Can Labor Standards Improve Under Globalization?

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Protestors now routinely fill the streets when any large, formal meeting dealing with international economic issues takes place. They express concern about the potential social and environmental costs of globalization and want negotiators to address these issues in trade agreements and international organizations. In addition, to the debate over whether and how to link labor standards to trade has led to an impasse in American trade policy for much of the past decade and the hands of US trade negotiators. Proposals to "let the market do it" or "let the International Labor Organization (ILO) do it" abound but it is less common to find any serious analysis of just how activists can galvanize consumers to demand that corporations raise labor standards in their global operations or how the ILO can become more effective. In this study, Elliott and Freeman move beyond the debate on the relative merits and risks of a social clause in trade agreements and focus on practical approaches for improving labor standards in a more integrated global economy. The authors examine both what is being done in these areas, and what more needs to be done to ensure that steady and tangible progress toward universal respect for core labor standards is made. While concluding that the ILO should have primary responsibility for labor standards, the book also suggests that the WTO should consider how to address egregious and willful violations of core labor standards if they are trade-related.

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Kimberly Ann Elliott, Research Fellow, is editor of Corruption and the Global Economy (1997) and coauthor of Reciprocity and Retaliation in U.S. Trade Policy (1994), Measuring the Costs of Protection in the United States and Japan (1994), Economic Sanctions Reconsidered (2d edition 1990), Auction Quotas and United States Trade Policy (1987), and Trade Protection in the United States: 31 Case Studies (1986). Richard B. Freeman holds the Ascherman Chair of Economics at Harvard University, and is currently serving as Faculty Co-Chair of the Harvard University Trade Union Program. He is Program Director of the National Bureau of Economic Research's Program in Labor Studies and is also Co-Director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. He has published a number of books and over 300 articles dealing with youth labor market problems, crime, higher education, trade unions, transitional economies, high skilled labor markets, economic discrimination, labor standards and globalization, income distribution and equity in the marketplace.