Violence-free world of work as a site of rights-claiming praxis for decency

Abstract

Neoliberalism has re-formed work within a shifting spatio-temporal fix, retrenching labor’s gains while (re)positioning violence within the organization of work. Transcending mere interpersonal conflicts, this violence is structural, manifesting through adaptive strategies including symbolic mechanisms of domination such as meritocracy and self-regulation. Long neglected yet increasingly scrutinized, this phenomenon is the focus of this article as a critical domain for stimulating rights-claiming praxis. It conducts a theoretical discussion grounded in literature and policy analysis, with particular attention to the Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (C190) of the International Labour Organization (ILO), whose scope operationally tends to foreground direct forms of violence. The article traces how normative claims can be translated into transformative practice, framing the claim to a violence-free world of work not as a static prerequisite for decency, but as a disruptive pathway for contesting power asymmetries and advancing egalitarian practices within contemporary capitalism.

Keywords

violence in the neoliberal world of work claim to a violence-free world of work decent work C190 rights-claiming praxis

Introduction

Employment relations constitute an exchange between mutually (re)constructed gains and liabilities within the production of economic value. Far from straightforward, this exchange unfolds through diverse complexities within the labor process, arising from the prevailing political economy and ongoing societal relations. In recent decades, attention has shifted toward a renewed conceptual terrain (re)interpreting the transformation of labor under neoliberal capitalism. The term “world of work” has been recognized as the wider space for, inter alia, combating violence at work (International Labour Organization; ILO, 2016a: 33–34), reflecting a theoretical lens on neoliberal shifts in spaces and temporalities of work. Currently, the world of work is where the ILO’s Violence and Harassment Convention (C190), adopted in 2019 and in force since 2021, establishes a universal regulatory framework to prevent and eliminate work-related violence. Beyond C190’s scope, which is confined to the visible manifestations of violence, structurally embedded grounds of violence within this world under neoliberal hegemony prevail.

This article contributes to the intellectual pursuit of decent work through a theoretical discussion grounded in literature and policy analysis. It argues that the quest for a violence-free world of work holds critical potential to stimulate rights-claiming praxis. First, it contextualizes violence within the neoliberal (re)configuration of work. Second, it explores the likely impact of the claim to a world of work free from violence on fostering such praxis, taking into account the ILO’s recent efforts to tackle the issue.

Recognizing violence in the world of work under the neoliberal rationale

The way work-related disputes are settled under neoliberalism’s market-oriented logic necessitates a nuanced understanding of the interplay between the neoliberal world of work and the violence embedded within it, with clear conceptual delineation of both.

The neoliberal world of work

The neoliberal rationale re-forms work within a spatio-temporal fix through which capital manages crises of accumulation by redistributing them across time and space (Harvey, 1992: 141–172; Navarro, 2007). This fix signifies a regime retrenching labor’s historical gains, as articulated through the term “world of work.”

Neoliberal organization of work is not confined to the bounded spaces and temporalities of factory assembly lines and office desks. The standard forms of employment associated with Western welfare states are increasingly supplanted by nonstandard forms, like temporary agency work, zero-hour contracts, gig work, self-employment, and subcontracting. Such forms, historically rooted yet reconstituted under neoliberalism, (re)define employment relations, dispersing labor across fluid locations and durations. Driven by a common logic of flexibility and fragmentation that cripples workers’ organized power and transfers risks onto them, non-standardization extends beyond blurred workplace boundaries to include transformations in work environments and conditions. This process legitimizes open-ended expectations of workers’ effort, effectively expanding work into the totality of life while providing diminishing returns. This is a flexible labor market aligning employment relations with the ongoing mode of capitalist production. It is further marked by a fragmented working class, exposed to job loss, informalization and casualization of work, de-collectivization, and deepening inequalities (Howell, 2021; Navarro, 1998).

The neoliberal rationale is strategic in securing labor’s acquiescence to the retrenched position. The way the neoliberal form of work saturates the totality of workers’ lives is hegemonic, capturing life through not only an external imposition but also an internalized order. It generates renewed mechanisms of labor control that facilitate the multidimensional degradation of work. Braverman’s (1974) account of scientific management, operating through the dehumanization of work, deskilling, and dwindling of rights and benefits amid ongoing mechanization, is (re)translated into neoliberal patterns, as reflected in the autobiographical narration by Staples and Staples (2000). Methods of control identified by Burawoy (1979, 1985) have likewise been revisited with regard to their relevance to the multi-scalar currents of neoliberalism (Hürtgen, 2022). Thelen’s (2004) comparative evidence from advanced democracies further demonstrates the strategic discretion capital enjoys in tailoring labor management strategies to specific capitalist variants.

From a labor-centered perspective of critical International Political Economy (IPE), Moore (2010, 2012) foregrounds neoliberalism’s overlooked impact on class asymmetries by revealing labor to be increasingly subordinated to market imperatives through a process reminiscent of Gramsci’s (2011) concept of passive revolution (p. 422). In the guise of meritocracy, workers are compelled to remain permanently employable; held individually responsible for continuous preparedness for eligibility in a world of indefinite labor processes. They are constituted as passive subjectivities acquiescent to a control regime that now permeates life in its entirety. They are confined to a fix, where they are interpellated as self-managing and adaptable lifelong learners subject to unilaterally imposed market norms, sustained through an argumentative framework that fosters the internalization of this hegemonic world of work (Moore, 2010, 2012).

