CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Against the background of the excessive exploitation of workers, laws for the social protection of employees were developed in the second half of the 19 th century. Essentially, they are meant to ensure that people work in dignity and are not unduly exploited in the course of work. International control bodies were established to ensure compliance with the new laws. The International Labour Organisation(ILO) with its unique tripartite composition stands out of all these bodies. It is the only United Nations body that brings together, on a permanent and on-going basis, representatives of workers, employers and government to discuss and reach agreements on issues of common concern. National and international instruments have been devised to give effect to this concern and are codified in national laws and international labour conventions and recommendations of the ILO which confer certain rights on workers as workers while constitutional provisions also confer on them certain rights as citizens. The rights are to ensure safe, healthy and fair conditions at work. But many employers violate these basic rights because they value their profits more than their workers. Since the ascendancy of neo-liberalism as the framework of economic policy formulation in the mid 1980s, international labour standards and the attendant rights conferred on workers have become the focus of intense debate among policy makers, international agencies, non-governmental organisations, the academia and the general public as well as within the trade union movement. Therefore, it has become a topical issue. This is partly on account of the fact that developments within the global economy have threatened some of the labour standards and rights enjoyed by workers. This is particularly so for developing countries where“national labour standards have often been identified by the World Bank as rigidities impeding the effectiveness of market-oriented reforms”(Plant, 1994). National governments who are desperately looking for foreign direct investments(FDI) would appear to have readily succumbed to pressures from international investors who usually insist on relaxing(lowering) labour standards and workers' rights. One interesting, if not intriguing, fact is that most of the investors/companies who seek a lowering of 1