Human Rights and Responsibilities at the Workplace

This is the transcription of a speech delivered on March 19, 1991 at the Seventh Annual Nathanial Nathanson Memorial Lecture at the University of San Diego School of Law. The speech encompasses four major areas of human rights and responsibilities in the workplace. Mr. Wirtz discusses alternative methods of dispute resolution, the role of labor unions, the international effects of labor standards, and the implications of the extraordinary changes that were taking place at that time in the American workforce and in the nature of work. The author suggests prospects that are relevant to the role of law and legal architects in perfecting the employment relationship. He concludes with hope that the law of human rights and the recognition of responsibility at the workplace will grow at least as much in the period ahead as it has within the last sixty years

Foreword

The papers in this issue of the San Diego Law Review could be taken as reflecting widespread disarray at the current stage of the always evolving, now rapidly expanding, law of the employment relationship. Dealing with a variety of subject matter areas, the commentators\u27 reactions to what they find range from exasperation to bewilderment to more restrained but nonetheless sharp criticism. If this is partly the custom of legal periodical literature, the general impression is left of more than ordinary confusion, uncertainty, and frustration of purpose in this body of law taken as a whole

Address by Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz

The address was delivered by Mr. Wirtz at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools held in Los Angeles on December 29, 1963. Because they were addressed to the particular group assembled and depended for their meaning upon circumstances existing at the time, certain introductory comments have been deleted