*{BUILDING WORKERS’ HUMAN RIGHTS INTO THE GLOBAL TRADING SYSTEM
1999

FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
PART ONE :
THE NEED TO PROMOTE WORKERS’ RIGHTS IN
INTERNATIONAL TRADE AGREEMENTS
BASIC WORKERS’ RIGHTS IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY  . 7
DEFENDING FUNDAMENTAL TRADE UNION RIGHTS . . . 7
SETTING A MINIMUM AGE FOR EMPLOYMENT . . . .. 10
ENDING DISCRIMINATION IN EMPLOYMENT . . . . . 12
FREE TRADE OR SLAVE TRADE? . . . . . . . . .. 14
THE HUMAN RIGHTS CASE FOR A WORKERS’ RIGHTS CLAUSE . 17
PART TWO :
GLOBALISATION, POVERTY AND
DEVELOPMENT
COMPLACENCY IN THE FACE OF IMPENDING FINANCIAL MELT-DOWN .. 19
ASIA . . . . .  . . . . 19
RUSSIA AND THE CIS . .  20
LATIN AMERICA . . . . . 21
AFRICA . . . . . . . .  22
TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT.  23
TRADE AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL PERSPECTIVE .  24
THE TRADE AND GENDER PERSPECTIVE . . . . .26
TRADE AND TRANSPARENCY . .. . . . . . . . 29
PART THREE :
THE PROPOSAL FOR A WORKERS’ RIGHTS
CLAUSE
WHY DEVELOPING COUNTRIES WOULD BENEFIT MOST FROM RESPECTING
WORKERS’ RIGHTS . . . . . .  . . .  . . . . . . . . . . 31
PROMOTING PRODUCTIVITY AND ENCOURAGING
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING . . . . . . . . . . . .  33
RESISTING PRESSURE ON NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY . .. . . . 36
PROTECTING WOMEN'S RIGHTS THROUGH THE WTO . .  . . 38
TACKLING CHILD LABOUR IN A WORKERS' RIGHTS CLAUSE .  40
THE WTO WORKING ALONGSIDE THE ILO? . . . . . . . . .. 42
WORKING TOGETHER THE WTO AND ILO COULD GET COUNTRIES
TO RESPECT WORKERS' RIGHTS . . . . . . . . . .  . . . 44
HOW WTO PROCEDURES WOULD DEAL WITH WORKERS' RIGHTS
TRANSPARENTLY AND EQUITABLY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
RESOLVING TRADE TENSIONS IN A CONSTRUCTIVE WAY  . . . 47
THE WTO IS THE ALTERNATIVE TO UNILATERALISM . . . . . 47
PART FOUR :
THE CAMPAIGN FOR WORKERS’ RIGHTS IN
INTERNATIONAL TRADE AGREEMENTS
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . 49
THE HAVANA CHARTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
GATT – THE PROVISIONAL ITO . . . . ..  . . . . . . . 50
THE WTO – A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY? . .. . . . . . . 52
THE UN SOCIAL SUMMIT . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . 53
FROM COPENHAGEN TO SINGAPORE . . . . . . . . . . 56
THE SECOND MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE OF THE WTO AND THE ILO
DECLARATION . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . 57
THE GENERALISED SYSTEMS OF PREFERENCES (GSP) . . . . . 58
THE GSP OF THE UNITED STATES . . . . .  . . . . . . . 59
THE GSP OF THE EUROPEAN UNION . . .  . . . . . . . . . 59
THE NAFTA SIDE AGREEMENT ON LABOUR . .  . . . . . 60
INTERNATIONAL COMMODITY AGREEMENTS . . . . . . . 61
CODES OF CONDUCT . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
GUIDELINES FOR THE MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS .  . . . 65
PART F I V E :
THE WAY FORWARD
THE NEXT STEP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
THE RIGHT TIME FOR WORKERS’ RIGHTS . . . . 67
THE MESSAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
BUILDING ALLIANCES . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . 69
EMERGING AREAS OF CONSENSUS  . . . . . . . . . . . 70
THE ILO . . . . . . .  . . . .. . . . . . . . . 72
THE NEED FOR DIALOGUE . . . . .. . . . . . . . 72
THE NEXT WTO SUMMIT: AN OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE PROGRESS . 75
CONCLUSION . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
USEFUL ADDRESSES . . .  . . . . . . . . 80

FOREWORD
over the past fifty years, the ICFTU has generally supported
the process of reducing trade barriers through the World Trade
Organisation (WTO) and its predecessor the GATT, while always
emphasising the importance of respect for core labour standards to
allow freer trade to result in better working and living standards for
the world’s work force. However, at the present time popular support
for trade liberalisation through the WTO is extremely fragile in many
countries as evidence of rising social inequalities mounts and the pace
of adjustment in employment accelerates, particularly in the wake of
the world economic and financial crisis.

Under such circumstances, the proposals to launch a comprehensive
round of trade negotiations at the third WTO Ministerial Conference
in Seattle face considerable difficulties. Despite the general support
of industrialised country governments, prospects for a new round are
far from assured. The majority of governments of developing countries
remain unconvinced of the value of a new round. In addition,
many trade unions as well as major and influential non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) are concerned that trade liberalisation has
exacerbated income inequality and undermined democratic decisionmaking
mechanisms by national governments. Many of the organisations
which campaigned against the OECD sponsored Multilateral
Agreement on Investment (MAI) in 1998 are opposing a new round.
In this booklet you will find the ICFTU’s proposals for changing the
world economy by giving it a genuine social dimension. It contains an
extensive description of the ICFTU proposals for linking basic workers’
rights to trade liberalization through a workers’ rights clause. We
explain the rationale for the proposals and answer the critics, we
summarize the history of our campaign and we point to the next steps
forward in the run-up to the third WTO Ministerial Conference in
the USA in December 1999.

The ICFTU Campaign on Labour Standards and Trade focuses on a
short list of basic human rights at work. Aimed at preventing repression,
discrimination, forced and child labour, they are fundamental
rights which all countries regardless of their level of development can
and should apply. With these rights, the cruellest forms of exploitation
are addressed and workers have a voice, an opportunity to have
their say about their working conditions. It is a simple but powerful
demand that anybody who professes to believe in democracy and
human rights can accept. But these rights are all too often abused,
and as a result legitimate grievances and aspirations are suppressed.
I hope this booklet will be widely read by trade unionists and all who
are interested in ensuring that the world economy is founded on fair
rules as well as competition. Our arguments are making headway,
even though a lot of work still needs to be done to convince those
who have genuine doubts about the workability of our ideas. We
must build on and strengthen the acknowledged competence of the
International Labour Organization on labour standards as emphasised
in the Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at
Work adopted by consensus at the 1998 ILO Conference. We must
break down the barriers which separate the world of commerce from
the everyday concerns of working people.

