny if
democratic critics had demanded this in, say, Indonesia or South Korea. But of
course neither of these countries then had the democratic system that would
have encouraged such demands to come from outside the government. The
unchallenged power of the rulers was easily translated into an unquestioned
acceptance of the lack of accountability and openness, often reinforced by strong
family links between the government and the financial bosses. In the emer-
gence of the economic crises, the undemocratic nature of the governments played
an important part.
6 I have investigated these connections in Sen, 1999a.

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Second, once the financial crisis led to a general economic recession, the
protective power of democracy — not unlike that which prevents famines in
democratic countries — was badly missed. The newly dispossessed did not
have the hearing they needed. A fall of total gross national product of, say, even
10 per cent may not look like much, if it follows the experience of past econ-
omic growth of 5 or 10 per cent every year for some decades. And yet that
decline can ruin lives and create misery for millions if the burden of contrac-
tion is not shared together but allowed to be heaped on those — the unem-
ployed or those newly made economically redundant — who can least bear it.
The vulnerable in Indonesia may not have missed democracy acutely when
things went up and up, but that very lacuna kept their voice muffled and inef-
fective as the unequally shared crisis developed. The protective role of democ-
racy is strongly missed when it is most needed.
The comprehensive view of society that informs the approach adopted in
the ILO vision of decent work (ILO, 1999) provides a more promising under-
standing of the needs of institutions and policies in pursuit of the rights and
interests of working people. It is not adequate to concentrate only on labour
legislation since people do not live and work in a compartmentalized environ-
ment. The linkages between economic, political and social actions can be criti-
cal to the realization of rights and to the pursuit of the broad objectives of
decent work and adequate living for working people.
International versus global
I turn now to the fourth and final distinctive feature of the approach under
discussion. While an organization such as the ILO has to go beyond national
policies (without overlooking the instrumental importance of actions by gov-
ernments and societies within nations), there is a critical distinction between an
“international” approach and a “global” one. An international approach is ines-
capably parasitic on the relation between nations, since it works through the
intermediary of distinct countries and nations. In contrast, a truly global ap-
proach need not see human beings only as (or even primarily as) citizens of
particular countries, nor accept that the interactions between citizens of differ-
ent countries must be inevitably intermediated through the relations between
distinct nations. Many global institutions, including those central to our work-
ing lives, have to go well beyond the limits of “international” relations.7
The beginnings of a truly global approach can be readily detected in the
analysis underlying the new directions of the ILO. The increasingly globalized
world economy calls for a similarly globalized approach to basic ethics and
political and social procedures. The market economy itself is not merely an
international system; its global connections extend well beyond the relation
between nations. Capitalist ethics, with its strong as well as weak points, is a
quintessentially global culture, not just an international construct. In dealing
7 I have discussed the distinctions involved in Sen, 1999b.

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128
with conditions of working lives as well as the interests and rights of workers in
general, there is a similar necessity to go beyond the narrow limits of interna-
tional relations.
A global approach is, of course, a part of the heritage of labour move-
ments in world history. This rich heritage — often neglected in official discus-
sions — can indeed be fruitfully invoked in rising to the challenges of decent
work in the contemporary world. A universalist understanding of work and
working relations can be linked to a tradition of solidarity and commitment.
The need for invoking such a global approach has never been stronger than it is
now. The economically globalizing world, with all its opportunities as well as
problems, calls for a similarly globalized understanding of the priority of de-
cent work and of its manifold demands on economic, political and social ar-
rangements. To recognize this pervasive need is itself a hopeful beginning.
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