Unacceptable forms of work: A multidimensional model

• Date: 01 June 2017
• Author: Deirdre McCANN,Judy FUDGE
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ilr.12002
• Published date: 01 June 2017

International Labour Review, Vol. 156 (2017), No. 2

Copyright © The authors 2017

Journal compilation © International Labour Organization 2017

Unacceptable forms of work:

A multidimensional model

Deirdre McCANN* and Judy FUDGE**

Abstract. Unacceptable forms of work (UFW) have been identied as an “area

of critical importance” for the ILO as it approaches its centenary. Yet there is cur-

rently no comprehensive elaboration of the dimensions, causes or manifestations

of UFW. This article reports on a research project that has proposed such a frame-

work. The article rst investigates and reconceptualizes key discourses on contem-

porary work to identify their contribution to an analytically rigorous conception

of UFW. It then outlines a novel Multidimensional Model that has been designed

for use by local policy actors in identifying and targeting UFW in countries across

a range of income levels.

Unacceptable forms of work (UFW) have been identied by the ILO as

work in “conditions that deny fundamental principles and rights at

work, put at risk the lives, health, freedom, human dignity and security of

workers or keep households in conditions of extreme poverty” (ILO, 2013a,

para. 49). In his 2013 report to the International Labour Conference, the ILO

Director-General included UFW among the Areas of Critical Importance

for the Organization (ILO, 2013b). In 1998, the Declaration on Fundamental

Rights and Principles at Work identied a set of universal demands – on

collective rights, equality, forced labour and child labour – that must be respect-

ed in all working relations. A decade later, the Declaration on Social Justice

for a Fair Globalization1 stressed the indivisibility of the ILO’s objectives and

conrmed a sustained commitment to the Organization’s long-standing con-

cerns of decent wages, feasible working hours and a healthy and safe work-

ing environment. As the ILO approaches its centenary, the Organization is

* Durham Law School, email: deirdre.mccann@durham.ac.uk. ** Kent Law School,

email: J.A.Fudge@kent.ac.uk. The authors are grateful to Manuela Tomei, Laura Addati, Anita

Amorim, Beate Andrees, Simonetta Cavazza, Richard Cholewinski, Colin Fenwick, Horacio Guido,

Susan Hayter, Christian Hess, Richard Howard, Coen Kompier, Christiane Kuptsch, Thetis Manga-

has, Shengli Niu, Martin Oelz, Mustafa Hakki Ozel, Natalia Popova and two anonymous ILR review-

ers for their comments on earlier drafts, and to Susie Choi for her invaluable research assistance.

Responsibility for opinions expressed in signed articles rests solely with their authors, and

publication does not constitute an endorsement by the ILO.

1 Adopted at the 97th Session of the International Labour Conference on 10 June 2008.

International Labour Review148

compelled to face a complex, yet inescapable, challenge: to secure the object-

ives of the twin Declarations it must identify and eliminate UFW.

Yet the ILO has recognized that there has been no comprehensive elab-

oration of the key dimensions of UFW. Nor are the causes of such forms of

work or how they manifest themselves in different economic or regulatory

contexts fully understood (ILO, 2014a, p. 19). To bridge these knowledge gaps,

the Organization called for “a more rened understanding concerning the

dimensions and descriptors of [UFW] to guide practical action by the ILO and

its constituency” (ILO, 2015, p. XIV).

Against this background, this article reports the ndings of a research

project that has responded by proposing a new framework for understand-

ing and addressing UFW (see also Fudge and McCann, 2015). It contends

that attempts to identify UFW – and to eliminate them – must recognize the

complexity of improving contemporary working life in the early twenty-rst

century. It has become apparent that there are groups of working people in

countries around the world that are profoundly adrift from decent work. Their

working lives are singled out in national and international debates through a

range of terminology, such as precarious work, informality, forced labour, etc.

The diverse nomenclature betrays a degree of confusion about how to iden-

tify, to categorize, and to improve these working relations. Each of the relevant

debates, however, conveys a set of guiding insights: that certain workers are

labouring in unacceptable conditions; that these working relationships are ex-

panding in many countries, in both the Global South and in the advanced in-

dustrialized economies; that UFW are centered on groups that are already at

risk of social and economic disadvantage – e.g. women, the young, ethnic mi-

norities and migrant workers; and that policies aimed at effectively improving

these working relations are both urgently needed and a potential entry point

for broader social and economic upgrading.

