Trade Unions as Human Rights Organizations

The mainstream human rights discourse has largely privileged individual rights over collective rights and civil and political rights over economic, social and cultural rights. Furthermore, much scholarship on collective social movements posits a shift in recent decades towards mobilization around identity politics and away from the economic or class-based focus of trade unions. In contrast, this policy and practice note argues against drawing a sharp analytical dichotomy between new identity-based and old class-based social movements. Moreover, it posits that there is value added by considering trade unions as human rights organizations (of a particular kind). Indeed, it is argued that in order to overcome some of the shortcomings of mainstream human rights discourse and practice it is both desirable and necessary to engage with the praxis of trade unions from a human rights perspective.