Workers’ rights and transatlantic trade relations: The TTIP and beyond

Abstract

In the context of the working-class backlash against free trade represented by Brexit, the recent surge of right-wing political parties in Europe and the 2016 US presidential election, it is timely to take stock of the threats to jobs and wages posed by recent negotiations over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The European Commission selectively relied on econometric analyses, predicting a positive impact of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Its proposed legal text on ‘Trade and sustainable development’ fell short of the European Parliament’s negotiating guidelines, which themselves failed to ensure protection of labour standards. The activities of corporate lobbies threatened the effective protection of workers’ rights. Major risks to workers’ rights are posed by discrepancies between US and European Union labour and social law and labour standards. The most recent legal text lacks compliance monitoring provisions and sanction mechanisms against member states failing to ratify core labour conventions. The investment court system does not resolve the problems of the discredited investor-state dispute settlement mechanism for which it is the proposed replacement. The year 2016 has provided a foretaste of the dislocation likely from trade and investment regulation that sees social and environmental standards and labour rights simply as barriers to corporate profits.

The European Union’s existential crisis: current challenges from populism to Donald Trump

“…The TTIP also faces criticism in the EU 47 since Greenpeace leaked some secret documents related to its negotiations. 48 European consumers are worried that the TTIP might degrade food safety, environmental standards 49 and workers' rights 50 in the name of free trade. 51 The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), as promised by Trump, will be renegotiated.…”