Abstract
Abstract This article explores the implications of the proliferation of labour provisions in free trade agreements (FTAs) in recent years. It reviews a relatively new form of empirical scholarship on the effectiveness of US and EU labour provisions. In doing so, it helps to identify a large gap between, on the one hand, the rhetoric of policymakers on the importance of such provisions and, on the other, the reality of what they achieve in practice. Reform efforts on both sides of the Atlantic are then examined to find that these also contain major deficiencies. The article therefore asks whether the ineffectiveness of the labour rights agenda in FTAs should be seen as part of a burgeoning class critique of trade policy. In the current political climate, it also suggests that the deficiencies identified, and how they should be resolved, require far greater engagement from both mainstream academia and trade policy communities.
Highlights
One telling of the trade and labour ‘linkage’ story has it following a similar trajectory to other recent trade and investment law issues discussed in this Special Issue
The article asks whether the ineffectiveness of the labour rights agenda in free trade agreements (FTAs) should be seen as part of a burgeoning class critique of trade policy
Its approach has gradually evolved over time and formalised with the signature of the European Union (EU)-Korea FTA in 2010, when the EU’s labour rights provisions were packaged together with rules concerning environmental protection in a ‘Trade and Sustainable Development’ (TSD) chapter.[20]
Summary
One telling of the trade and labour ‘linkage’ story has it following a similar trajectory to other recent trade and investment law issues discussed in this Special Issue. Deadlock at the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been followed by an upsurge in the prevalence of labour provisions within free trade agreements (FTAs). Policymakers have used the presence of ‘strong’ labour provisions in trade agreements to argue that the social consequences of trade commitments are taken seriously How are they responding, and how should they respond in the future, to the serious deficiencies in those provisions which are becoming apparent? The article starts by recalling the history of the trade and labour linkage, and how it has played out within the WTO and in the trade agendas of the major proponents for their inclusion within trade agreements It explores how, since the deadlock at the WTO, the number of trade agreements that include labour provisions have expanded greatly (Section 2).
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