"Labour is not a commodity" is the principle expressed in the preamble to the
International Labour Organization's founding documents. It expresses the view that people should not be treated like inanimate
commodities
In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them.
The price of a comm ...
,
capital
Capital may refer to:
Common uses
* Capital city, a municipality of primary status
** List of national capital cities
* Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences
* Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...
, another mere
factor of production, or
resources. Instead, people who work for a living should be treated as
human being
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedality, bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex Human brain, brain. This has enabled the development of ad ...
s and accorded
dignity and respect. Paul O'Higgins attributes the phrase to
John Kells Ingram, who used it in 1880 during a meeting in
Dublin of the British
Trades Union Congress.
[O'Higgins, P.]
'Labour is not a Commodity' — an Irish Contribution to International Labour Law'
(1997) 26(3) Industrial Law Journal 225-234
Law
*
Clayton Act 1914
The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 (, codified at , ), is a part of United States antitrust law with the goal of adding further substance to the U.S. antitrust law regime; the Clayton Act seeks to prevent anticompetitive practices in their incipie ...
, which gave trade unions in the
United States the freedom from paying penalties from courts for organising and taking
collective action
Collective action refers to action taken together by a group of people whose goal is to enhance their condition and achieve a common objective. It is a term that has formulations and theories in many areas of the social sciences including psych ...
*
Versailles Treaty, establishing the International Labour Organization, Article 427
*
Declaration of Philadelphia 1944, reestablishing the ILO under the
United Nations and reaffirming the first principle that labour is not a commodity
See also
*
Commodification of labour
*
Fictitious commodities The concept of fictitious commodities (or false commodities) originated in Karl Polanyi
Karl Paul Polanyi (; hu, Polányi Károly ; 25 October 1886 – 23 April 1964),''Encyclopædia Britannica'' (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. 2003) v ...
*
Labor theory of value
*
Criticism of capitalism
References
External links
* International Labour Organization
Declaration of Philadelphia(1944)
Human resource management
Labour movement
Labour law
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