"Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights elaborates the right to work in the context of individual freedoms and economic, social and cultural development. The Covenant also elaborates the role of the State in realising this human right. Article 6 states:
"(1) The State Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right to work, which includes the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his living by work which he freely chooses or accepts, and will take appropriate steps to safeguard this right. (2) The steps to be taken by a State party to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right shall include technical and vocational guidance and training programmes, policies and techniques to achieve steady economic, social and cultural development and full and productive employment under conditions safeguarding fundamental political and economic freedoms to the individual."
"Every individual shall have the right to work under equitable and satisfactory conditions, and shall receive equal pay for equal work."
Soviet Union
The 1977 Soviet Constitution also emphasises conditions of work, or labor rights, and revered to economic, social and cultural development. Article 40 stated:
"Citizens of the USSR have the right to rest and leisure. This right is ensured by the establishment of a working week not exceeding 41 hours, for workers and other employees, a shorter working day in a number of trades and industries, and shorter hours for night work; by the provision of paid annual holidays, weekly days of rest, extension of the network of cultural, educational, and health-building institutions, and the development on a mass scale of sport, physical culture, and camping and tourism; by the provision of neighborhood recreational facilities, and of other opportunities for rational use of free time. The length of collective farmers' working and leisure time is established by their collective farms."[1]
Criticism
Paul Lafargue, in The Right to Be Lazy, wrote: "And to think that the sons of the heroes of the Terror have allowed themselves to be degraded by the religion of work, to the point of accepting, since 1848, as a revolutionary conquest, the law limiting factory labor to twelve hours. They proclaim as a revolutionary principle the Right to Work. Shame to the French proletariat! Only slaves would have been capable of such baseness."
Right-to-work law, US legislation which prohibit trade unions from making membership or payment of dues or fees a condition of employment enforced on a state by state basis
Article 28: Social order·Article 29.1: Social responsibility·Article 29.2: Limitations of human rights·Article 29.3: The supremacy of the purposes and principles of the United Nations Article 30: Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.