Prof Mantouvalou gives oral evidence to Joint Committee on Human Rights on ‘Human Rights at Work'

Image: Kate Roberts, Virginia Mantouvalou and Alex Millbrook 

Professor Virginia Mantouvalou, Professor of Human Rights and Labour Law in the Faculty of Laws, gave oral evidence to the Joint Committee of Human Rights on 13 September for their Inquiry on ‘Human Rights at Work’.

Professor Mantouvalou’s session focused on labour exploitation and the resulting human rights violations. A key point examined in the session was the idea that there are both extreme forms of exploitation and more widespread standard and routine forms of exploitation in the UK labour market. Professor Mantouvalou and her co-panelists, Alex Millbrook of Kalayaan and Kate Roberts of FLEX, discussed extensively restrictive visa rules affecting various categories of workers, such as migrant domestic workers and workers in agriculture. Drawing on her recent book, she also emphasised that other labour law rules promoting flexibility at work, such as rules on agency work and zero-hour contracts, often end up creating a precarious, vulnerable and exploitable workforce. The panelists also made proposals for reform.

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Virginia Mantouvalou, ‘Welfare to Work, Structural Injustice and Human Rights’, (2020) 83 Modern Law Review 929