1999 will be the year when governments prepare for a new round of
trade negotiations, which could be decided at the Ministerial
Conference in December 1999. They will not get far if they do not
take heed of workers’ fears that globalization is for a rich few and
promises only more insecurity for working people. They will not get
far if they do not address the need for the world trading system to
promote the development of developing countries and to ensure that
world trade is environmentally sustainable. This booklet shows how
the international community can begin to respond to the needs and
aspirations of hundreds of millions of working people in the developing
and the industrialised countries for a say in their future.

PART I
CHAPTER ONE} *partie=titre THE NEED TO UPHOLD
WORKERS’ RIGHTS IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE AGREEMENTS 
BASIC WORKERS’ RIGHTS IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY *partie=nil
Until late 1997, trade, investment and economic growth were all
booming, according to the world’s leading economic institutions the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), the OECD and the World Trade
Organization (WTO). Globalization of the world economy was stimulating
massive investments by transnational corporations (TNCs)
which acted as a dynamo to produce more jobs and higher profits
worldwide. The onset of the Asian crisis put an end to this illusion.
And somehow, the experiences of individual workers never corresponded
to this rosy view of world developments. Poverty and
inequality had been on the increase in the developing world for a long
time and growing insecurity and mass unemployment had scarred the
industrialized world for two decades or more.
These contradictions have a simple explanation - we are seeing a worsening
of the two-tier economy, with the divisions between rich and
poor widening as income distribution worsens everywhere. The world
economy is producing wealth and dividends for some but poverty and
insecurity for many others.

The recent financial and economic crisis has led to social turmoil in
several Asian countries and shown the weakness of simply pursuing
economic growth which does not take the needs and demands of civil
society into account. It has led to a serious questioning of the process
of economic growth without a social dimension.
Yet experience to date shows that the only answer countries can find
seems to be more of the same. Governments, made increasingly desperate
to increase their countries’ exports and attract foreign investment
after the Asian crisis, are finding themselves in a buyers’ market
dominated by companies who can name their price. And that price all
too often includes cheap labour, low standards and no trade unions.
Too much of global competition seems to take the form of governments
competing for the attention of companies, rather than enterprises
competing for the attention of consumers.

*partie=titre DEFENDING FUNDAMENTAL TRADE UNION RIGHTS *partie=nil 
The most recent edition of the ICFTU’s Annual Survey of Trade Union
Rights shows that 132 trade unionists were murdered in 1998. There
sucis no doubt that many of these murders took place as a result of governments’
failure to protect trade union rights and, in some cases, with
the tacit agreement of certain governments. Trade unionists in
Colombia, where 98 of their colleagues were killed during the year, say
that the security forces were implicated in many of the killings. They add
that violence against union members was never investigated.

The persecution of trade unionists in Colombia is extreme but not
unique. It is merely one example of a pattern listed throughout the
Survey: workers carrying out normal trade union activities are accused
of threatening the country’s economic progress, and then find themselves
the victims of repression by their own governments, by paramilitary
forces or by company thugs. In many countries, the trade union
movement’s scope of action is being steadily curbed by batteries of new
laws, special powers, and so-called “labour code reforms”, with trade
unionists being treated as criminals and accused of sabotage, subversion,
and even terrorism. These accusations are used to justify repressive legislation
against trade unions, or the persecution of individual trade
unionists. The Survey records over 1650 cases of union members being
harassed or injured in 1998, 3660 being arrested, and a massive 21,427
sacked for trade union activities recognized in international law and
codified by the International Labour Organization. Each year the numbers
of countries violating trade union rights is increasing - the 1998
total stood at 119 countries.

Some countries will not tolerate free trade unions at all. China is now a
powerful player on the global economic stage, with many experts predicting
it will have the biggest economy in the world within the next 25
years. There are 153 million manufacturing workers in southern China
alone powering an economy unencumbered, as the regime would see it,
by any kind of independent voice demanding higher standards or fair
wages. Many factories in China are run by the army, and the country
has an extensive system of forced labour camps where labour is unpaid.
It is difficult to see how any other government could compete with that,
no matter how tightly it restricted workers’ rights.

Yet that is what many governments seem to be doing, especially those
who are competing for foreign investment. Throughout the world, governments
are investing heavily in Export Processing Zones (EPZ), and
touting them as sources of cheap, mainly female labour where unions
are often suppressed. Some Asian leaders have tried to portray trade
unions as alien institutions that are threatening Asian culture – though
this is not a view their citizens seem to agree with, whenever they have
the liberty to organize free trade unions. In Central and Eastern Europe,
there is widespread hostility to trade unions, with governments designing
labour laws so as to frustrate, rather than encourage collective bargaining,
and to place limits on trade union activity.

An important part of the explanation for this downward pressure on
trade union rights is the global competition for trade and investment.
Rather than trade being the well-spring for the improvement of living
and working conditions through the resources provided by higher
exports, it is all too often the source of misery as governments actually
reduce workers’ rights out of their belief that minimising labour
costs is the best way to attract foreign investment and compete sucis
cessfully with countries such as China. This “beggar-thy-neighbour”
competition has effects on all countries, including the industrialized,
but it goes without saying that the countries most affected are those
developing countries genuinely seeking to protect workers’ human
rights and raise basic living standards, for these are the countries most
vulnerable at the margin to being forced out of the world market, particularly
if multinational companies close down production in order to
move to a cheaper location.

It’s hurting, but is it working? Ironically, despite so many governments’
efforts to emulate the EPZ model of development, its long-run
success is far from proven. According to the OECD , countries that
suppressed union rights did not improve their economic performances
in the long term, and “concerns expressed by certain developing countries
that core standards would negatively affect their economic performance
are unfounded”. The OECD also said that “host countries
may be able to enforce core standards without risking negative repercussions
on FDI [Foreign Direct Investment] flows”.
The conclusion is irresistible: never was so much inflicted on so many
for so little and so needlessly. A workers’ rights clause as suggested by
the ICFTU would end this downward spiral in living and working
conditions. The international labour standards we propose constitute
basic human rights for workers. We do not advocate global minimum
wages and working conditions - what we seek to stop is governments
trying to gain competitive advantage through the repression, discrimination,
and exploitation of workers, and instead to ensure that globalization
does result in gains for all workers.

