01-DEC-2000
Idea of the Week: Multilateral Promotion of Workers' Rights
This week the International Labor Organization (ILO) imposed unprecedented penalties on member-country Myanmar (formerly Burma) for a persistent and widespread pattern of abuse of workers. It's an important international development because it shows the world's multilateral organization for protecting workers' rights is becoming increasingly assertive and can provide an alternative to unilateral and bilateral methods that typically restrict trade without benefitting workers.
In fact, as Progressive Policy Institute International Economist Jenny Bates explains in a recent editorial, the ILO action has a direct bearing on one of the hottest domestic debates over trade policy. For a number of years, the AFL-CIO and many labor-oriented Congressional Democrats have argued that trade with developing countries is often unfair because these countries rely on forced or child labor, or prevent organization of workers into unions. More broadly, many critics of economic globalization claim that expanded trade creates a "race to the bottom" with respect to workers' rights, rewarding countries that mistreat workers with a competitive cost advantage. Both arguments have been deployed in support of demands that the U.S. insist on labor standards as a condition in bilateral or regional trade agreements with developing countries.
New Democrats have responded by noting that demands for labor (and also environmental) standards in bilateral trade agreements with developing countries are typically "deal-breakers." While there may be exceptions, as in the recent U.S.-Jordan trade deal, developing countries generally reject such conditions out of hand as representing an effort to dictate their domestic policies, and as a back-door means of protecting U.S. industries from competition.
But fortunately, there is a "third way" beyond choosing between expanded trade and enhanced workers' rights: multilateral efforts to generally improve labor standards around the world. That's where the ILO comes in: a multilateral organization which all but a few countries have already joined, and which has pushed its signatories to recognize and implement certain core worker rights, including prohibitions of child and forced labor, and the right of workers to organize to promote their collective welfare and living standards.
The main objection you hear about the ILO is that it is a "toothless tiger" which does not take concrete action to hold its members to their promises. But the Myanmar action showed the ILO is beginning to cut its teeth. In response to complaints first initiated by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the ILO took several important steps:
* heavily documenting and publicizing the abuses in Myanmar, including widespread forced labor involving as many as one million workers.
* cutting off technical assistance to Myanmar and barring its representatives from multilateral talks.
* calling on ILO members, including governments, unions and businesses, to revise all their dealing with Myanmar to ensure they are not indirectly contributing to, or supporting, forced labor.
* working with other international organizations, including the World Trade Organization, and encouraging them to review their relations with Myanmar.
The Myanmar action is a good start for the ILO's more aggressive stance, but its limitations show the ILO needs more teeth. PPI has recommended that the ILO should create a process for expelling "bad actors;" streamline its operations to speed up punitive actions and the dissemination of information on abuses; and most of all, work with the WTO towards rules for multilateral sanctions on countries that persistently and egregiously fail to respect core workers' rights.
The bottom line is that the best way to ensure that expanded trade and higher standards of living around the world can be promoted simultaneously is to create new global rules that all trading countries recognize and that can be enforced multilaterally, not by one country fruitlessly trying to dictate to another. The ILO with its new show of teeth can be an important actor in that process.
Related Material:
"The ILO Cuts its Teeth" by Jenny Bates PPI Editorial, November 30, 2000: http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=108&subsecid=133&contentid=2742
"Lifting Labor" by Jenny Bates Blueprint Magazine, June 1, 2000: http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?contentid=970&knlgAreaID=108&subsecid=133
"International Trade and Labor Standards" by Jenny Bates PPI Policy Report, April 1, 2000: http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?contentid=1152&knlgAreaID=108&subsecid=133
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