Corporate social responsibility instruments and their impact on labour rights

Abstract

The aim of this article was to assess to what extent self-regulation within the CSR framework contributes to improving workers’ rights worldwide. Transnational company agreements, corporate codes of conduct, NGOs’ social accountability standards, ISO standards, the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the Global Reporting Initiative were critically analysed us- ing logical-linguistic, historical and comparative legal methods. The research showed some evidence of a limited impact of CSR instruments on labour rights and proved that CSR tools can be perceived only as additional value to law.

Keywords

• labour rights
• corporate social responsibility
• private standard-setting