Precarity, ever-present in the labor process but recently acknowledged as ubiquitous globally (ILO, 2015), has become determinative of the neoliberal world of work. It manifests in myriad ways and degrees depending on factors such as working hours, types of contracts, sectoral dynamics, supply chain conditions, levels of economic development, and the strength of democratic culture (ILO, 2015). It refers to the erosion of workers’ legal status and judicial protection, concomitant with the crippling of the organized working-class power. Employer domination, exerted through mechanisms such as withholding pay, performance metrics, and managerial systems, triggers an implicit precarization, destabilizing job conditions and fragmenting status across contractual bases, skills, titles, and decision-making (Alberti et al., 2018). This implicit form pervades not only the nonstandard but also the ongoing standard employment relations (Alberti et al., 2018: 452–453). It undergirds insecurity and uncertainty, spanning all jobs and employment types with far-reaching adverse consequences (Bourdieu, 1998: 81–87; ILO, 2012: 35–39). Yet, the costs of labor’s retrenched position are not borne equally. Disadvantages intensify along intersecting axes of educational level, gender, race, migration status, age, and skill, as neoliberal practices unfold through variegated (re)configurations of power, as well as historical-social specificities (Crouch and Streeck, 1997; Fraser, 1995; Hudson, 2012; Jessop, 2014; Pettinger, 2019). Such intersectional factors function to amplify and unevenly distribute the predicaments of flexibilization through fragmentation.

As precarity turns out normal, even via lawful and political mechanisms (Frade and Darmon, 2005: 116–118), the precariat comes into being in a slightly better position than the underclass in a strictly stratified society, as remarked by Standing (2009: 98–117, 2011). It is re-emergent as a class-in-the-making, subject to precarious terms and conditions of employment, global in scope and dangerous insofar as it suffers vulnerability (Standing, 2011). It is everywhere, as heterogeneous as precariousness is. No matter how it comes about, it is exposed to asymmetrical power relations and confined to lesser rights, standards, and expectations both at work and beyond it. In increasingly larger numbers but with obliterated collectivity, the precariat, Standing (2011) argues, imposes the need for a rights-based and all-inclusive perspective.

As Silver and Arrighi (2001) demonstrate, organized working-class power succeeded in influencing capitalism’s trajectory in the 20th century. Nevertheless, its achievements were reversed with the advent of neoliberalism. Navarro (2007) contends that neoliberalism holds the ideological hegemony despite its adverse economic and societal effects, culminating in a shrinking space for labor. Even Western European welfare states -often portrayed as emblematic of relative advancement for labor in capitalism’s so-called “golden age”- have become interventionist to expand the employers’ maneuverability within neoliberal employment relations (Howell, 2015, 2021). Thus, contrary to Munck’s (2018) assertion of “after neoliberalism” in light of the globally widespread uprisings against the 2007–2009 crisis, the neoliberal rationale for labor does not appear to have abated.

Against this backdrop, the world of work is a recent conceptual framework crystallizing within neoliberal imperatives. It challenges analytical frameworks such as employment relations, labor relations, industrial relations, the labor process, and labor-capital relations. These frameworks position the working class as a collective subject and are, following Navarro’s (2007) critique, regarded as antiquated in neoliberal times. This shift is concurrent with the relegation of organized working-class power to the background. Meanwhile, distinct historical and social trajectories converge with shared market-oriented rationalities to secure labor’s compliance with capital’s interests. Emerging within the totality of neoliberal (re)configurations for labor, the concept of the world of work offers a theoretical lens to examine work-related violence across blurred spaces and temporalities of the workplace beyond episodic misconduct.

Contextualizing violence in the neoliberal world of work

Violence, even when indisputably overt, demands a multidimensional and interrogative understanding to be fully identified. Beyond physical or verbal outbursts, it encompasses multiple causes, scales, forms, and actors at the intersection of sociocultural, economic, political, and psychological dynamics.

The theoretical foundations laid by Galtung and Bourdieu offer an analytical ground to delve into the multiplicity of violence. Galtung’s (1969, 1990) typology of direct, structural, and cultural violence builds on the gap between potential and actual outcomes that cannot be reduced to individual causes. Instead, it points to the determining role of society in the organization of uneven and unequal life chances. This expansive conceptualization, far beyond the interpersonal and the somatic, invites broader perspectives when considered alongside Bourdieu’s (2001) notion of symbolic violence (pp. 33–42). Embedded in the norms, values, and processes of the (re)production of the social fabric, symbolic violence, once it becomes perceptible, enables a critical interrogation of mechanisms through which domination, compliance, and control are exercised and naturalized. Therefore, violence, neither exceptional nor always discernible, demands critical and reflexive inquiry to be grasped in tandem with the dynamics that incite and sustain it within broader social patterns.

