Best practice in the regulation of international labor standards: Lessons of the US-Cambodia textile agreement (original) (raw)
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Labour Provisions in US Free Trade Agreements : Determinants and Adequacy
the inclusion of labor-related provisions in US Free Trade Agreements has been a contentious issue. They have been attacked both for allegedly weakening the comparative advantage of developing and emerging countries; and for being too weak and inconsistent with the recommendations of the International Labour Organization (ILO). This paper proposes a method of assessing the reality of labor rights protection in U.S. FTAs Partnercountries and gives a more precise picture of the adequacy of Labor-related provisions in those FTAs given the situation of labor rights protection in U.S FTAs Partner-countries. In doing so, it provides also a careful and original methodology to evaluate the respect of ILO Conventions and build an Index of Labour Bargaining Power, both of these constructions can be reproduced in further research and used to monitor the evolution of Labour Rights in any given country. The United States has a long standing tradition of linking labor standards and trade, dating back to the McKinley Act of 1890 and the Trade Act of 1930 which respectively restricted then prohibited imports convict or prison-made goods i . However, the US-Jordan Free Trade Agreement, signed on October 24 th , 2000 is the first U.S international trade agreement to include labor related provisions in the main body of the agreement ii . This practice has been followed since, in virtually every Free Trade Agreement negotiated and signed by the U.S with countries so diverse as Chile iii and Singapore iv (2003), Australia v , Bahrain vi , Costa Rica, Dominican republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua vii and Morocco viii (2004), Colombia ix , Oman x and Peru xi (2006); Korea xii and Panama xiii (2007).
International Trade Agreements and Their Relation to Core Labor Standards
Journal of Politics and Law, 2018
The research is an attempt to comprehend with these issues and enunciate an argument that international labor rights and labor standards are a pivotal component of international trade, investment, and development strategy for the well-being of the entire society not only for the wealthy nations. Section 1 of the paper lays out unanimity of labor rights and standards depicted from different sources with evoking instances showing real concerns that have originated with the development of new universal trade. Section 2 illustrates various forums where the international labor rights assertion perhaps induced, through a discourse of multiple supervision or enforcement mechanism available under such forums. Last part of the paper concludes the study and proposes future initiatives to labor rights advocates from all discussions and further recommends new allegiances to international fair labor rights and standards by government, employers, and trade unions entered into a global economy.
Each of the three sources has strengths and weaknesses. As noted by others, the ILO reports are heavily lopsided by region. Approximately half of all Freedom of Association cases filed with the ILO relate to Latin American countries (National Research Council 2004). Filing ILO complaints takes capacity and it is much less likely that countries with little capacity, or few labor rights, would have many complaints filed. As Compa (2005) has noted, the U.S. State Department Reports are very detailed in some years, but then appear to be repetitive in other years, depending on the number of field staff available to update reports. The ICFTU reports also vary in quality, with some years and regions containing much more detail than others. We discuss some of the specific weaknesses of these sources in Section 8. propose an alternative to existing comprehensive measures of FA/CB based on the evaluations of national experts, utilizing a combination of 4 A number of these methods are discussed in Kucera 2007.
U.S. Free Trade Agreements and Enforcement of Labor Law in Latin America
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
This paper analyzes whether Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) signed between the United States and Latin American countries during the last decade produced higher enforcement of labor regulations. The paper computes before-after estimates of the effect of FTAs on labor inspections and exploits variation across countries using non-signers as a comparison group. The empirical strategy benefits from the fact that about half of Latin American countries have signed a trade agreement with the United States. Difference-indifferences estimates suggest that signing an FTA produced a 20 percent increase in the number of labor inspectors and a 60 percent increase in the number of inspections. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), however, does not appear to have the same positive impacts on Mexico. The paper concludes with a discussion of these results.
Labor Standards and Trade Agreements: Raising Standards or Raising the Walls of Protectionism?
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
Several major trade agreements in recent years have included a provision that addresses labor standards. Other trade agreements that are now in the discussion stage are considering incorporating labor standards as an integral part of the final agreement. The goals of such agreements are noble --to raise the conditions under which the workers of poor countries must work. The arguments are framed in such a way that anyone who opposes raising labor standards appears to be cold and heartless. The problem with raising labor standards by law rather than by the market process is that imposition of higher labor standards has unintended consequences, some of which hurt the very people the new standards are intended to help. But worse yet, some of the people who advocate raising labor standards in poor countries do so knowing that making poor countries comply with new and higher 2 requirements will make it more difficult for them to sell their products in international markets. This paper looks at the economics and politics of harmonizing labor standards and explores some of the unintended consequences of imposing higher labor standards on poor countries and focuses on the protectionist aspects of such policies.