*partie=titre SETTING A MINIMUM AGE FOR EMPLOYMENT *partie=nil 
Almost every country has laws against child labour, and virtually all
have signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, protecting
children from exploitation. Many countries respect this Convention as
well as ILO Convention 138 on the Minimum Age for Employment
and an increasing number are taking steps to enforce their own child
labour laws. Some are not, however; and a minority of countries is still
prepared to tolerate child labour in the belief that it will give them a
competitive edge. Of the 250 million child labourers in the world, at
least 15 million are producing goods for international markets, and
tens of millions more are making products for sale within the countries
where they work.

There is no evidence that child labour does anything other than exploit
the children and enrich a handful of unscrupulous employers. The
short term gain will easily be outweighed by the long-term damage
being done to a country’s skills base if it puts its children in factories
rather than in classrooms. In other words, today’s child labourers are
tomorrow’s unskilled and unemployed young workers. Around one
billion adults worldwide are today illiterate because they had to work
as children instead of going to school.
Opponents of a workers’ rights clause also deploy the same argument
in the case of child labour as in the case of free trade unions: they say
that child labour is a part of the culture of some countries, and that
those who want to get rid of it are trying to impose “Western values”.
But child labour is a world-wide problem, as successive reports by the
ICFTU and other organisations make clear. It exists throughout Latin
America and it exists in North America, Africa, Asia and Europe.
There is nothing “cultural” about it. Loving your children and wanting
the best for them is not a “Western value”. Families put their children
out to work because the family needs their income to survive. In
every case investigated by the ICFTU, child labour is found alongside
high adult unemployment, low adult wages and violations of union
organising rights.

The cruelties inflicted on children who work illegally are well-documented.
In Brazil children work in the tin and charcoal industries,
where they have to dig by hand for cassiterite, and as debt slaves raking
up charcoal. Some of those who have tried to escape have been
murdered.
In the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, children are locked into garment
factories for 10 - 14 hours at a time. Some of them are not even
paid, but forced to work for nothing as ‘apprentices’. In Peru, gold
prospectors buy child slaves from contractors in the Peruvian
Sierra. There are media reports of secret graves of unidentified children
in the forests, and children who have escaped tell of the treatment
they have received: girls are raped, boys are beaten; they get
just one meal a day; there is no medical service and no education;
all they do is work. A child from a carpet factory in the Indian state
of Rajasthan described the primitive medical care he and his friends
received. The employer would put turmeric paste on their fingers if
they got cut. Not for any medical reason – but to stop blood dripping
on the carpets.

In the United Kingdom unions found that 20% of 11 year olds and
25% of 12 year olds work, and 1.5 million children are thought to be
working illegally.

All these and countless other examples point to a multilateral world
problem that cannot be solved by unilateral action alone. This is not
to say that specific initiatives have no value; the ICFTU, the
International Trade Secretariats, and individual trade unions and
internationalcentres are all involved in and committed to projects designed
to stamp out specific instances of child labour. But all these initiatives
risk being undermined by the few countries who turn a blind eye to
child labour for sake of short-term competitive advantage.
The most effective way to protect children would be through a workers’
rights clause that would remove the competitive advantage from
using child labour. Countries where no effort is made to stop the abuse
and exploitation of children would become outcasts from the world
trading system – no more than they deserve - while those who are trying
to work their way out of poverty and eliminate child labour at the
same time would be given help.

The workers’ rights clause would also help eradicate child labour
because it would protect and encourage free trade unions. Trade
unions have a daily presence at the work place which ensures that
child labour will not be used. Exploitation of any sort flourishes
where organizing rights and collective bargaining rights are weak.

*partie=titre ENDING DISCRIMINATION IN EMPLOYMENT *partie=nil 
All over the world, in both industrialized and developing countries,
women workers have become the main victims of unemployment;
they are often confined to the jobs requiring the lowest skills; and most
still do not receive equal pay for work of equal value, or even equal
pay for equal work. And most of the workers in the new bastions of
the global economy – the informal sector, the export processing zones
and home working – are women.

Two ICFTU reports in recent years have logged the growing number
of women who are working. Women now make up nearly 50% of the
world’s labour market, and 35% of union members. Their contribution
to the economies of developing countries may be even higher
because of under-reporting. In Africa alone, the International Fund for
Agricultural Development (IFAD) says that women produce 70 per
cent of the food.

Yet they have paid a heavy price to get into the labour market. Many
governments, after pressure from trade unions and women’s groups,
have tried to remove inequalities. But their efforts have been undermined
by employers who still see women, especially young women, as
a source of cheap labour. Many in developing countries rely on labourintensive
industries with a predominantly female workforce to boost
their exports. To keep up with international competition, the average
wage paid to these women can be half of what men get. Some countries
even boast in advertising aimed at attracting foreign investment
about the fact that they employ women workers, pointing out that not
only are the women cheap, but they are more docile and less likely to
become trade union activists. Some multinationals, keen to escape
higher wages, stricter laws and stronger unions in the industrialized
world, have been only too happy to take advantage of such opportunities
for exploitation.

The main culprits are the factories in the export processing zones –
special zones where foreign companies are offered tax breaks and, in
many cases, exemptions from labour laws if they invest. On average,
80 per cent of the workers in these zones are women, and in Panama,
nearly 95% of them are women. They are subject to a level of abuse,
exploitation and humiliation which would cause a public scandal if it
happened in the investor’s home country. Working conditions in zones
are characterised by bullying, unpaid overtime, and often the requirement
that the women must undergo a pregnancy test before being
hired. Working hours are long and safety protection is usually poor.
The discipline is harsh and arbitrary, and sexual harassment is a common
problem. The ICFTU report quotes the case of a young
Salvadorian woman who died after an attack of gastro-enteritis for
which her employer refused her treatment. Another woman working
at a Korean factory in the same country was beaten so badly by a
supervisor that she suffered a miscarriage.

These women have been forsaken by their own governments. Once
they start work in the zones, they are often beyond the protection of
their national laws. Nor do they find it easy to protect themselves.
Trade unions are nearly always denied access to the zones, and women
who try to join or form unions face, at best, dismissal, and, at worst,
persecution. For example, in the San Pedro de Marcoris EPZ in the
Dominican Republic, Ingrid Bastado and Carmen Rosaria tried to set
up a union in a textile factory. Their initiative did not go unnoticed, as
one night they were attacked with clubs, leaving them seriously
wounded. Ingrid Bastado was pregnant.