What counts as violence when it occurs at work, with all its far-reaching multiplicity, continuously evolving through commonly naturalized power relations? Employment relations hinge on an authoritarian language between different levels of hierarchy as well as reciprocal formalities and responsibilities among peers. They are, inherently, contradictory and prone to psychological and communicative tensions, creating conducive ground for legal, managerial, interpersonal, and task-related disputes. In such settings, aggressive acts – ranging from homicide to physical assault, sexual harassment, bullying, mobbing, threat, intimidation, discrimination, verbal assault, and deliberate isolation – are not unexpected. Far from being exclusively sporadic, work-related violence often materializes as systemic practices within the everyday labor process.

However, even direct aggression in this space does not appear as clear-cut. Subjectivity and culture in addition to type, magnitude, frequency, and duration impact the perception, identification, appraisal, and mitigation of the problem. Vickers (2010) highlights a mindset that distorts concepts of justice, rights, and freedoms with a tendency to normalize violence and associate it with economic efficiency. Likewise, cultural dynamics assume a variety of roles in interaction with many other factors in shaping the type and frequency of workplace bullying and responses to it (Grimard and Lee, 2020; Salin, 2021; Samnani, 2013). Wrongdoings are likely to be perceived as normal, rational, or even necessary, and vice versa, depending on factors such as cultural background, hierarchical position, or direct exposure to violence. Moreover, underreporting, lack of data from undemocratic societies, hurdles in standardizing data across countries, blurred boundaries between work and workplace, and challenges in recognizing and exposing non-physical violence all complicate the definition and measurement of the issue (Chappell and Di Martino, 2006: 16–24). Overall, it proves to be far from simple to detect violence at work, map its scope, and assess its severity and impact at individual, organizational, and societal levels.

In addition, the frequency of occurrence across dimensions such as type, geography, gender, and sector remains largely unknown. Nonetheless, a growing body of research over recent decades has continued to unpack the issue in the absence of harmonized and standardized continuous global data sources (Agervold, 2007; Chappell and Di Martino, 2006; D’Cruz et al., 2021; D’Cruz and Noronha, 2021; ILO, 2018; LaVan and Martin, 2008; León-Pérez et al., 2021; Leymann, 1996; Salin, 2001; Samnani and Singh, 2012; Zapf et al., 2020). Drawing on the accumulated knowledge to date, the prevalence of the issue has gained wider currency. It has also been documented as a persistent phenomenon even in societies renowned for their strong democratic culture (Agervold, 2007: 166; Einarsen et al., 1994: 382; Einarsen and Skogstad, 1996; Mangan, 2020; Morris, 2016; Perry et al., 2019; Salin, 2001). The fact that research efforts thus far have burgeoned predominantly in advanced nations requires a critical inquiry into the under- or non-researched societies marked by severe political and socioeconomic conditions with dysfunctional legal systems.

What counts as violence when its multiplicity and work-related ambiguities intersect with layers of the neoliberal world of work? The prevailing capitalist orthodoxy, despite its rhetoric of rights and freedoms, is ontologically violence-prone. Its power asymmetries and hegemonic structures are rooted in the exploitative nature of capitalist social relations that constantly adapt to context-specific conditions. In his critical analysis of the Cambodian case, Springer (2015) illustrates how the country has undergone exceptional and exemplary violence in its transformation into a neoliberal spatio-temporal fix, as an unfettered market appetite recognizes no limits. This reading demonstrates the convergence of structural and symbolic domination through inequalities and the strategy of othering. Springer (2016) further theorizes neoliberalism’s organic link with violence, accentuating the urgency and the ever-deepening difficulty of imagining viable alternatives.

This limitless rationale embeds violence within the organization of work. In the neoliberal world of work, violence is not exceptional, but ordinary, encoded in the transfer of responsibility and risk onto workers. Compelled to secure their own survival in a flexible labor market, workers confront a regime where capital colonizes lifetime and domestic space. Synthesizing the insights of Bourdieu, Galtung, and Moore, this structural phenomenon aligns with the pressure of permanent employability through symbolic patterns such as skill-centered valuation and occupational stratification amid diminishing returns.

Inextricable from the retreat of labor under neoliberal imperatives, the burden does not weigh equally. Certain categories, such as migrant, racialized, and gendered labor, are disproportionately subjected to violence. Pre-existing axes of domination and exploitation for these groups are reconfigured within the current capitalist phase, entrenching even slavery-like working and living conditions while marginalizing them within rights-claiming activism (Anderson, 2013; Bohrer, 2019; Crenshaw, 1989; Cruz and Klinger, 2011; Harrod, 1987; ILO and Walk Free Foundation, 2017). Domestic work, a site of intersectional inequalities, once a Fordist capitalist housewife-breadwinner model, has been (re)scaled under neoliberal restructuring into a commodified sector heavily reliant on precarious labor, especially that of migrant women. What is at stake, here, is not exploitation per se but its intensity. This migrant workforce faces a system of extreme exploitation that links global neoliberal tendencies to local specificities, leveraging unequal power relations to capitalize on the severity of precarity (Fraser, 2022; ILO, 2021a; ILO and Lloyd’s Register Foundation, 2022; Parreñas, 2015; True, 2012; Waite et al., 2015).

