Labour rights and the impact of human dignity, religious belief and perception of society

Contains fulltext : 161716.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)The present study was part of a large research project on human rights. This paper focuses on attitudes towards labour rights of German adolescents (N = 2244) The labour rights under investigation are the right to work for everyone, the right to equal pay for equal work, the right to working hour limitations, the right to paid holidays, and the right to support for the unemployed. Although human rights in general are considered as universal, egalitarian and indivisible, attitudes towards these rights can be positive, negative or ambivalent, and may depend on the context. The aim of this study is to investigate adolescents’ attitudes towards labour rights, and to examine whether and which contextual factors are related to their attitudes towards labour rights. The contextual factors under examination were: human dignity, religious beliefs, the socio-political perception of society, and socio-demographic characteristics. The findings show that labour rights are very positively valued, except support for the unemployed. From all predictors the strongest is the understanding of human dignity as inherent to humans, followed by dignity through moral behaviour.33 p