Social Clause Research Articles

Social clauses in public contracts, the Posted Workers Directive and Article 49 EC: the Rüffert Case

Social clauses in public contracts, the Posted Workers Directive and Article 49 EC: the <i>Rüffert</i> Case

Social Dumping: The Debate on a Multilateral Social Clause

Competition between countries has rapidly increased in the current context of economic globalization. Both indirect competition (through trade) and direct competition (through illegal immigration) can breed social dumping, exerting downward pressure on labor conditions in developed countries. In this paper we show the need for a social clause in order to prevent firms from illegally obtaining a comparative advantage. The adoption of a social clause, based on agreed labour rights by all signatories to ILO Conventions and on the compliance by multinationals, would eliminate social dumping. Linking labor standards and trade at the multilateral level has received a lot of criticism. Some claim that this is just another strategy to masquerade the protectionist ambitions of developed countries. We believe that it should be adopted at the multilateral level in order to favor an ethical behavior in both trade and investment. This is particularly crucial for less developed countries that have inserted themselves in the international economy. A balanced analysis of the arguments in favor and against the adoption of a social clause reveals that there is a patent need for an international harmonization of workers' rights regardless of the instruments.

L’inclusion des normes sociales à l’OMC : vrai leurre, fausse panacée ?

Labour cost gaps between developed and emerging countries justify in political discourses in France the implementation of policy measures such as tariff barriers, social VAT, and/or the inclusion of Social Clause in the WTO to protect developed economies against allegedly “dumped” imports from developing countries. We examine each of these policy measures to show that their contribution to tackling the wage gap issue between rich and poor countries would be marginal and much below politicians claims and opinion expectations.

Enhancing the effectiveness of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education to move health promotion forward

The success in recent years of many IUHPE initiatives provides cause for celebration, but also reminds us of the challenges that lie ahead. The Global Programme for Health Promotion Effectiveness provides a blueprint for how the IUHPE can effectively participate in, and lead, global networks for health. Health promotion research is well organized and productive in most of the Northern hemisphere, but important wells of health promotion knowledge in the Southern hemisphere are not widely-enough disseminated. The IUHPE needs to help liberate knowledge producers everywhere from unnecessary structures, and find innovative ways to illuminate knowledge for all to see. We have developed and proven the effectiveness of a range of technologies such as settings-based health promotion. However, the vast majority of communities are untouched, and the IUHPE needs to be a leader in finding ways to better disseminate effective health promotion practice. The IUHPE is a vigorous and effective advocate for health promotion training, practice and research. Now we need to expand our advocacy for equity in health, building on our effective work on social clauses in trade agreements and on tobacco control.

What if all trade was fair trade? The potential of a social clause to achieve the goals of fair trade

This paper focuses on one of the strategies proposed in the name of ‘fair trade’: the inclusion of social clauses in trade agreements. Although the social clauses could cover any non‐economic aspect of trade exchanges, such as environment, they are more commonly used to protect labour rights. Although examined in other disciplines, this issue is still elusive for marketers, despite its implications for this discipline. This paper attempts to answer the question: Will the inclusion of a social clause in bilateral and multilateral trade agreements help to achieve the objective of fair trade? After analysing the possibility and the effectiveness of such a social clause and examining whether the objectives attached to the social clause are coherent with those of the fair trade movement, the conclusion follows that only to some extent will the inclusion of a social clause in trade agreements help to achieve the goals of the Fair Trade movement. Since it does not aim at altering ‘unjust’ trade structures but ‘unfair’ labour practices, the social clause should be better understood as an improvement of existing Ethical Trade initiatives.

Architectural Digest for International Trade and Labor Law: Regional Free Trade Agreements and Minimum Criteria for Enforceable Social Clauses

In the past decade and a half, the negotiation of free trade agreements (FTAs) has dramatically increased. The number of party states and the range of level of development among party countries have expanded drastically. At the same time, the subject matter scope of these treaties has grown by leaps and bounds. Agreements are no longer limited to trade in goods, but increasingly cover trans-national provision of services and crossborder mobility of investment capital. Bilateral agreements are proliferating at an astounding pace, but even more significant are the agreements, much smaller in number, involving three or more countries. At the global level, the World Trade Organization (WTO), whose predecessor body began with a mandate limited to trade in goods, has now expanded into trade in services, as well as intellectual property, with frustrated efforts to add elements addressing investment and government procurement. Plurilateral agreements, such as the treaties establishing the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), combine more extensive coverage of goods, services, and capital, and constitute regional integration agreements. Separate from these types of trade-related agreements, there are international labor rights instruments binding many of the same countries, under the auspices of the