Normalization is accompanied by rationalizing strategies that both obscure and legitimize violence. Selective recognition, deciding which variants of violence to acknowledge and which to ignore, is integral to staying in tune with market interests. While the system appears responsive to certain manifestations, particularly interpersonal and spectacular forms, such responsiveness leaves the foundational structural causes unchallenged. Empirical research in Canada shows that legislative arrangements precarizing the labor market correlate positively with workplace harassment and power asymmetries (Perry et al., 2019). Anner’s (2022) analysis of global production networks in the apparel sector further demonstrates how neoliberal variations in non-democratic contexts culminate in a more volatile and violence-prone world of work. Ideological euphemisms also rupture the link between social costs and market-driven conduct. Neoliberalism has even appropriated second-wave feminism’s critique of unpaid domestic labor to justify market-driven restructuring and new exploitative dynamics in the domestic sphere (Fraser, 2012). In this vein, Berdayes and Murphy (2016) portray this as a systemic degradation of everything to preserve the market dominance, reframing even the deepest disadvantages of immigrant workers as outcomes of rational individual choice. Kamali’s (2021) research on immigrant intellectual workers in Sweden offers another example, masking symbolic violence of labor control through security considerations.

Amid all the ambiguities and complexities, violence at work is elaborated as “varieties” of acts stemming from power dynamics interwoven along a “continuum” (Berlingieri, 2015; D’Cruz and Noronha, 2021). Within spatial and temporal (re)configurations of neoliberalism for work, violence becomes constitutive of and structural to variegated accumulation strategies as a continuation of exploitative relations inherent in capitalism. The neoliberal rationale embeds violence within the labor process through adaptive strategies, including symbolic violence, which naturalizes exploitative arrangements while eroding collective resistance. Unraveling this embeddedness necessitates a systemic analysis of societal relations, political-economic dynamics, labor policies, sector-specific conditions, and organizational settings, which all align with neoliberal imperatives. The question, then, becomes how workers experience and respond to violence within the “passive revolution” of neoliberal employment relations. This query foregrounds the potential to transform passive subjectivity into active, rights-claiming agency capable of disrupting the imposed spatio-temporal fix. Violence in the neoliberal world of work thus constitutes a terrain of counter-hegemonic struggle against a socioeconomic order that presents itself as natural.

The ILO in pursuit of a violence-free world of work

Violence at work, as the ILO (2009) notes, has long been “ignored, denied, or considered to be a harsh reality,” only lately attracting the attention it requires. Until quite recently, the issue remained extra-diegetic, even for the ILO itself. Recent shifts in the ILO’s agenda indicate that it is no longer out of scope. The adoption of the C190, which becomes binding upon ratification, alongside Recommendation 206, marks a global step forward.

The Organization conducts a retrospective assessment of how its pre-C190 policies engaged with the phenomenon (ILO, 2018: 33–39, 2021b: 3–5). This analysis seeks to demonstrate that combating violence has been embedded in the ILO’s agenda, even if not explicitly prioritized, since the 1944 Philadelphia Declaration. Attendant to violence in the world of work, the ILO has addressed a spectrum of interrelated matters, including precarity, discrimination, inequality, vulnerability, and human rights (ILO, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2016b; Politakis, 2007). At this stage, decency can be regarded as an overarching framework. At its 87th session, the International Labour Conference (ILC) commenced the decent work agenda (ILO, 1999). The 1998 and 2008 declarations, centered respectively upon fundamental principles and rights at work and social justice for a fair globalization, enhanced this mission. The launch of the World of Work Report further underscored the significance of decent work (ILO, 2008: 153–159), followed by the 2016 Resolution on Advancing Social Justice through Decent Work. The ILO, advancing social justice and promoting decent work as part of its current mandate, even sought to appeal to the spiritual aspirations of religions to persuade labor market actors to halt the indecent character of work (Peccoud, 2004). Decent work still requires robust mechanisms as an open-ended objective within the United Nations’ development agenda and is strongly interconnected with global goals.

Since the mid-1990s, the ILO has intensified its engagement with violence at work. A notable case study focused on project-based collaborative work aimed at tackling workplace stress and violence in Malaysia (Di Martino and Musri, 2001). Another example focused on definitions and measurement tools within the service sector (ILO, 2003). Both underscore a strategic orientation responsive to the sectoral and geographical dynamics of the neoliberal labor market. The Violence at Work report (Chappell and Di Martino, 2006), heralded in a press release as “the most extensive worldwide survey of violence in the workplace” (ILO, 1998), represents a landmark contribution through three iterations in 1998, 2000, and 2006. A key strength of this report lies in its global scope, emphasizing systematic, reliable, and comparable data across diverse contexts. At its 98th session in 2009, the ILC adopted the Resolution Concerning Gender Equality at the Heart of Decent Work, which dealt specifically with gender-based violence. The Conference delved into the issue at its 107th session in 2018 in light of the 2016 tripartite discussions (ILO, 2016a, 2018). These deliberations brought the need for international labor standards anchored in the principle of zero tolerance to the fore as a prelude to the C190.

