Labor laws; human, economic ends

Labor laws, like human resource management, have human and economic ends. They must support, if not propel, productive performance of the enterprise while protecting, if not providing, human dignity and human necessities.

In relation to capital, labor laws must respect the logic, the fairness and the need for realizing reasonable return on investment. In relation to labor, labor laws must safeguard the logic, the fairness and the need for rewarding one’s contribution to the harvests of the investment.

Indeed, labor laws should support two masters.

Laws, especially labor laws, are passed to address social inequities, to minimize social frictions, to uplift the common man. They are needed not to equalize poverty but to distribute wealth. A law that does not help improve social conditions is either an irrelevancy, an artifice, or a burden. It may even be a cause of the people’s poverty. (C. A. Azucena, Jr.. 2013. Labor Standards)