Determinants of a social clause in international trade negotiations

AbstractSurvey data are used to examine the determinants of a “social clause” in international trade negotiations. Proponents of such a clause argue that the inclusion of labor laws, environmental impacts, and other social issues in international trade negotiations would ensure fair competition, an equitable distribution of the benefits of free trade, and, in the case of labor, protect the basic rights of workers. Opponents see these arguments as a disguised form of protectionism and self‐interest based on the protection of labor‐intensive industries in developed countries. Results from a logit model indicate a decreased likelihood for the inclusion of a social clause in international trade negotiations across farm sizes. In particular the results suggest that agricultural producers with annual gross sales including government payments between US$500,000 and US$999,000, are 40% less likely to want labor laws, environmental impacts, and food safety standards to be included as part of international trade negotiations. The results also show that agricultural producers with college experience or college degrees are less likely to want these social interventions while second generation farmers and first generation farmers with a master's degree want labor laws, environmental impacts, and food safety standards to be included as part of international trade negotiations.

The International Labour Standards Regime: A Case Study in Global Regulation

The World Trade Organisation's (WTO) consistent rejection of proposals for the inclusion of a social clause into its existing rules and regulations has prompted the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to examine alternative ways in which global consensus on the regulation of labour standards can be developed. In this paper we map the failure of the social clause debate by reference to the outcome of successive WTO ministerials and we examine the role of executive leadership and related epistemic activity in the development of the international labour standards regime (ILSR). We conclude that the switch to a focus on a regime of core labour standards provides the most promising platform for progress in labour protection and an influential outcome in placing the ILO at the heart of attempts to integrate social policy into global economic governance.

EU trade policy and a social clause : a question of competences ?

After describing Europe&#8217;s position on a social clause since the seventies, this article highlight the relevance of the competence dimension for explaining Europe's (in)capacity to export core labour standards through its trade regime. We argue that the vertical integration cleavage in EU politics sheds light on Europe's evolving stance and on the difficulties to reach a clear and common position on a social clause. The article illustrates how this proposal runs up against the limits of further European integration in both the external trade (trade-related issues) and the internal social (community role in ILO labour standards) domains.

Globalization and Paradoxes of Ethical Transnational Production: Code of Conduct in a Chinese Workplace

Neo-liberal economic globalization and acceleration in information and communication technologies have strengthened the competitiveness of transnational corporations by making it easier for them to stretch their global commodity chains to developing countries. Such control from a distance threatens national states' capacity to regulate TNCs and their impact upon environment, labour and human rights in developing countries. This has prompted anti-TNC sentiments and campaigns that challenge brand-named TNCs on labour exploitation in the south. These changes have triggered discussions on setting labour standards in the international arena. With the WTO distancing itself from the ‘social clause’, this has prompted the TNCs, NGOs and other stakeholders to self-regulate by introducing codes of conduct. Concentrating on the clothing industry, this paper examines the emergence of company and multi-stakeholder codes of conduct that require the involvement of subcontractors and NGOs in developing countries. The moving of ethical codes to developing countries condenses and reproduces, under the twin pressures of competitiveness and social auditing, the paradoxes of ethical transnational production in the internal organizations of local firms. These paradoxes are demonstrated from a case study of a workplace in China. The paper ends by outlining three paradoxes and commenting on the development of a managerialist ‘audit culture’ in workplace practices as commodification of ethical code.

La libéralisation des échanges mondiaux et le respect des règles fondamentales en matière sociale : un lien controversé (Note)

At the end of the Uruguay Round talks, the social dimension to world trade liberalization is still a subject of sharp controversy. The question has come up time and again over the last fifty years, particularly in response to certain American initiatives. It never could provide common ground for the interests of all parties present on the international stage. The possibility of agreeing on its raison d'être has seemed, from that point on, impossibly vain. In a context of increasingly deeper economic integration, in which trade liberalization is not inconsequential to domestic industries, the seriousness of the worker protection issue is no longer debatable. The idea of linking the opening of markets to respect for certain basic social standards seems both unavoidable to some and unacceptable to others. The following article casts a retrospective look on the debates raised during the last few decades over what is now commonly called the "social clause".