Notwithstanding claims of embeddedness, the ILO has only recently integrated the violence-free world of work into its labor standards. The C190, classified as a technical convention and grounded in equality of opportunity and treatment, marks a normative shift by adopting a rights-based approach. It affirms the right to work free from violence and harassment, including the gender-based form. It deems the world of work involving violence and harassment incompatible with human dignity, human rights, and decent work. In addition, the Convention’s scope is all-encompassing in formal and normative terms. It presents itself as covering all forms of violence and harassment, regardless of magnitude, frequency, and duration. Its universal definition dissolves the conceptual dichotomies within the intellectual debate and practical applications. The world of work, as defined here, extends beyond the conventional workplace. It transcends factory floors and office settings. It reaches into environments before and after formal working hours. It protects anyone engaged in work in any capacity, irrespective of employment status, role, and phase of engagement. This includes recruitment, probation, execution, or simply benefiting from the outcomes of work. In short, the Convention applies wherever employers exercise authority or work-related interactions occur.

This international treaty is an agenda-setter amid fragmented intellectual, political, legal, and civil society initiatives across global and multilevel contexts. It calls on stakeholders to enhance awareness, recognition, and concerted action. Since the adoption of the C190, the ILO has actively sought greater engagement from stakeholders through efforts such as investigations into links between violence and occupational safety and health (ILO, 2020c, 2024a). It has compiled the trade union strategies following the C190 standards (ILO, 2024b). It has also published guidelines for parties to comply with the C190 and Recommendation No. 206 (ILO, 2021b, 2022). Among the ILO’s key contributions to emerging multidimensional research and global data systems is its first global survey, which provides data-driven insights into people’s experiences of violence at work (ILO and Lloyd’s Register Foundation, 2022). The findings suggest implications for methods and priority areas of intervention, shedding light on the causes and consequences across various dimensions. The ILO’s gender-responsiveness in advancing the right to a violence-free world of work led it to examine the gendered nature of power asymmetries embedded in labor processes (ILO, 2020a, 2020b).

In short, building on the discussion of the neoliberal boundaries for labor above, the C190 represents an institutional acknowledgment of the phenomenon. In a world of work where even the direct violence in Galtung’s typology is rampant (ILO and Lloyd’s Register Foundation, 2022), the highlight of a rights-based approach with a more comprehensive scope than earlier ILO instruments functions as an enabling agenda that targets the visible symptoms of structural violence embedded in the neoliberal trajectory. It holds potential to reinvigorate collective action as a counterbalance to the expansive freedoms enjoyed by capital. However, normativity and moral rhetoric, acknowledged as a panacea across contexts, are meaningful only when they are not limited to official documentation, but form the basis of praxis to disrupt neoliberal re-formation.

A violence-free world of work as a site of rights claims

The neoliberal rationale persists. So does the systematic marginalization of labor. The working class has yet to overcome the adverse effects of this regime. It has been further subsumed into the global economy as a (re)commodified labor force. In this picture, this article argues that the right to a violence-free world of work constitutes fertile ground for disrupting the global dominance of market fundamentalism.

Above all, it is imperative to fortify the emancipatory mindset. The notion of a counter-bloc against the neoliberal ethos is not novel. Ceaseless imposition of market-friendly policies has provoked multifarious forms of contestation (Munck, 2007). Dissenting activism has been on the march, denoting the endurance of class-based contradictions and struggles through new paradigms (Barker and Lavalette, 2015; Munck, 2023). Protests across the globe have exhibited variegated class compositions, transnational connections, and outcomes (Della Porta, 2014; Della Porta and Diani, 2020; Della Porta et al., 2017; Della Porta and Tarrow, 2005). Even groups with obstacles to collective action, such as the unemployed and the precariat, have engaged in innovative mobilizations, contributing new perspectives to the theorization of social movements (Burgman, 2016; Della Porta et al., 2015: 14–19; Selwyn, 2007).

From a critical perspective, the effectiveness of evolving social movements, as market strategies penetrate resistance acts and dilute their scope (Collins and Rothe, 2020: 138–149), is worth questioning. Equally important is assessing whether the assemblage of resistance has become an influential challenge to neoliberal trajectories (Lambert and Herod, 2015). At this juncture, Sennett’s (1980) emphasis on disruptive activism to dismantle the entrenched power relations serves as a stimulus (pp. 175–190). Similarly, once the hegemonic narrative of market superiority is unsettled, the focus shifts to subversive praxis (Bourdieu, 1998: 29–44). In his portrayal of workers on the eve of the 21st century, Arrighi (1996) underlines both the necessity and the prospects for new forms of mobilization. An inciting proposal is Springer’s (2021) call in 21 languages for a form of politics that does not (re)produce neoliberal hegemony, but actively repels it. What is common to such arguments is their convergence around path-breaking steps nuanced according to the evolving neoliberal context.

