Are Rights Optional

Article 23 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights section (1) states that we all have “the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.”


My first thought about this is that a “right” to work might be the first right I might be prepared to give up assuming of course that my “right” to my pay packet remained intact but assuming that isn’t about to happen any time soon I was wondering about the validity of this idea.

Isn’t work more of an obligation than a right or at an even lower level isn’t it necessary for survival. I mean in a world without social security type support if you didn’t work you would starve and die. The UN declaration doesn’t feel the need to spell out the “right to breath” or “right to eat” and potentially work is in the same category.

If we cast back to pre history if you didn’t get off your butt and find something to eat i.e. do some work, then you would soon reap the consequences. So along comes a barter type system where we trade based on skills but again if you didn’t have anything to trade the consequences would be dire. So moving along to our current set up and momentarily ignoring the social contracts we have now to look after the weaker members of society then surely the same imperative of “work or die” remains.

So you probably think that this is just semantics, who cares if we call it a right or just something we all have to do. Well with rights come obligations. For example if you have a right to free speech then I am obliged to allow you to speak without interference. If you don’t have this right then I am presumably justified in taking steps to shut you up if you say something I don’t want to hear.

This is the bit the intrigues me about work, if I have a right to work who carries the obligation to provide the work for me to do? And if you don’t give me some work are you not infringing on my rights? Clearly we have unemployed people in this country (I hear about them regularly on the news although I don’t know any personally) Assuming that at least some of them wish to exercise their “right to work” does that mean we are paying them hush money (in the form of the dole) to stop them suing for society breaching their rights.

Can we extend this idea, can I apply to the government for “Quiet Money” where I agree not to exercise my right to free speech and not to say inflammatory things in public in return for some cash. There are 30 UN “rights” there could be a number of them I could cash in. Article 23 again section 4 has a “right to join a trade union” and although I have serious doubts about this even being in this document (how come my right to join a golf club or a chess club is not mentioned) given that it is I am very happy to trade this off for some cash given that I have no intention of joining one.

The idea of work as a right has brought with it a whole range of obligations which have been placed on employers but given this is a voluntary role (I presume you can’t compel people to be employers although the UN declaration is silent on this point so maybe you can) (I just realised I am often compelled to be an employer via the taxes I pay but that is a whole new topic.) is this a rational approach.

As a final thought the next time some right wing politician (it tends to be them) suggests a “work for the dole” scheme just remember they are merely trying to meet our obligations as a signatory to the UN declaration and protect unemployed peoples right to work.