Countries with higher standards cannot hope to compete fairly with
the export processing zones. Whatever advantage the zones bring is
only temporary: South Korea, for example, once benefited from its
low wages, but it soon found itself undercut by workers in countries
like Indonesia, China, Sri Lanka or Vietnam. The only real winners in
this game are the transnational corporations which can move from
country to country as soon as the going gets too expensive.
This is a problem that will have to be tackled internationally by a
workers’ rights clause. Nearly all the countries in the world have
signed up to the ILO convention on discrimination in employment.
Nearly all of them were represented at the United Nations Fourth
World Women’s Conference in Beijing in 1995. There is a clear 
national commitment to ending the injustices inflicted on women; and
a clear need to end the unfair competition that is threatening to undermine
what has already been achieved, and what women in many countries
are striving to achieve.

A workers’ rights clause would help women to join together in trade
unions to protect themselves; and it would make it clear to every country
and every transnational corporation that exploiting women was no
longer economically viable.

*partie=titre FREE TRADE OR SLAVE TRADE? *partie=nil 
The media image of the global economy is of a technology-driven,
high-production free market gearing itself up for the 21st century. But
how free is a market that tolerates forced labour?
In August 1998 the International Labour Organisation published a
report Forced Labour in Myanmar (Burma). The 400 page report,
which was the result of a two year investigation, showed widespread
and systematic use of forced labour by Burma’s ruling military junta,
and concluded that the violations were so serious as to constitute
crimes under international law.

The ICFTU and Amnesty International were able to corroborate the
report’s findings with film footage shot clandestinely inside Burma,
which showed children and women unloading heavy sacks of cement
from a barge, building roads under soldiers’ supervision in Rangoon,
working on an irrigation site in Mandalay City, as well as men displaying
horrendous scars suffered after extended portering for the
army in the Burmese jungle. All people carrying out this work did so
as slaves.

The ILO’s report also charged that the practice of forced labour often
gives ‘rise to extortion of money ... threats to the life and security and
extrajudicial punishment of those unwilling to comply, which could
range from money demands to ... beatings, torture, rape and murder’.
Since 1994, Burma’s military dictatorship, the State Law and Order
Restoration Council (SLORC) has been building a railway line that
will connect the town of Ye in the southern part of Mon state, to
Tavoy. The railway will be used to transport troops to and from a
pipeline linking huge natural gas deposits in the Gulf of Martaban
with customers in Burma and Thailand. The pipeline itself is alleged
to have been built under similar conditions. Thousands of villagers
have been thrown off their land to make way for the pipeline, and
thousands of others have been press-ganged into working on the project.
The total value of the project is estimated at over $12 billion.

Foreign companies involved include the French-based TOTAL-FINA,
and the US-based UNOCAL.

The workers are supervised by armed guards. They have to forage for
their own food and firewood. Hundreds have died of cholera, and
countless others have been beaten and tortured by the guards.

Following the publication of the ILO report, the ICFTU once more
called on multinational companies to disinvest from the country as
long as the army remained in power, as they could no longer claim
ignorance of Burma’s disastrous human rights’ record.

Burma is an extreme case, but it is not the only offender. Forced labour
exists in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere in Asia.
In 1993, the ILO said that “Pakistan is beset with some of the most
critical problems in the world in terms of forced labour”. Forced
labour is used in several sectors, including the brick kilns (where
whole families are enslaved), carpet-weaving, shoe-making and agriculture.
The problem is caused by a loan system, known as bonded
labour, under which outstanding debts bind the creditor to the debtor.
The interest is so high that the debt is passed on through generations,
and in fact, is never paid off. The employer gets free labour not just
for life but for several lives, with whole families working to repay the
debt.

Several of the products made using this kind of labour find their way
onto world markets, and it is the international connection that
enabled the trade union movement and human rights groups to take
action.

In the cases of Burma and Pakistan, the ICFTU, the relevant
International Trade Secretariats and the European Trade Union
Confederation (ETUC) have framed complaints about forced labour
under the European Union’s Generalized System of Preferences (GSP).
This allows preferential access to certain goods from developing countries
into the EU’s markets, and makes such access conditional upon
respect for basic workers’ rights as set out in ILO conventions. As a
result of the trade union complaint, Burma was formally suspended
from the European Union’s GSP in March 1997.

Withdrawal or the threat of withdrawal of GSP benefits can contribute
to eradicating forced labour. But in a global economy, any such system
has to have global coverage.

Burma’s efforts to secure its membership of the Association of South East
Asian Nations (ASEAN) show how international approval does matter to
repressive regimes. Other ASEAN countries argued that the SLORC
would modify its behaviour after joining the club. But the opposite has
happened. The ICFTU says that it has treated its membership as a “license
to increase repression”, sentencing an activist of the Free Trade Unions of
Burma (FTUB) to life imprisonment on trumped-up charges of terrorism
and other pro-democracy activists to long jail terms.
A workers’ rights clause would turn countries like Burma into outlaw
states. But it would have enough flexibility to help countries that were
genuinely trying to deal with the problem of forced labour, while
removing the economic incentives that make forced labour so attractive
to unscrupulous employers and foreign buyers.

*partie=titre THE HUMAN RIGHTS CASE FOR A WORKERS’ RIGHTS CLAUSE *partie=nil 
The moral case for a workers’ rights clause is unanswerable.
Globalization promises a great deal, but delivers insecurity and cruelty
to millions. The world cannot tolerate an economic system that depends
on repression for profit; that exploits children and young women; and
that makes slavery a sound business option. A workers’ rights clause
would create the potential for a different future, one that creates a basis
for really achieving workers’ rights and economic development and
growth on the basis of respect for human rights and improvement in living
and working conditions for all world citizens.

The international community already agrees that the global economy
needs global regulation. That is the whole basis for the World Trade
Organization; for international standard-setting; for laws banning the
manufacture and sale of counterfeit goods and protecting intellectual
property; and for the environmental initiatives following on from the
Earth Summit. Many of the mechanisms set up to enforce these regulations
are expensive for the companies to operate, and operate across the
jurisdiction of nation-states.

There seems no justification for global regulation to protect property
rights, while claiming that the same type of international regulation
cannot operate to protect basic human and trade union rights.
But what of the economic case? What of the accusation that a workers’
rights clause is a protectionist device designed to safeguard
Western workers from the more competitive and efficient developing
countries? This is the argument we confront in Chapter Three. First,
we look at some of the other development, environment, democracy
and gender issues which have so far been undermined or neglected by
the world trading system.