Revisiting the contextualization of violence in the neoliberal world of work in this light, its opposite, a violence-free world of work, is neither a spontaneously emerging conflict-free state nor reducible to the elimination of visible friction. It marks a counter-hegemonic process that disrupts the smooth functioning of capital’s logic. Put differently, it entails continuous transformative contestation against neoliberal (re)configurations for work where systemic violence forges and sustains variegated domination, underwriting exploitation. This perspective exposes neoliberalism’s orchestrated reliance on violence as integral to its accumulation strategies. Accordingly, a violence-free state does not denote the correction of an anomaly. It signals a strategic intervention that calls into question the systemic justificatory mechanisms normalizing coercive instruments. By doing so, it politicizes what are presented as structural “requirements,” converting them into explicit debates over legitimacy.

How, then, can labor contest from its marginalized position? A persistent claim to a violence-free world of work, beyond interpersonal struggle, generates a rights-based praxis contesting power asymmetries that foment neoliberal rationalities. Such praxis cultivates critical awareness of neoliberalism’s adaptive and manipulative manifestations of violence by making visible practices routinely obscured, silenced, or reframed as isolated technical or procedural disputes. Experiences of harm, coercion, and domination processed through managerial, administrative, or judicial channels are rearticulated as expressions of structural violence. When suppressed experiences and claims are opened to collective contestation, grievances that appear sporadic or individualized are reconstituted as politically salient conflicts, exposing the non-democratic, non-transparent, and coercive applications embedded in neoliberal employment relations.

Rights-claiming praxis therefore refers to the conversion of lived experiences of violence into transformative collective action. It moves beyond organizational or legalistic grievance mechanisms to engage the structural character of violence itself, including the commodification of life and the erosion of collective agency. Through the relocation of disputes from depoliticized settings into arenas of public deliberation, ostensibly technical issues are recast as political struggles. Adopting a Gramscian perspective (2007: 109, 117, 168–198, 266–267), such praxis constitutes a war of position, a strategic intervention into the hegemonic order, enacted by active, interrogative subjectivities, set against the compliant dispositions fostered by neoliberal labor regime. As a strategic mode of mobilization, it challenges neoliberal domination by grounding abstract rights within the differentiated, lived experiences of violence.

An emancipatory politics thus emerges through a movement from situated knowledges toward collective horizons without effacing the particular conditions through which violence is experienced. This translation into shared political struggles forges a unifying front of dissent, exposing, for instance, how arbitrary hierarchies, nepotism, favoritism, and unfair competition among peers systematically privilege capital. It also unveils violent applications, including material deprivations, coercive instruments, and disciplinary mechanisms among others, that convert daily aggressive acts at work into a naturalized process of exploitation. Crucially, this praxis is also to account for intersectional axes of domination and violence they produce, targeting migrant, racialized, and gendered labor.

In this context, a counter-sphere uniting global collective initiatives, including those within the world of work, merits attention. It draws on theories of an inclusive public sphere accounting for societal antagonisms (Fraser, 1990; Knödler-Bunte et al., 1975; Negt and Kluge, 1993) and Marx’s philosophy of internal relations (Ollman, 2015). These perspectives invite a critical inquiry: What is democratic? This inquiry enables a vantage point wary of manipulative and/or exclusionary characteristics embedded in participation, deliberation, and representation under neoliberalism. It unearths class-based contradictions and (under)privileged positions beneath the legitimizing sources of bourgeois democracy. It seeks to amplify democratic public opinion, counterbalancing dominant class interests in the organization of social life beyond the labor process. It opens pathways for emancipatory perspectives and practices that confront structural marginalization.

Within this landscape, the agenda for a violence-free world of work is no longer extra-diegetic. It is increasingly recognized as a matter of global concern. The ILO, despite revealing a self-contradictory position on decent work as evidenced by its casual job advertisements, appears committed to advancing a non-violent work environment. The organization is active in reporting, data generation, and awareness-raising, while issuing guidelines for employers and member states. As of January 2026, 54 member states have ratified the C190 and 121 have communicated it to domestic authorities. Nevertheless, this agenda remains far from adequate as international conventions rarely become obsolete simply because the problematic they address is fully resolved.

Research has thus far primarily focused on workplace-specific issues, ranging from personal strife to business conduct (Agervold, 2007; Baron and Neuman, 1998; Einarsen et al., 1994, 2020; Keashly et al., 2020; Leck and Galperin, 2006; Leymann, 1996). Preventive, investigative, and mitigating strategies have been proposed to ensure a safe work environment (Einarsen et al., 1994; Guerin, 2016; Ishmael and Alemoru, 2002; LaVan and Martin, 2008; Minor, 1995; Stouten et al., 2010). While significant, this agenda needs to extend beyond workplace boundaries to respond to the neoliberal hegemony permeating every aspect of life. Research should delve deeper into its multi-causal and systemic dimensions (Bauder, 2001; Berlingieri, 2015; Samnani and Singh, 2012), aligning with the ILO’s broader framing.

