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Human rights are taking an increasingly important role in the workplace. This course investigates the trend. It looks at the implications and the potential of the analysis that frames the issues arising between employers and workers in terms of rights, as well as the challenges. The rights concerned might be constitutional rights or rights found in regional or international documents of human rights. The course is not limited to a particular jurisdiction but some of the central examples discussed are from the European human rights system and UK law. The course examines human rights at work in relation to some illustrative rights e.g. freedom of association, the prohibition of slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour, platform work and emerging technologies, freedom of expression, the right to work, the right to privacy and freedom of religion. The cases have been selected as illustrations of issues that arise in workplace disputes and how attempts to analyse them in terms of rights have been resolved (including, commonly, the rejection or suppression of a rights discourse). The course concludes by examining this approach to employment law from philosophical perspectives.

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Module Syllabus

TERM 1

Seminar 1 - Introduction: Solidarity v Human Rights?
Seminar 2 - The Right to Work and Social Rights/The Duty to Work
Seminar 3 – Freedom of Association – Blacklisting/Closed Shops
Seminar 4 - The Right to Industrial Democracy
Seminar 5 – The Right to Strike
Seminar 6 – The Prohibition of Slavery, Servitude, Forced and Compulsory Labour Ι - Migrant Workers
Seminar 7 – The Prohibition of Slavery, Servitude, Forced and Compulsory Labour ΙΙ – Work in Prison and Immigration Detention
Seminar 8 – The Right to Private Life at Work
Seminar 9 - The Right to Private Life Outside the Workplace
Seminar 10 – The Right to Freedom of Expression I

TERM 2

Seminar 11 – The Right to Freedom of Expression II
Seminar 12 – Non-Standard Work and Human Rights
Seminar 13 – AI at Work and Human Rights
Seminar 14 – The Platform Economy and Human Rights at Work
Seminar 15 – The Right to Fair and Just Working Conditions
Seminar 16 - The Right to Equality
Seminar 17 – The Right to Freedom of Religion
Seminar 18 – The Right to Fair Pay
Seminar 19 – The Right to Be Protected from Unjust Dismissal
Seminar 20 - Theories of Rights in the Workplace

Recommended Materials

Module reading lists and other module materials will be provided via online module pages, available at the beginning of term once students have enrolled.

However, we will draw upon (and you may like to obtain a copy of and read some of in advance) Alan Bogg, Hugh Collins, ACL Davies, Virginia Mantouvalou, , Hart 2024.

Preliminary Reading

• Jay Youngdahl, ‘Solidarity First: Labor Rights are Not the Same as Human Rights’, New Labor Forum (18(1) 31-37 (Winter 2009)

• Lance Compa, ‘Solidarity And Human Rights: A Response to Youngdahl’, New Labor Forum (18(1) 38-45 (Winter 2009)

Both of the above articles are available at: 

• V Mantouvalou (ed), The Right to Work – Legal and Philosophical Perspectives, (Hart Publishing, 2014)

• V Mantouvalou, ‘Are Labour Rights Human Rights?’, (2012) 3 European Labour Law Journal, available at

Key information