This article proposes a new model to identify and address UFW. It does not

suggest a universal framework, applicable across all socio-economic contexts; in-

stead, it recognizes that UFW will vary from country to country. This conception

of UFW also integrates a continuum that stretches from UFW to decent work, in

which some forms of work are clearly unacceptable, such as forced labour, while

others harbour elements of unacceptability that should be eliminated, and yet

others constitute decent work or good jobs. The article begins by selecting a set

of discourses that pertain to contemporary work, which are used as a source of

insight for identifying what makes different forms of work unacceptable, namely:

Decent Work, Good Jobs, Precarious Work, Vulnerability, Informal Work and

Forced Labour. It then reviews these six key discourses, focusing on what each

can offer for constructing an analytically rigorous and policy-oriented concep-

tion of UFW. The second section is devoted to outlining a novel Multidimen-

sional Model of UFW, which is designed to capture the complexity of modern

working life and to be used as a diagnostic tool by local actors (governments,

social partners, civil society organizations) to identify and target UFW across a

range of economies at different levels of development.

Unacceptable forms of work: A multidimensional model 149

Unacceptability in contemporary discourses

of working life

The contention of this article is that to realize the potential of the UFW con-

cept fully it is essential to engage with the academic and policy discourses that

pursue similar objectives. A range of policy and academic traditions – drawing

on diverse concepts and methodologies – is investigating how to identify and

eliminate forms of work that are unacceptable. This article revisits these litera-

tures to argue that the existing models, while insufcient on their own, are cru-

cial to developing a robust concept of UFW. Three criteria were used to select

the discourses evaluated: relevance to identifying unacceptable work; take-up by

policy-makers or key policy institutions; and currency within the relevant (legal,

regulatory or sociological) academic literature. Two of these discourses – Decent

Work and Good Jobs – reect the international debate about core development

issues, namely, the creation of employment and the quality of work. As such, they

provide an overarching imagery of a working life that is the antithesis of un-

acceptable work. The others – Precarious Work, Vulnerability, Informal Work and

Forced Labour – centre on specic and interrelated manifestations of unaccept-

able work that are of concern to policy-makers or ripe for regulatory intervention.

Decent Work

Decent Work has become the guiding contemporary image of an accept-

able or desirable working life. Elaborated as a commitment to “promote

opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work,

in conditions of freedom, equality, security and human dignity” (ILO, 1999,

p. 3), the concept is situated at the convergence of four principles – also sin-

gled out as the “strategic objectives” of the ILO – the promotion of rights

at work, employment, social protection, and social dialogue (ibid.; see also

more recently ILO, 2013c). After the ILO rst articulated it at the turn of

the century, Decent Work developed into a prominent theme of the broader

global labour, social and development policy agendas, culminating in 2007 in

an endorsement by the United Nations General Assembly in the revision of

the Millennium Development Goals (see McNaughton and Frey, 2010).2 The

ILO’s conception of Decent Work can be taken to denote the antithesis of

unacceptable work. As such, it illuminates the project of mapping the forms

and locations of unacceptability.

3

In this regard, the notion of unacceptability

2 See United Nations Statistics Division: Ofcial List of MDG Indicators, available at http://

mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/. Sustainable Development Goal 8 aims to “[p]romote inclusive and sustain-

able economic growth, employment and decent work for all”. See www.un.org/sustainabledevelop

ment/economic-growth [accessed 29 May 2017].

3 Webster, Budlender and Orkin (2015) developed a questionnaire based on nine of the in-

dicators identied by the ILO’s 2008 Tripartite Meeting of Experts on the Measurement of Decent

Work. Their diagnostic tool focused on individual workers at industry level rather than conditions

at country level in order to monitor progress towards decent work while enabling key actors at in-

dustry level to develop evidence-led strategies to overcome decent work decits. Their notion of de-

cent work decits has much in common with the notion of unacceptablity developed in this article.