With this growing focus, the struggle for a violence-free world of work stimulates egalitarian counterweights primarily due to the transcendent character of this world. Work itself has been recontextualized beyond conventional premises by neoliberal impetus. Violence manifests beyond physical workplace boundaries. The violence-free world of work, as a corollary to decent work and recently portrayed in international labor standards, intersects with a wide-ranging human rights framework. This broad space does not hinge solely on individual and/or organizational matters, but bears a multidimensional societal scope. It connects to the universal normative stance that takes violence seriously and aligns with the concerns of rights-based activism. Such rights-claiming practices are likely to trigger synergy among sporadic claims across the globe. Making violent acts in the world of work public helps detect the gap between the actual and the illusory allure of the existing democratic setup. This, in turn, prompts questions about the limits to non-exclusionary collective interests within a bourgeois democracy committed to market-making.

Second, it is unifying for labor. The neoliberal nature of work imposes varying costs on workers depending on the working conditions, employment types, and the political-economic juncture. The neoliberal labor regime impacts workers unevenly across an intersectional matrix of disadvantages, thereby fragmenting the grounds for collective action. Those in relatively more secure and socially valued positions, most notably high-skilled workers, either experience the neoliberal tempo more gradually or are better able to justify, absorb, or temporarily compensate for its effects. This differentiated exposure, in turn, blurs the grounds for collective solidarity. Violence at work, however, cuts across all forms of employment and working conditions. Hence, making violent acts in the world of work public is likely to mobilize the fragmented working class around a shared concern.

In addition, this focus contributes to the critique of the human cost of the unfettered market. The claim to a violence-free world of work disrupts the self-perpetuating logic of neoliberal domination. Referring to Wright’s (2000) concept of positive class compromise, the idea of a violence-free world of work touches upon the immanent contradictions within the market-driven angle. Unlike collective bargaining, solutions do not entail a huge economic burden. Instead, they reveal how systemic violence targets productivity and efficiency. They even safeguard employers, who are also potential targets of violence. Such labor-friendly policies further bolster brand value. Furthermore, the state is still critical in instilling a non-exclusionary public sphere to (re)establish the social justice perspective in decision making. Drawing on Howell (2015, 2021) and Tansel’s (2017) examinations, neoliberal states assume regulatory roles that secure market-making through the preemptive and preventive disciplining of life in its entirety. Within the variegations of capitalism, neoliberal hegemony owes its persistence to the state’s capacity to institutionalize coercion to the advantage of market forces. Rights claims to a violence-free world of work compel states to ensure practical administrative arrangements, comprehensive legal frameworks, monitoring mechanisms, and accessible mental and physical health services. These claims challenge the notion that labor is merely a cost in the marketplace, extending beyond sectoral and national boundaries and carrying a transnational transformative potential. So, making violent acts in the world of work public engages with wider rights-claiming practices and allows room for maneuver for these practices to open the foundations of bourgeois democracy to interrogation.

Rights-claiming praxis is accumulative. The crux of the matter is to consolidate dissenting lenses on market-driven priorities within the bourgeois public sphere. Put another way, it involves developing a vantage point against becoming inured to and even supportive of market appetite to the detriment of decency. In particular on violence at work, this approach facilitates a shared platform for learning and adaptation, enabling practical solutions that mitigate the isolation and helplessness of (potential) victims. This common ground encourages perpetrators and those responsible for resolution to reassess their roles. It is critical to reverse the experience from either committing or being exposed to violence to struggling against it. The dissemination of best practices in legal, organizational, civil, and medical fields not only fosters solidarity and empowerment but also generates self-reflective outcomes. Creating a learning environment, this process helps a behavioral shift from normalization, apathy, resignation, and internalization, often culminating in learned helplessness, toward empathy, awareness, and proactivity.

The issue is no longer extra-diegetic, but generating an impactful and resonant process demands practical experience. Building on the current agenda, there is a promising avenue for translating normative stance into actionable strategies. This necessitates developing systematic tools for sector- and geography-specific data collection, self-assessment, and monitoring (Outhwaite and Martin-Ortega, 2019), while linking violence in the world of work to broader human rights violations. In this context, it is imperative to reinforce the C190’s contribution through participatory and enforceable monitoring mechanisms capable of capturing violations in a timely and verifiable manner. Developing universal monitoring and data collection standards tailored to sectors aligned with recognized systems such as European Classification of Economic Activities (Nomenclature générale des Activités économiques dans les Communautés Européennes) – [NACE] codes and attentive to supply chain governance can enhance context-sensitive analyses and support a result-oriented approach. Crucially, such measures must account for the distinct risks faced by different categories of workers.

Integrative data-driven and participatory knowledge production can underpin awareness through a holistic rights-based approach. Survey findings by Baron and Neuman (1998) highlight the prevalence of covert forms of violence across occupational strata, with individuals often perceiving themselves as victims rather than perpetrators. In this regard, access to reliable data facilitates the cultivation of self-reflective awareness among workers – particularly given that workplace aggression may originate from peers, subordinates, clients, or supervisors (Leck and Galperin, 2006). Moreover, the broad dissemination of these findings promotes legal literacy and practical strategies for navigating institutional pathways, from international conventions to domestic regulatory frameworks. Comparative assessments of domestic legal systems remain a vital next step in operationalizing these principles into enforceable and contextually responsive frameworks.

