Abstract
As labor provisions in trade agreements have become increasingly ubiquitous, there remain questions about whether or not these provisions have been effective in improving working conditions in trading partner countries. Through an analysis of sample labor provisions in United States and European Union free trade agreements, this paper shows that both approaches, albeit using different methods, aim primarily to improve <em>de jure</em> labor law and <em>de facto</em> enforcement of that law by government regulatory institutions. This paper argues that instead, labor provisions ought to be grounded in a supply chain approach. A supply chain approach shifts the focus from impacting <em>de jure</em> and <em>de facto</em> labor law as administered by the state though sanctions or dialogue, and towards context specific, experimental, and coordinated private and public regulatory interventions that operate in key export industries that are implicated in trading partners’ supply chains. It does so in part by recognizing the potential regulatory power of consumer citizenship.
Highlights
Labor provisions have become increasingly common in bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) across the globe
We will return to that topic in Part 3, for it is key in developing a supply chain approach to trade and labor provisions
Policymakers should use the principles of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), dialogue and cooperation that are thinly specified in the agreements, and make them thick through actual institutions that can draw on the dynamics of consumer citizenship described earlier
Summary
Labor provisions have become increasingly common in bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) across the globe. A supply chain governance approach shifts the current focus of labor chapters from broadly affecting de jure and de facto labor law through the use of sanctions or dialogue, towards context specific and coordinated private and public regulatory interventions that focus on improving labor rights and standards in key export industries. Such experimental regulatory tools are rooted in what some scholars describe as governance, or sometimes “new governance” approaches to regulation (Van Den Putte & Orbie, 2015). To solve a supply chain problem, we need supply chain solutions
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