Labour standards in international trade agreements: an assessment of the arguments

Abstract

In the 1980s and 1990s organized labour in industrialized countries was hit by the demise of traditional manufacturing industries, the ever-expanding globalization of the economy and the ideological dominance of economic liberalism and free trade. Support for the introduction of labour standards in the world trade regime grew out of these conditions. This paper introduces an analytical framework for the study of labour standards in international trade agreements (LSITA) and provides a detailed examination of the individuals and organizations involved in the debate and an analysis of their arguments and activities. Experiences of LSITA fall into four categories: (i) unilateral: child and prison labour legislation and corporate codes of conduct; (ii) bilateral: the GSP programmes; (iii) multilateral: attempts in the GATT/WTO; and (iv) regional: the Social Charter of the EU and the labour side agreement of NAFTA. In the opposition group are neoclassical economists and free trade theorists; major international employers; and some Third World governments and economic elites. Among the proponents belong neo-Keynesians and neo-institutionalists; 'ethical' international employers; trade unions; the ILO; governments and politicians in industrialized countries; and a plethora of NGOs and individual activists

International Labour Regulation:

“…Nous avons déjà présenté un cadre de référence en matière de législation internationale du travail en retenant les types de rapports commerciaux impliqués, classés sous quatre rubriques : unilatéraux, bilatéraux, régionaux et multilatéraux, que nous appelons UBRM (Tsogas, 1999). Nous introduisons ici une dimension additionnelle.…”

“…In addition to the various regulation schemes identified by Tsogas (1999), we have appended here-under the multilateral level, in the soft regulation path-the United Nations' Global Compact that aims to regulate the behaviour of transnational corporations through the multilateral role of the UN (Bendell, 2004;Utting, 2002b). Similarly, framework agreements are included here as a bilateral and a soft form of regulation, negotiated between a multinational company and an international sectoral trade union federation (Riisgaard, 2005;Schömann et al, 2008).…”

“…Additionally, there is no account of a major contemporary source of international labour regulation stemming from companies that intervene and regulate employment relations in their supply chains through voluntary codes of conduct. Tsogas (1999) introduced a framework of international labour regulation based upon the types of trade relations involved, classified into four types: unilateral, bilateral, regional, and multilateral. The unilateral approach involves trade laws of a country that contain a social clause embracing all of its trade relations.…”

“…social clauses and labour regulation instruments; a small segment has concentrated on assessing and analyzing the validity of the various arguments raised (Krueger, 1996;Lee, 1997;Scherrer, 1996;Tsogas, 1999), while very little has been written on the actual or potential industrial relations and labour market effects (Tsogas, 2001). …”

Transnational labor regulation, reification, and commodification: A critical review

“…We evaluate TLR, using the four aforementioned criteria, against an analytical framework of TLR (Tsogas, , ). Summarized in Table , historical and contemporary experiences of TLR are systematically categorized along a matrix of two regulatory planes and four trade levels.…”