Striking a proper match? Strategies to link trade agreements and real labor rights improvements
Executive Summary: Labour Global …
A growing number of nations including Canada, Chile, the EU, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and the U.S., now include labor rights provisions in their free trade agreements. But we don't yet know if such links actually empower workers or lead to improved labor rights governance. Moreover, because each government takes a different approach to these agreements, policymakers may be sending confusing signals on how to promote labor rights; what labor rights are internationally accepted core labor rights; and how important these rights are to good governance.
Social Science Research Network, 2021
This Article considers how far labor obligations in trade agreements extend into state regulation of national economies, and more specifically what it means for state action or inaction to be "in a manner affecting trade" so as to engage those obligations. This question is key to defining what potential issues labor chapters aim to address. It was central to the first trade dispute in the world involving labor obligations to be resolved by a dispute settlement panel, the Guatemala-Labor Obligations case. The panel's decision was followed by agreement on a definition of this phrase in the revamped labor chapter that was key to reaching the new United States-Canada-Mexico Agreement. This definition may in turn have implications for the interpretation of many earlier trade agreements to which the United States is party. The literature to date treats the definition as correcting an interpretation in Guatemala-Labor Obligations that critics contend made proof of violation, and thus enforcement, unworkable. This Article maintains that this account is inaccurate, and that the extent of labor obligations in U.S. trade agreements can only be understood by more fully grasping their purposes, something about which the parties and the panel in Guatemala-Labor Obligations had relatively little to say, and which remains unsettled in policy debate and the academic literature. The Article develops a theory of labor obligation purposes that accounts well for their wording and structure and explains how the USMCA labor chapter may set normative ground rules for an integrated economic space to address systemic labor rights problems, rather than simply prohibiting and remedying particular * Associate Professor of Law, Queen's University, B.A. and LL.B. (University of Toronto), S.J.D. (Harvard). I served as Chair of the Panel that delivered the Report in Guatemala-Labor Obligations. In this Article I speak neither for other Panel members, nor for the Panel itself. The Panel is functus officio. Nor should anything that I say in this paper be considered indicative of the Panel's deliberations. It is not. I cannot and would not disclose such matters, as the Code of Conduct for Panel members prevents me from doing so. These are my own personal views, developed quite some time after the release of the Panel's Report. The Report should and must speak for itself in regard to the interpretation and application of the obligations in issue to the facts established in the evidence before it. I wish to thank Professors Valerie Hughes, Kevin Kolben and Nicholas Lamp for insightful comments on earlier drafts, and John Wilkinson for helpful research assistance. Any errors remain mine. V C 2021, Kevin Banks. KIMBERLY ANN ELLIOT, DEVELOPING A MORE INCLUSIVE US TRADE POLICY AT HOME AND ABROAD, 18-21 (2019), https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/developing-more-inclusive-ustrade-policy-home-and-abroad.pdf. This in turn depends upon which potential issues or problems those obligations can reach and address, and how well agreement procedures enable the parties to ensure compliance with them. According to the wording of most U.S. trade agreements, how far many labor obligations extend into state regulation of national economies depends on what it means for state action or inaction to be "in a manner affecting trade." 2
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
In the past decade and a half, the negotiation of free trade agreements (FTAs) has dramatically increased. The number of party states and the range of level of development among party countries have expanded drastically. At the same time, the subject matter scope of these treaties has grown by leaps and bounds. Agreements are no longer limited to trade in goods, but increasingly cover trans-national provision of services and crossborder mobility of investment capital. Bilateral agreements are proliferating at an astounding pace, but even more significant are the agreements, much smaller in number, involving three or more countries. At the global level, the World Trade Organization (WTO), whose predecessor body began with a mandate limited to trade in goods, has now expanded into trade in services, as well as intellectual property, with frustrated efforts to add elements addressing investment and government procurement. Plurilateral agreements, such as the treaties establishing the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), combine more extensive coverage of goods, services, and capital, and constitute regional integration agreements. Separate from these types of trade-related agreements, there are international labor rights instruments binding many of the same countries, under the auspices of the
Trade and Labor Rights: A Panel Study, 1986-2002
T his article investigates the nature of the linkages between trade and labor rights in developing countries. Specifically, we hypothesize that a "California effect" serves to transmit superior labor standards from importing to exporting countries, in a manner similar to the transmission of environmental standards. We maintain that, all else being equal, the labor standards of a given country are influenced not by its overall level of trade openness, but by the labor standards of its trading partners. We evaluate our hypothesis using a panel of 90 developing countries over the period 1986-2002, and we separately examine the extent to which the labor laws and the actual labor practices of the countries are influenced by those of their export destinations. We find that strong legal protections of collective labor rights in a country's export destinations are associated with more stringent labor laws in the exporting country. This California effect finding is, however, weaker in the context of labor rights practices, highlighting the importance of distinguishing between formal legislation and actual implementation of labor rights.