Data-driven framing of violence in the world of work as a human rights issue opens a normative and strategic pathway to challenge dominant policy paradigms. It underlines the urgency of regulating employment relations not merely as market transactions but as sites of human dignity and social justice, even offering a unifying potential that transcends North-South divisions. Politically, this exerts pressure on practitioners and decision-makers to establish a counter-public sphere in which justice, dignity, and solidarity are not aspirational ideals but actionable principles. Accordingly, holding public authorities accountable for fulfilling their human rights obligations, particularly through ratified instruments such as the C190, becomes a pivotal mechanism for reversing hegemonic narratives and institutionalizing protective mechanisms across the employment spectrum. Such a challenge may also activate societal sensitivities, stimulating demands for robust procedural and legal safeguards on the demand side.

In summary, normativity is embraced as a commitment to democratic values, rights, and freedoms. Yet, realization demands more. Lasting and meaningful achievement requires cultivating experience with a persistent insistence on collective interests (Knödler-Bunte et al., 1975; Negt and Kluge, 1993). As neoliberal imperatives override globally, advancing a non-exclusionary public sphere that encompasses a world of work free from violence in all its forms entails a war of position, reinvigorating class praxis: as resistance to a political economy embedded in market supremacy; as a unifying space within a fragmented work environment; as a legitimate claim rooted in bourgeois democratic norms; and as a cross-cutting theme within broader struggles for rights and freedoms. It calls for a public sphere that incorporates the voice of labor into decision-making, shifting the trajectory from de/re/regulation for market superiority toward regulation for decency.

Conclusion

The present article is not utopian. It is ambitious for praxis. It envisions a public sphere that encourages rights claims dedicated to the non-exclusion of the interests of anyone. Countless works of art, literature, and intellectual inquiry, nurtured by and inspiring the social movements across time and geographies, have articulated such societal ideals. They converge in promoting breakthrough thinking and action for egalitarianism, from where this article takes off. The public sphere aspired to here, first, embraces out-of-the-box thinking in its confrontation with dominant paradigms. Second, this sphere is contemplated as a process of learning, evolving through the accumulation of rights-claiming praxis. Third, in the face of neoliberal capitalism, it does not take the insatiable appetite of the market forces for granted. The prelude to this kind of space this article traces is the phenomenon of violence in the neoliberal world of work.

Neoliberalism prevails, entailing multiple complexities and costs. Labor once went through the tracks of change amid capitalist imperatives and still retains that potential. As Buck-Morss (1991) notes, the late 19th century exhibits the design of a hegemonic capitalist public sphere, which advanced the interests of the capitalist class through a progressive historical myth (pp. 86–91). This sphere functioned to steer the working class toward reconciliation with industrialists and away from revolutionary action. The once path-breaking impetus of the collective labor movement, currently often viewed through a nostalgic and pessimistic lens, previously achieved drastic gains against the then-limitless market appetite.

The world of work, a conception saturated for labor with the neoliberal rationale, is no less complex than neoliberalism itself. Precarity, in its diverse forms and consequences, persists as a global phenomenon, never gone but continuously reproduced under dominant production relations. The meaning of work within capitalist society and its future trajectory have been called into question. This involves the fragmentation of the workforce and the erosion of union power, undermining the worker’s voice through the de-collectivization of employment relations. It also refers to the role of law in enforcing market-friendly retrenchment of labor rights, while highlighting labor indeterminacy and unequal power relations. Together, these factors pose the challenge of how to leverage a better labor agenda for all.

Violence in this world, as a newly recognized phenomenon, is equally complex and urgent. It extends beyond individual concerns within the boundaries of conventional workplace, being structural to the neoliberal hegemony. The long-overdue normative basis has recently been laid down by the C190. Yet, realization requires praxis. Against the hegemonic discourse that normalizes the violence by grasping it within the economic imperatives, there is a persistent and widespread claim to develop effective mechanisms and channels that expose the veiled nature of violence. This demands proactive and collective responses, fostering a public stance against the breach of workplace rights and potentially sparking a collective outcry, akin to a #metoo movement for bullies.

The motive for change within this web of complexities is simple: the universally recognized fact that violence has no excuse and no basis for tolerance. Change is arduous but possible, by forming praxis to, inter alia, realize the right to a violence-free world of work. The claim to this end is not only a prerequisite for embedding decency into life but also a viable ground for stimulating egalitarian counterweights in tracks of that life, even when democratic geographies suffer from democratic deficits amid multiple complexities. It constitutes a strategic targeting of the structural character of the neoliberal world of work from within, leveraging the C190’s foothold in direct violence into a disruptive tool for change.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Esra Aras

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author biography

Esra Aras is an independent scholar with a PhD in Social Policy. Her research examines labor, power relations, counter-hegemonic knowledge production, and the political agency of dissenting social actors across historical and contemporary contexts.

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