By Eva Seidelman, Program Assistant, International Labor Rights Forum
On July 16, United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk announced a more proactive strategy to enforcing labor provisions in existing free trade agreements. View the USTR plan for labor rights enforcement here. He makes particular reference to enforcing protections for temporary and subcontracted workers in Peru where the U.S. has just begun to implement an Free Trade Agreement.
The marginalization of contract workers has become a global problem, also in countries where Free Trade Agreements are pending such as South Korea. Read yesterday's front page New York Times article on the issue.
The USTR has outlined how it will monitor compliance by FTA countries with their labor obligations in trade agreements through a policy of engagement "to resolve labor issues through dialogue, technical cooperation, and Labor Chapter consultations and dispute settlement, as necessary." We have yet to see what that will practically mean for workers. ILRF's Executive Director,Bama Athreya, elaborates on the importance of this initiative in an article here.
Provisions of existing free trade agreements require signatory nations to uphold domestic labor laws and pursue or adhere to international labor norms. To date, enforcement of these provisions has been carried out largely on a complaint-driven basis. Existing complaint mechanisms have been largely ineffectual due their inaccessibility to foreign workers and the lack of capacity for resource poor organizations and unions to document and file complaints. In addition, complaints take years and years to resolve and workers see little in return for engaging in such processes. ILRF has witnessed the problems with the complaint-driven process after filing NAFTA (NAALC-labor side agreement) and DR-CAFTA complaints.
Aside from enforcing existing agreements, the U.S. government could take these additional steps to improve labor rights through trade: 1) Hold U.S. corporations accountable for violating labor rights abroad 2) Ensure that trading partners are provided with incentives to enforce labor rights and sanction them if they don't 3) Ensure that trading partners meet human rights, labor rights and environmental pre-conditions before being rewarded with an agreement.
1) The ILRF has had a history of bringing cases against U.S. corporations such as Chiquita, Coca-Cola, Nestle, Drummond and others for violating human rights abroad. ILRF's former lawyers at IRadvocates are bringing a new suit against Dole for hiring paramilitaries to commit violent acts against union leaders in Colombia. The Department of Justice could play a large role in investigating such cases with trading partners but hasn't shown such interest. Tell the DOJ to act here!
2) Free Trade Agreements differ from the Generalized System of Preference program in that under GSP, developing countries receive trade benefits under a system of renewal based on labor rights conditionally. Governments within FTAs do not necessarily have an incentive to enforce labor rights because they don't face the threat of having trade benefits removed since FTAs are not renewed regularly. We have seen this in the case of Guatemala where violence and impunity has gotten worse since Dr-CAFTA's implementation. View the Solidarity Center's latest report on labor in Guatemala and WOLA's evaluation of the DR-CAFTA labor commitments here.
3) Thus, the Obama Administration also needs to reevaluate the labor rights conditions within potential, (not just existing) trading partner countries to see if they are serious about enforcing labor rights. Governments interested in engaging in trade with the US need to demonstrate a strong political will to uphold the rule of law to benefit workers over business. For example, South Korea needs to deal with its widespread abuse of contract labor before being rewarded with an agreement. They must improve labor standards and actually enforce them on the ground. The USTR should engage with civil society groups and unions to evaluate that enforcement, not high level officials who will fudge statistics to demonstrate progress.
Such has not been the case with Colombia, where paramilitary activity has been worsening, causing increased violence against unionists and social activists. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has failed to commit to truly dismantling these groups and has not enforced existing labor law, which still restricts core worker rights. In such cases, pre-conditions, not just reactive measures are essential to initiating enhanced trade relationships. Read ILRF's "Labor Considerations Regarding the Colombia FTA" here.
Thanks for this detailed summary of such a complex issue.
A question: what, if anything, is being done to ensure that goods from countries who DO choose to improve enforcement are price competitive with goods from nations who choose to exploit workers with impunity?
Posted by: Daniel | July 29, 2009 at 12:37 PM