LABOR HISTORY SYMPOSIUM

LABOR HISTORY SYMPOSIUM

Globalization, labor standards, and women's rights: dilemmas of collective (in)action in an interdependent world

This paper challenges the idea that a “social clause” to enforce global labor standards through international trade agreements serves the interests of women export workers in poor countries. Drawing on fieldwork in Bangladesh and empirical studies, the author argues that exploitative as these jobs appear to Western reformers, for many women workers in the South they represent genuine opportunities. Clearly, these women would wish to better their working conditions; yet having no social safety net, and knowing that jobs in the informal economy, their only alternative, offer far worse prospects, women cannot fight for better conditions. Moreover, global efforts to enforce labor standards through trade sanctions may lead to declining employment or to the transfer of jobs to the informal economy. Lacking measures that also address the conditions of workers in this informal economy, demands for “the social clause” will reinforce, and may exacerbate, social inequalities in the labor market.

Effects of a Humanitarian WTO Social Clause on Welfare and North-South Trade Flows

The integration of core labour standards into the WTO has been demanded mostly on either humanitarian or fair trade grounds. While both reasons can be justified theoretically, the case for integration remains unclear. Whereas the humanitarian integration of core labour standards is a question of means, the fair trade reasoning is a question of empirical relevance. This paper contributes to both questions by estimating the effects of a social clause in a standard computable general equilibrium model of world trade (GTAP). Our finding is that developed countries have little incentive for protectionist misuse of a social clause, since humanitarian trade sanctions hardly reduce their import pressure. Furthermore, even a drastic reduction of child labour in developing countries only has a marginal effect on north-south trade flows. Therefore, calls for a better enforcement of labour standards in the south to correct vertical distribution effects of world trade in the north are not supported by our findings. However, in light of possible trade liberalization-enhancing effects and only a limited danger of protectionist misuse, a multilateral humanitarian social clause could be an effective instrument for furthering the century-long global quest for better worker rights.

Seeking Social Justice through Globalization: Escaping a Nationalist Perspective

in this bold attempt to build a global social movement. The first is the North/South divide, a divide that is deepening under the impact of neo-liberal globalization. Munck devotes a separate chapter to both the North and the South. He concludes the chapter on the South by arguing that the 'social clause is viewed by many in the South as a Northern protectionist measure' (p. 183). The second faultline is the growing 'informalization' of work, especially in the South. This is a process that is becoming increasingly 'feminized'; and it threatens established trade unionism, creating a 'crisis of representation'. Munck provides a useful summary of the innovative responses by trade unions to the 'informal sector' (pp. I I -28) but makes it clear that the successful examples of organization, such as the Self-Employed Workers Association in India (SEWA), must not be seen as a trend (p. 128). This is an important, but exploratory, book that raises many questions. The first is how new is the 'new' labour internationalism and what is the relationship between the 'old' and the 'new'? Could a stronger case could be made for a new labour internationalism if detailed research were done on some of the successful campaigns (such as Rio Tinto) that draw on the new information technology and the new norms of workplace governance that have become part of the discourse of 'corporate citizenship'? What organizational examples are there of a new labour internationalism and how sustainable are they? A second, and linked question, relates to the roots of this 'new' internationalism. To what extent does this new labour internationalism emerge out of the innovative responses by trade unions in the South in their struggle for worker rights during the I970s and g98os? It is during these struggles that workers went beyond the workplace to find allies in their communities locally and internationally. Did these responses that emerged in countries such as Brazil, South Africa and Korea-the Unified Workers' Central (CUT), the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the Korean Council of Trade Unions (KCTU)-provide the foundations on which this new form of trade unionism was built?

Quelques observations sur les évolutions juridiques

While the law on labor relations has proven a certain degree of adaptability to the conditions of a world economy marked by international trade and the appearance of multinational enterprises, the challenges resulting from globalisation seem to be of another order&#160;: National labor law can no longer fully grasp the reality of internationally fragmented production, States themselves come under the pressure of regulatory competition, and economic and social conditions in- and outside the enterprise develop faster than the law evolves or than existing law can be enforced effectively. The report substantiates these propositions in a first section by explaining the development of national labor law both as regards the substance of its application to multinational enterprises and as regards the extraterritorial reach of its enforcement. In addition, transnational rules have been established, mainly by the European Union, in particular with respect to matters of employee representation. Another new phenomenon is that social partners themselves have adapted their relations to the conditions of globalisation either by voluntarily and unilaterally adopting rules of social conduct or by establishing new forms of a social dialogue. A second part of the report is devoted to the development of truly &#171;&#160;global&#160;&#187; rules of labor relations which match the territorial scope of globalized industrial activities. As an example, the report gives a historical account of the ill-fated controversies over the insertion of a &#171;&#160;social clause&#160;&#187; in the WTO-agreement, and then explains the activities which the ILO has developed more recently in order to bring States to voluntarily accept a minimum of social standards. Finally, the report points to the more promising efforts to establish binding social standards on the level of regional integration.