*{PART II}
*partie=titre THE PROPOSAL FOR A WORKERS’ RIGHTS CLAUSE 
COMPLACENCY IN THE FACE OF IMPENDING FINANCIAL
MELT-DOWN *partie=nil 
Globalisation isn’t all that it was cracked up to be. Most people now
agree it has failed to deliver overall benefits for everyone.
The past three years have seen the worst financial crises since the
years of Depression in the 1930s. Asia, Russia, and Latin America
have or are facing financial crises. Africa is experiencing a fall in
growth and a setback to prospects for employment and poverty
reduction. Look at what has happened in the name of globalisation.

*partie=titre Asia *partie=nil 
Asia’s economic and social catastrophe began in the summer of
1997, when Thailand had to stop shoring up its currency the baht,
against the dollar. As it plunged downwards, the Thai curency
dragged those of Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea with it. The
main cause of this crash was the bursting of the speculative bubble
precipitated by a lack of transparency and the vested interests of the
region’s elites. From a financial crisis, it became an economic and a
social crisis which engulfed whole swathes of the region’s economies,
plunging millions of people into abject poverty. The cause of the
financial crisis in the region was the single-minded pursuit of financial
liberalisation, without a proper regulatory framework to prevent
mismanagement, speculation and corruption. This was combined
with social neglect and repression of basic human rights, while
governments left the responsibility for managing their economies to
financial markets.

Thailand, Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines
and the People’s Republic of China have all been affected. In all these
countries the most vulnerable are having to suffer the worst effects.
In Thailand and Indonesia, families are sending their children and
grandparents to scavenge on rubbish tips, while the adults search for
casual labour. A recent World Bank report said that the effect of the
crisis had been worse for female workers since they worked in many
of the sectors which were dependent on international finance.
Women in several sectors were often the first to be thrown out of
work, and growing poverty resulted in a disproportionate number of
girls being withdrawn from school.

In Indonesia, which is the world’s fourth largest nation, half of the
population is now living on an income below the poverty line, and
the minimum wage is equivalent to 2.6 kilograms of rice.
Migrant workers are another vulnerable group affected by the crisis.
There is tension in the main host contries of migrant workers, especially
Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, because of the large numbers
of unemployed migrant workers, who do not want to return to
their country of origin because of the lack of job opportunities there.
From the other side, the Philippines, one of the main countries which
supplies migrant workers in the region, is finding itself with high
unemployment because of the forced return of migrant workers.
The political response to the crisis was inadequate. The situation
worsened as millions of workers did not benefit from even minimal
social safety nets. In one report to the WTO, the ICFTU stated that
‘the financial crisis has revealed the short-comings of the pursuit of
economic development at the expense of broadly based social development
targeted at reducing poverty.’

*partie=titre Russia and the CIS *partie=nil 
In Russia a new elite has built massive fortunes from privatisation
and the growth of a largely unregulated financial sector. Individuals
have transferred a large proportion of their assets into foreign currency
accounts in Switzerland and Cyprus, while 50% of the
Russian workforce is not receiving regular wages. In many areas a
barter economy has replaced one based on currency, as millions of
Russian workers have been paid in kind - coffins, can openers and
manure are just some of the more bizarre examples.
A worrying addition to this phenomena is the growing number of
children who are now working in Russia in order to help their families
to survive.

*partie=titre Latin America *partie=nil 
Latin America has been hard hit by natural as well as man-made disasters
in recent months. Hurricanes Mitch and Georges have devastated
entire regions, justifying the appeals of the local communities
for international assistance and debt relief. At the beginning of this
year there was a threat that natural disasters would be followed by
an economic crisis as the Brazilian Real was halved in value and
there were massive currency shifts out of the country.
In Brazil the social cost has been high, interest rates were hiked to
45% in the wake of their devaluation, unemployment is rising, and
the education budget has been cut by 10% and the health budget by
6%.

Even before the crisis, the International Monetary Fund acknowledged
that Brazil had one of the world’s worst records for social justice.
According to the barometer used by eocnomists to measure the
rate of inequality - the Gini index - Brazil is top of the league with a
rate of 0.59, far higher than the Asian average of between 0.35 and
0.39. And the crisis is bound to create further inequality.

*partie=titre Africa *partie=nil 
Of the 45 countries classified by the United Nations as least developed,
32 are in Africa. These 32 countries account for about 46 per
cent of the total continental population, but only about 16 per cent
of its GDP. More than half of the 360 million people in Eastern and
Southern Africa live on less than $1 a day, four years after their leaders
committed themselves to eradicating poverty at the World
Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995.
These people are also affected by structural adjustment programmes,
many of which were brought in as a condition of loans
from international financial institutions, which had to lend to countries
after former dictators left having milked the country dry of all
their resources. The massive foreign bank deposits of ex-President
Mobutu in the - now renamed - Democratic Republic of Congo provide
an example of this phenomenon.

Many of these countries have found themselves owing debts hundreds
of times their annual earnings, which they have absolutely no
chance of repaying. To deal with this the Highly Indebted Poorest
Countries (HIPC) initiative was brought in to reduce and in some
cases to write-off the debt. However, its implementation has been
very slow and disappointing. The $7 billion promised mainly to
African debtors over the next four years contrasts starkly with the
$100 billion loans mobilised for Asia over just one year.

*partie=titre TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT *partie=nil 
Given the present world economic crisis, most developing countries
feel lukewarm, at best, at the prospect of a new round of WTO negotiations.
They know that as things stand at the moment, they will
find it hard to make their views count. Low-income developing
countries have little negotiating strength in the WTO process.
Two-thirds of ICFTU affiliates come from these countries and the
ICFTU is very much aware of those trade unions’ concerns about a
new round. If developing countries are to support the new WTO
round, they need effective guarantees that they will benefit from it.
The ICFTU proposes that a new WTO Negotiating Group on
‘Treatment of Developing Countries’ be set up in the new Round.
This would review the WTO’s current mechanisms and functioning
in order to make it more flexible in dealing with the needs of developing
countries, especially the Least Developed Countries, and in
protecting their rights. WTO industrialised country members will
have to make a much greater financial commitment to assist developing
countries so that they can obtain a positive impact from trade.

