Financial Times - November 19, 1999
EMPLOYMENT: RIGHTS ARE 'VITAL TO TRADE' By Robert Taylor, Employment Editor
The promotion of labour rights must be linked to the development of trade if basic living standards are to be raised across the developing countries, the Brussels-based International Confederation of Free Trade Unions argues in its manifesto for the Seattle summit of the World Trade Organisation later this month.
The 90-page document, published today, sets out the views of an organisation claiming to represent 124m workers in 137 countries.
More than 100 trade union leaders will be lobbying the WTO meeting that begins on November 30, arguing the case for the inclusion of workers' human rights in the global trading system.
"Many trade unions as well as major and influential non-governmental organisations are concerned trade liberalisation has exacerbated income inequality and undermined democratic decision-making mechanisms by national governments," said Bill Jordan, the ICFTU general secretary.
In its manifesto, the organisation says it is opposed to trade protection, denying its call for including core labour standards in trade agreement threatens open trade.
"A workers' right provision would strengthen the political authority of the WTO and break, rather than build, barriers to world trade," the ICFTU argues.
It would also - the manifesto maintains - "serve to reinforce the case for better access for developing countries to world export markets".
The ICFTU wants to incorporate the worker rights issue into WTO mechanisms and processes by forming a WTO committee on the link between trade, investment and core labour standards along the lines of the body formed on trade and environment five years ago.