L'impact du SPG européen sur les pays en développement d'Asie

L&#8217;exemple de quatre pays en d&#233;veloppement d&#8217;Asie montre que le syst&#232;me de pr&#233;f&#233;rences tarifaires g &#233; n &#233; r a l i s &#233; e s (&#160;S P G&#160;) e u r o p &#233; e n n &#8217;o f f r e q u &#8217;u n e pr&#233;f&#233;rence tarifaire r&#233;duite. Cet int&#233;r&#234;t est par ailleurs encore r&#233;duit par la tendance, qui s&#8217;est fait jour lors de la r&#233;vision du syst&#232;me en 1998, &#224; multiplier les r&#233;gimes sp&#233;ciaux et &#224; &#233;tendre la graduation. Par le b i a i s d e r &#233; g i m e s s p &#233; c i a u x, l a C o m m i s s i o n europ&#233;enne a tent&#233; d&#8217;introduire dans le SPG des clauses sociales et environnementales mais s&#8217;est heurt&#233;e &#224; l&#8217;opposition des pays en d&#233;veloppement. Qui plus est, l&#8217;application de plus en plus fr&#233;quente du m&#233;canisme de graduation pourrait avoir des effets n&#233;fastes sur les &#233;changes des pays en d&#233;veloppement car il incite &#224; la fraude et peut d&#233;boucher sur un d&#233;tournement d&#8217;&#233;changes pr&#233;judiciable aux pays en d&#233;veloppement.

WTO and ‘New Issues’

The paper argues that WTO has not been functioning in a transparent manner and that the benefits of globalisation have not reached all countries. If Seattle is any indication, WTO is in fact 'a rich man's club'. Developed countries have been adopting the strategy of prying open the markets of developing countries while at the same time, erecting barriers that prevent access to markets in their countries to the products emanating from developing countries. In this regard, the paper looks at the 'new issues' that developed countries are keen to introduce into the WTO agenda through a new round of negotiations and argues that these would act as 'disguised protection'. By themselves, each of these issues represents an area of concern and interest for the developing countries, such as, investment, competition policy, environment, electronic commerce, etc. However, their relationship with trade is complex and this needs to be comprehensively examined in the first instance. The paper argues that it would, therefore, be both premature and inappropriate to agree to the inclusion of these so-called 'new issues' into the WTO agenda and that it is important to first implement commitments entered into in earlier rounds before taking on board fresh commitments. Much, in other words, could in fact be lost by overloading the WTO agenda.&#x0D; The paper also looks at the issue of labour standards, better known as 'the social clause', which some developed countries are keen to place on the WTO agenda and argues that such insistence and pressure would be counterproductive to the Multilateral Trading System as it would harm both trade and labour standards.&#x0D; This is not the time to bring more issues into the WTO. This is the time, on the eve of the next millennium, to reflect on our responsibilities to each other and to future generations, a time to review and repair. For too long, trade liberalization has been pursued as a goal in itself, regardless of its impact."&#x0D; "Millennioum Round, Game Over, No Credit Left" Friends of the Earth, 1999, The World Trade Brief, Agenda Publishers, UK.

Ética e relações internacionais: elementos de uma agenda político-cultural

As relações internacionais passaram a refletir, em ritmo crescente, a partir dos anos 1990, a exigência de moralização do espaço público. O tema da ética, já presente na agenda política interna, é incorporado no programa de ação dos organismos multilaterais e cobrado cada vez mais intensamente dos agentes políticos. Nos campos interno como externo a agenda ética contemporânea articula-se sobretudo em torno dos direitos humanos, como pauta de valores comportamentais válida de igual forma para indivíduos e coletividades, inclusive as politicamente institucionalizadas. Disso dão exemplo a política interna e externa brasileira, a tendência organizacional dos blocos regionais, como a União Européia, e a "cláusula social" tornada indispensável às relações econômicas, comerciais e financeiras.

Social dumping and relocation: is there a case for imposing a social clause?

Public opinion in Europe seems worried about the relocation of production plants toward low wage countries often accused of practicing ‘social dumping’. To reduce the incentives for relocation trade unions proposed the adoption of ‘social clauses’ protecting domestic markets from commodities produced in countries where minimal labor condition are not met. We analyze the effects of the adoption of a social clause in a vertically differentiated Bertrand duopoly. We assess how such a policy affects firms’ relocation decisions in order to be able to assess its welfare implications. We also characterize the optimal social clause policy, both under domestic welfare maximization, and from an efficiency point of view. While we show that a social clause policy cannot be dismissed on domestic (or world) welfare grounds, its case is weaker the higher is the domestic wage and the lower is the foreign wage.