The ICFTU advocates the following measures for developing countries:
• a much more generous financial commitment from the industrialised
country members of the WTO to help developing countries, including
trade assistance programmes that are gender-sensitive;
• assistance in using the trade disputes mechanism of the WTO;
• the use of capital controls to prevent financial destabilisation;
• the opening up of world trade in agricultural products;
• strengthened provisions on food security in the WTO Agreement on
Agriculture, with attention to the situation of women agricultural producers;
• renegotiation of the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights
(TRIPs) Agreement to provide improved protection for developing
countries, especially LDCs, including exemptions for life-saving drugs
and particular regard to the problems of indigenous peoples and rural
communities;
• urgent removal of tariffs and import quotas for least developed countries
respecting core labour standards;
• acknowledgement of the need for a multifaceted development strategy
which stimulates internal demand at the same time as export
production while maintaining food security.

These measures would provide developing countries with some
assurance that their interests will be taken into account in the new
WTO negotiating round.
Furthermore, the ICFTU supports the NGO Jubilee 2000 initiative
on debt relief. It agrees that the process must be speeded up to provide
debt relief for all potential qualifying countries by the year
2000. Large scale concerted action is essential to avert the risks of a
deep and long world recession, through :
• a major increase in financial assistance to the developing and
transition countries in the front-line of the crisis, targeted on
social programmes and the restructuring of private and public
debt;
• substantial reforms to the architecture of the global financial system;
• a coordinated cut in interest rates across the OECD countries;
• support for the building of democratic institutions and the principles
of good governance, including the respect for fundamental
workers rights; and
• a determined drive to eradicate poverty.

*partie=titre TRADE AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL PERSPECTIVE *partie=nil 
Since the Singapore WTO Conference various other factors have
become central to the debate. The first concerns the environment.
The presence of smog which obscured the sky over much of
Indonesia and Malaysia during autumn 1997, brought home to
people the importance of controlling the rape of the environment by
the race for a quick buck.

The WTO lacks any legal clarity to make sure that its trading regulations
are compatible with trade provisions of multilateral environmetal
agreements such as the UN Convention on Climate
Change (UNCCC). In other words, countries which agree to comply
with targets for reducing ozone or greenhouse gases risk being
found guilty of trade discrimination because they are not in line
with trading regulations of the WTO.

At successive UN Environmental meetings like the Commission
Sustainable Development (CSD), where the trade union delegation
is a strong force, trade unionists have been forcing home the point
that ensuring sustainable development depends, to a very large
extent, on respecting core labour standards. One way to reduce
greenhouse gases is for trade unions to work with employers to
achieve agreed targets at workplaces, and to promote political support
for other measures within their communities around the world.

It was a major success for the trade union movement when, in
1998, the CSD defined a sustainable workplace as one that repected
all the core labour standards. This definition was stated again at
the Commission for Sustainable Development in April 1999.
In addition, the ILO has developed a body of sustainable development
indicators which link health, safety and environment issues
with core labour standards, which have been used extensively at the
CSD.

The WTO Committee on Trade and Environment needs to be
strengthened. While the WTO Committee has provided an important
forum for discussion since it was set up in 1994, it has so far
not made sufficient progress in harmonising emerging global rules
on the environment with trade policy.

Environmental concerns need to be mainstreamed throughout the
WTO, and this should be done in Seattle by establishing a formal
WTO Negotiating Group on ‘Environmental Protection and Trade’.
Formal recognition is needed of the importance of the precautionary
principle in environment and health-related trade questions,
including preventing hazards at work.

The ICFTU has stressed how important trade unions can be in protecting
the environment. Not only are they crucial to worker
involvement, they are in a strong position to facilitate education
and communication as well as to intervene with governments and
employers as well as other stakeholders.

*partie=titre THE TRADE AND GENDER PERSPECTIVE *partie=nil 
The absence of social considerations in WTO negotiations to date
has meant that WTO procedures and mechanisms proceed as if trade
was gender-neutral. Therefore, in spite of the fact that hundreds of
millions of women work in export sectors or are affected by trends
in international trade, no attention was paid in the Uruguay Round,
or so far in any part of the WTO work programme, to the gender
implications of trade liberalisation. As a result, trade policies that
are not gender sensitive adversely affect women and increase the
gender segmentation of the labour market. For example the expansion
of export processing zones and clothing, textiles and light manufacturing
industries has generally been based on low-wage female
labour working in unacceptably bad conditions, often without any
protection of their right to organise into trade unions.

In other countries, traditional agricultural products mainly produced
by women often cannot compete with imported goods when trade
barriers are reduced, as has been shown by work of the Informal
Working Group on Gender and Trade (IWGGT). This can also result
in decreased food security. The reduction in revenue when import
tariffs are reduced frequently results in fewer public services, which
tends to have its most negative effects on women who depend on services
such as health care, child support, maternity assistance payments
and so on. Local producers, often women, may be replaced by
TNCs. Export promotion measures, including subsidies and access
to credit, may also adversely affect women’s income and employment
positions.

According to the ILO ‘Since the 1980s women have been providing
the bulk of all new labour supply in most regions of the world.
However, although women’s employment has been growing they still
have higher unemployment rates than men and far outnumber men
among the poor and the underemployed....Women are crowded into
low-skilled, low-status, low-paid and atypical jobs under precarious
forms of employment arrangements.’

Women’s labour is the staple of the burgeoning export zones, which
now number over 850. The expansion of these zones has generally
been based on low-wage female labour, in unacceptably bad conditions,
without any protection to organise into trade unions. ICFTU
reports have described how some countries deliberately advertise
these zones as places where women can be ‘bought’ very cheaply to
carry out work, often in the textile or electronics sector. For example
a recent campaign to encourage investors described Salvadorian
women as ‘submissive, hard-working, skilful and non-unionised’.
This, they believe, gives a country competitive edge over rivals.
However, although the combination of direct investment, employment
and technology transfer are presumed to stimulate development
of the host country, there is virtually no link between the EPZ
and the economy of these countries.
Export zones were originally established in Central and South-East
Asia. They have now gained a foothold in all regions of the world,
particularly in Africa and in Central and Eastern Europe. According
to the ILO, women, who represent 90% or more of the EPZ work
force in the textile, clothing and electronic assembly sectors, suffer
more disadvantages than men, long working days, low wages, lack
of social facilities and the often arduous nature of the work.

However, it is clearly not simply in the Export Processing Zones that
women are discriminated against at work. Women, who make up the
bulk of public service workers, have also felt the effects of the recession.
The public sector is a sector where there have been major cutbacks.
For example in Russia, and in the rest of the former Soviet Union,
state coffers are empty. Public expenditure on education has been
slashed, basic social services have stopped and the public sector has
collapsed. In 1997, even though women comprised 53% of the population
of the Russian Federation, they represented 70% of the jobless
total.

