This paper aims at enabling a theoretical-conceptual discussion about the concepts of decent labor and worthy labor, from the conceptual contraposition between citizenship and human rights. Its argument is that decent labor would refer to the basic idea of citizenship and to an operational concept, clearly pointed out in the order of the day of the International Labor Organization (ILO), whereas worthy labor would refer to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), depending on a network of rights. In order to transpose this dichotomy, we propose a complete overview of human beings at work, based on the concept of recognition and the holistic approach of human rights, which form the basic idea of decent labor.
decent labor; worthy labor; human rights; holistic vision of rights; recognition