Work and rights

• Author: Amartya SEN
• Date: 01 June 2000
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2000.tb00406.x
• Published date: 01 June 2000

Work and rights 119

Copyright © International Labour Organization 2000

International Labour Review, Vol. 1 39 (200 0), No. 2

Work and rights

Amartya SEN*

This is a crucial moment in the history of working people across the world.

The first fl ush of globalization is nearing its completion, and we can

begin to take a scrutinized and integrated view of the challenges it poses as well

as the opportunities it offers. Th e process of economic globalization is seen as

a terrorizing prospect by many precariously placed in dividuals 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-d eliberated action in support of social and political as well as econ-

omic changes that can tr ansform 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 f irst 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 int o the

contemporary i ntellectual discourse o n economic arrangem ents, social valu es

and political realities? I should like to identify four specific features of the

approach which m ay be especially important to examine. I shall have t he op-

portunity of scrutinizing o nly two of th ese issues in any detail, but I shall

briefly comment on the other two distinctive features.

* Master, Trinity College, Cambridge, and Lamont University Professor E meritus, Harvard

University. This article is based on his address to the 87th Session of the International Labour

Conference, Geneva, 15 June 1999.