In practical terms as well, women’s share of unpaid work, mainly in
the home, has grown. Once again women are finding themselves
confined to a gender-based system of dividing labour where the man
is the ‘powerful’ one, the ‘breadwinner’ and women have become
entirely responsible for the family, bringing up the children and
doing all the housework.
The 7th ICFTU World Women’s Conference, which took place in
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in May this year (1999) took as its theme
Women in the 21st Century: Demanding our Space, Taking our
Place. The discussion at the Conference centred round how to
change the face of globalisation so that it responds to women's
needs. Current research shows that of the 1.3 billion people living in
poverty worldwide, more than 70% of them are women and girls.
As part of the trade union lobbying of the WTO, the ICFTU is cooperating
with NGOs and other social groupings to defend the interests
of women workers. It is also part of the Informal Working
Group on Gender and Trade (IWGGT) which comprises more than
30 women’s groups.

It submitted a Declaration on Gender and Trade to the WTO’s
Second Ministerial Conference in Geneva, drawing attention to the
way in which trade liberalisation adversely effects women. For
example, it stressed that when social service provision is reduced, the
burdens are shifted on to the household, and inevitably, to the
woman. The statement also drew attention to the way in which, historically,
the expansion of trade has been based on access to low
wage female labour.

Fundamental to defending the working standards of women, is the
ban on any form of discrimination against women, a ban which is
central to the objectives of equality and development which were
defined at the 4th United Nations’ Women’s Conference in Beijing
1995, in which the ICFTU played an active part.
As a follow-up to Beijing, the ICFTU is continuing to call on governments
to respect the pledges they made there. It will also be taking
an active part in the UN General Assembly debate "Women 2000
-Gender equality, development and peace for the 21st Century"
which takes place in June 2000 .

Because of growing pressure for women’s groups to make globalisation
adapt to women’s needs, there is likely to be a demand at the
Third WTO Ministerial that these issues are clearly addressed within
the WTO, and that gender concerns must be mainstreamed within
the WTO’s structure. One way to do this is for the WTO to build
into its functions the respect of the core labour standards on discrimination
- Convention 100 on equal pay, and Convention 111 on
discrimination.

*partie=titre TRADE AND TRANSPARENCY *partie=nil 
The last factor to surface has been an increasing impatience from the
world outside the WTO with the undemocratic mechanisms of the
organisation. Among the measures to begin opening up the WTO are
efforts to involve NGOs more directly. One move has been to open
up its website to contributions from NGOs.

However, the WTO system still needs to become much more democratic.
It needs to set up proper channels for involving trade unions
and other democratic representatives of civil society, and it needs to
recognise that they have legitimate concerns.

A proper consultative process should be established to ensure that
international union, business and other non-governmental organisations
can present their views to WTO committees and discuss issues
of mutual concern with trade ministers, on occasions such as WTO
Ministerial Conferences. The WTO General Council should furthermore
take immediate measures to improve public access to information
emanating from the WTO. This should entail automatic derestriction
of documents except under exceptional circumstances.

The WTO’s dispute settlement procedures need to be opened up for
public information and involvement. The relevant civil society
groups concerned by any dispute settlement process should be able
to engage in direct participation in the procedures. There should be
a swift public release of the findings and conclusions of disputes settlement
procedures.

Developing countries, too, find it hard to participate in the WTO
system. A much more generous financial commitment is needed from
the industrialised country members of the WTO to enable developing
countries to better participate in the process. A package of financial,
technical and legal assistance needs to be made available to
developing countries, especially the least developed, to assist them in
capacity-building so as to maximise the benefits of their participation
in the global trading system. Many developing country members
of the WTO should also be provided further assistance to help them
to take a full part in the technical negotiations involved in areas such
as intellectual property rights and investment measures.
The global economy needs global rules. Although it could be a powerful
mechanism for dynamic development, it can also lead to the
exclusion and marginalisation of millions of ordinary citizens.
Achieving progress on development, environment, gender, transparency
and international workers’ rights and trade is one of the
keys to the future of the world trading system.

*{PART III}
*partie=titre WHY DEVELOPING COUNTRIES WOULD BENEFIT MOST FROM
RESPECTING WORKERS’ RIGHTS THE PROPOSAL FOR A WORKERS' RIGHTS CLAUSE *partie=nil 
The accusation most commonly leveled against those campaigning for
linking trade and workers’ rights is that it is an attack on the up-andcoming
developing countries by the hidebound economies of the West.
However, competition is not simply between developing countries
and industrialized countries. Low-wage economies are in direct competition
not with countries producing high value-added goods, but
with other low-wage countries. And the labour on the other side of
the border will always be cheaper.

The world’s financiers have developed an investment strategy where
out of $100 billion for all the developing world, China alone gets $38
billion and all of Africa gets just $5 billion. The attractions of China
are obvious. There, the labour isn’t just cheap; some of it is free. The
country has a vast network of labour camps. Whole factories are
being run by the army. Who can compete with that?

Developing countries struggling to emerge from economic crisis,
many of which have governments which would genuinely wish to
raise working and living conditions, are in a difficult position to compete
with other countries with development models based on Export
Processing Zones – where cheap labour, use of young female workers
and, often, lack of union rights are among the main selling points.
Unfettered competition leads to a race to the bottom. Without a
mechanism to link core labour standards to the world trading system
such as a workers’ rights clause, this is the shape of things to come
for low-wage economies.

Many developing countries aren’t even at the starting gate. Countries
in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America are still struggling to
emerge from the economic crisis of the 1980s and have so far been
excluded from the benefits of globalization.
Those who have aren’t getting the return they deserve. Around the
world, income and wage inequalities continue to expand with societies
polarized between those who have the wealth or skill to gain
from global integration and those who remain trapped in poverty
without productive employment or basic labour standards.
Apart from a handful of countries, the investments made in Export
Processing Zones have generally failed to spill over into the rest of the economy.

