This article examines the relationship between human rights and labour law. It first explores the reasons for the resistance to examining labour rights as human rights. Second, it turns to European human rights developments in order to assess the case law of the European Court of Human Rights in this context. It presents an interpretive technique adopted by the Court, the integrated approach, which takes note of social and labour rights in the interpretation of civil and political rights. The article argues that the integrated approach to interpretation needs firm theoretical grounding, and the third part suggests that the prohibition of workers’ exploitation is an important underlying principle that should guide our understanding of labour rights as human rights. It develops a definition of workplace exploitation on the basis of theoretical literature, and suggests some of its implications for the adoption of the integrated approach to interpretation
