Cross-border temporary agency work:Social sustainability of a business model (too often) based on regulatory arbitrage

Presentation held at the European Regional Congress of the International Society for Labour and Social Security Law (ISLSSL) on Temporary Agency Work in the context of cross-border movement & service provision within the EU

Decent and sustainable work for the future?:The ILO future of work centenary initiative, the UN 2030 agenda for sustainable development, and the evolution of the meaning of work

The meaning of work for individuals and society is evolving and is increasingly linked to sustainability challenges on a global level. For paid work to be meaningful, it has to be ‘decent work’, which has become a central principle in international labor and human rights law. This concept of decent work is an important component of high-profile international initiatives that chart the pathways towards a sustainable future. This Article analyzes and clarifies the evolving meaning of decent work as one of the main objectives of the international labor and human rights discourses and illustrates the increasingly closer connection between decent work and global sustainability instruments and challenges. The United Nations (“UN”) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development incorporates decent work as a central theme of its social pillar. The recently adopted International Labour Organization (“ILO”) Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work further emphasizes the close relation between decent work and sustainability requirements. To get to a more comprehensive understanding of the evolving meaning of ‘decent and sustainable work’, this concept is examined from both a labor law perspective and a human rights law viewpoint. These overlapping but not identical vantage points show that both societal and environmental elements supplement traditional individualized values of work as personal remuneration and fair working conditions. This way, decent work is re-conceptualized to assist in addressing the challenges of creating a socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable future. By tracing the development of decent work and related fundamental labor standards in international human rights law and by inquiring into the core values attached to work from a labor law perspective, we aim to contribute to a better understanding of the deep transition the meaning of work is undergoing, in particular concerning its increasingly closer relation to sustainability challenges. While the modern understanding of decent work for all is firmly embedded in the global sustainability framework, it is argued that in the dynamics of the contemporary globalized economy, it remains important to safeguard its goal of inclusiveness to guarantee a ‘human-centred approach’ in which no vulnerable groups fall outside its scope of protection

Stateless Indigenous People(s): The Right to a Nationality, Including Their Own

According to the 2007 UN Declaration on the Right of Indigenous Peoples, every indigenous individual has the right to a nationality. The present paper focuses on the right to a nationality as a ‘gateway’ to the recognition of a plurality of other rights. Doing so, two issues are given special attention: 1) the lack of adequate birth registration and the consequences of this ‘false start’ for other rights, such as, again, the right to a nationality. 2) The recognition of indigenous identity papers: while regularly Indigenous Peoples do not want to establish an independent sovereign State, many of them strive for the recognition of their own Indigenous identity papers. The paper discusses some of the advantages and consequences thereof

Acute phase inflammation is characterized by rapid changes in plasma/peritoneal fluid N-glycosylation in mice.

To access publisher's full text version of this article, please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links field or click on the hyperlink at the top of the page marked Files. This article is open access.Murine zymosan-induced peritonitis is a widely used model for studying the molecular and cellular events responsible for the initiation, persistence and/or resolution of inflammation. Among these events, it is becoming increasingly evident that changes in glycosylation of proteins, especially in the plasma and at the site of inflammation, play an important role in the inflammatory response. Using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS)-based glycosylation profiling, we investigated the qualitative and quantitative effect of zymosan-induced peritonitis on N-glycosylation in mouse plasma and peritoneal fluid. Our results show that both N-glycomes exhibit highly similar glycosylation patterns, consisting mainly of diantennary and triantennary complex type N-glycans with high levels (>95 %) of galactosylation and sialylation (mostly NeuGc) and a medium degree of core fucosylation (30 %). Moreover, MS/MS structural analysis, assisted by linkage-specific derivatization of sialic acids, revealed the presence of O-acetylated sialic acids as well as disialylated antennae ("branching sialylation") characterized by the presence of α2-6-linked NeuGc on the GlcNAc of the NeuGcα2-3-Galβ1-3-GlcNAc terminal motif. A significant decrease of (core) fucosylation together with an increase of both α2-3-linked NeuGc and "branching sialylation" were observed in N-glycomes of mice challenged with zymosan, but not in control mice injected with PBS. Importantly, substantial changes in glycosylation were already observed 12 h after induction of peritonitis, thereby demonstrating an unexpected velocity of the biological mechanisms involved.Dutch Arthritis Association (Reumafonds) LLP-24 Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking (IMI JU)/ 115142-2 Netherlands Genomic Initiative/93511033 info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/278535info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/27853