The minimum age is 14. What shocks us here is not, as too many people would have us believe, supposedly unfair competition by low-wage countries, since low wages are usually accompanied by lower productivity, and anyway the manufacturing cost of a shoe is just a fraction of the total value added. This is not just us decrying social dumping in other countries to justify protectionism in our own. No, what really offends us is that workers in these countries are unable to organise to negotiate better pay and working conditions, and so obtain a fairer share of the gains of opening up markets, which is a prerequisite for further economic development. To this extent, basic labour rights are a material and crucial manifestation of human rights in the developing countries.
Globalisation highlights different collective choices in the matter of human rights.
It forces us to distinguish between that which is absolute and universal in these rights and that which requires differing practical responses at local level, in short to apply the principle of subsidiarity to human rights. Child labour is a good example of what I mean. We naturally consider it abusive to send children out to work at the age of 14, though the ILO Convention allows it. Quite apart from the question of adjustment to local circumstances, many countries are seriously divided on the legitimacy of human rights. Before getting on to the subject currently uppermost in my own thoughts, Seattle, I would like to look at some of the wider issues bound up in the political debate on human rights and economics.