Here's something from May, plus a related piece.
at http://epinet.org -- Both can be downloaded free.
mbs
CHINA CAN WAIT
WTO accession deal must include enforceable labor
rights, real commercial benefits
by Robert E. Scott
After rejecting a proposal to bring China into the World Trade
Organization (WTO) in April 1999, the Clinton Administration is working
to negotiate an accession agreement in time for the WTO ministerial
meetings in Seattle later this year. [1] The proposed deal would be
harmful to workers in both the United States and China, primarily for
three reasons . . .
CERTIFYING INTERNATIONAL WORKER RIGHTS
A Practical Alternative
by Jerome Levinson
Free trade among countries with very different domestic
practices requires either a willingness to countenance the
erosion of domestic structures or the acceptance of a
certain degree of harmonization (convergence).
– Dani Rodrik, Has Globalization Gone Too Far? (p. 37)
The effort to incorporate core worker rights into multilateral trade and
investment agreements and thereby achieve, in Rodrik’s words, “a
certain degree of harmonization,” has failed. There are two major
reasons why. First, despite the support for worker rights in U.S.
legislation, the American negotiators of these agreements have not
been willing to give worker rights as high a priority as they do the
protection of investors. Second, sensing that reluctance, domestic and
foreign opponents of worker rights have been able to muster majorities
against them in multilateral negotiations.