Unequal exchange of labour and global justice: Principles for a fair international distribution of work

The international distribution of work is highly uneven: high-income countries benefit from large amounts of labour time performed abroad, while they devote comparatively little of their own labour for foreign consumption. The opposite pattern is necessarily observed in lower-income countries since, globally, who provides and who benefits from work is a zero-sum game. In this paper, we argue that the fairness of such imbalances can be appraised using normative principles of global distributive justice. We suggest four principles, as well as methodological guidelines for their empirical assessment: (1) labour time ought to be exchanged equally, (2) imbalances ought to be limited to those explained by international differences in physical labour productivity, (3) the fairness of current imbalances ought to be evaluated conferring to the historical processes from which they have arisen, and (4) imbalances ought to be limited as they prevent universal access to decent lives. Our contribution is primarily conceptual, yet we provide empirical illustrations when possible. Existing evidence and our illustrations suggest a critical need for thorough empirical assessments of these four principles, as current patterns of international trade could violate all of them. Finally, we discuss limitations of our approach and policy implications for achieving a fairer international distribution of work. • The international distribution of work is highly uneven. • Appraising the fairness of these patterns requires explicit normative principles. • Principles of global distributive justice provide adequate grounds to do so. • We set out four principles and provide guidelines for their empirical appraisal. • Current patterns of international trade may violate the four principles suggested.