Anyone from a developing country who harbours doubts about this
should look at what has happened in the merchant shipping sector
since the Flag of Convenience system started. The system allows shipowners
to register their vessels in countries which allow low wages
and standards. Flags of convenience exist specifically for the purpose
of enabling shipping companies to avoid national taxation, social,
safety and environmental legislation, and they have resulted in an
industry which is largely outside the influence of national legislation.
By providing OECD country shipowners with easy access to exploited
labour they have also seriously impeded the development of effective
domestically owned shipping industries in most developing coun-
tries. The system has undermined safety standards at sea, and it has
kept wages in the industry down. But while it has undoubtedly helped
the shareholders of many of the world’s shipping fleets, it has bought
no long-term benefits to the countries that have sought to exploit it
for obvious reasons: first, European seafarers were cheaper than
American; then Asians were cheaper than Europeans; now Eastern
Europeans are cheaper than some Asians, and some Asians are cheaper
than other Asian

And there are some developing countries which have never bought in
to the model of progress through exploitation. Mauritius, which has
used its Export Processing Zones to develop an impressive industrial
base, has emphasized the improvement of skills and working conditions
of its workforce. A Director of a Mauritian promotional agency
for the zones has stated: “It is not our aim to attract foreign
investors with cheap labour. In the long term, it is always counterproductive,
because unskilled workers produce goods with no value
added which do not sell well on the export market” . In Mauritius
too, however, trade unions continue to be excluded from most EPZs
because unions are denied access to the workplace premises by the
employers. This is particularly regrettable because the experience in
those EPZs in Mauritius where there are unions is that employers and
unions in EPZs are quite able to forge a mutually rewarding longterm
relationship, to the benefit of the workers and of higher productivity.
The Philippines is another country where there have been some positive
experiences of unions organising, against immense odds, within
free trade zones. In November 1998, another union agreement was
signed in the economic zone of Victoria Wave near Manila City.
International rules which protect workers rights help governments
which do respect workers rights, against those which don't. Without
an international framework of rules governments which allow their
workers to be exploited will, in effect, be rewarded. For example the
carpet industry in Nepal has been severely affected by competition
from India, where carpets are produced with a high degree of child
labour, and are cheaper.

*partie=titre PROMOTING PRODUCTIVITY AND ENCOURAGING COLLECTIVE 
BARGAINING *partie=nil 
Much of the concern about a workers’ rights clause is the result of a
misunderstanding about what a workers’ rights clause is and how it
would work. A workers’ rights clause is protective – it will help protect
workers and children from exploitation – but it is not protectionist.
Its aim is not to undermine economic competition, but to
enhance it by removing unfair advantages. It will not restrict free
trade, but will bring more people into the global economy. And it will
work to close, rather than to widen, the gap between the developing
and the developed world.

The aim of a workers' rights clause is to ensure that companies which
trade agree to abide by seven basic rights, and these rights proposed
by the international trade union movement are among the most highly
ratified of the International Labour Office (ILO). Six of the seven
have been ratified by over 120 states. Universal adherence to these
would not alter developing countries’ legitimate comparative advantage
but prevent the most extreme forms of cut-throat competition
and exploitation.

What is crucial about the rights to organise and bargain is that they
are enabling rights. They give workers and employers the means to
negotiate improvements in wages and working conditions as trade
and development expand.

In those negotiations, workers would obviously take note of how
their employer was doing and how much their country could afford;
negotiations don’t take place in an economic vacuum. Unlike fly-bynight
transnationals who are only interested in making cheap goods
for a quick profit, workers have a long-term interest in their country’s
prosperity. They would expect a fair share when things are going
well; and if they were allowed a genuine say in economic policy, they
would be more likely to accept and carry out difficult decisions when
there were problems.

There is no possibility that a workers’ rights clause would bring about
an international minimum wage that will drive the industries in poor
countries to bankruptcy; split the world market into two camps and
undermine global free trade. No one can seriously suggest that giving
workers in the developing world the basic rights enshrined in a workers'
clause will lead to their wage costs spiraling up to European levels. It just
won’t happen. Developing countries will still be able enjoy comparative
advantages from their abundant supply of labour. All that will happen
is that governments will not be able to keep these costs down by
oppressing their workers; and transnational corporations will not be
able to bully countries into competitive repression.
In any event, it is not true that low wages will give countries a guaranteed
competitive edge. Labour costs obviously figure in the final
price of any product entering the world market. The exact weight of
labour costs, however, depends on productivity; a poor country with
low per capita income and low wages may still not have much competitive
advantage on world markets because of low productivity.

Likewise high wages matched by high productivity may make the
output of rich countries very competitive.
The best way for developing countries to guarantee prosperity is to
base their economies on high productivity and high skills; and the
best way to do this is to allow workers and employers to set high
standards, and fair wage levels. It makes sense that as trade and productivity
grows, wages and other conditions of work also rise as
national conditions permit, rather than be kept down by exploitation
and repression.

Cheap labour is not all that developing countries have to offer the
world. Not only is that an insulting picture of their economies; it is
also inaccurate. To take just one example, India turns out 250,000
science graduates a year. Many of the world’s leading companies are
hiring Indian computer programmers to write their software and to
process their data. Cost is a factor; but so are skill-levels. This is the
kind of competition developing countries will have to offer in the
information age. A workers’ rights clause will give them the space to
do that by easing the constant downward pressure on standards
brought about by the present system.

It is surprising that the arguments against workers’ rights in the WTO
are being put forward with such fervour by governments in the developing
world; and it is interesting that this view is not shared by the
citizens of these countries. Workers in the developing world make up
some of the most committed members of trade union organizations;
their women workers are among the most passionate advocates of
equal treatment; and the campaign against child labour and forced
labour has strong roots in the developing countries.
Countries that take the high road to development will become more
efficient, more competitive and more prosperous as long as their
efforts are not undermined by countries who try to cut corners by
exploiting their citizens. A workers’ rights clause will help close off
the short cuts.

*partie=titre RESISTING PRESSURE ON NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY *partie=nil  

Another concern is that pushing for workers' rights which have universal
application will weaken the national sovereignty of developing
countries; and it will undermine their national culture by imposing
“Western values” on traditional societies. But the notion that a workers’
rights clause would violate national sovereignty is simply not
true. In today’s global economic environment, national sovereignty is,
anyway, something of a myth.

How much national sovereignty does a country have when it dare not
protect its own citizens’ trade union rights for fear that foreign
investors will shut down their factories and pull out? How much
power does it have when it feels compelled to put areas of its own territory
off-limits to its own laws in Export Processing Zones? What’s
left of parliamentary accountability when citizens going into those
zones have to surrender their rights in order to get a job in their own
country?

The real beneficiaries of the current world trading system are not the
developing countries, but the transnational corporations - TNCs. Out
of the 100 top economies in the world, only 49 are countries. The rest
are TNCs.

The combined sales of the world’s top 200 corporations surpass the
combined economies of 182 countries - every country on earth minus
the nine biggest. Annual sales by the foreign affiliates of transnational
corporations of $7 trillion now exceed total exports of $6 trillion.
These corporations have almost twice the economic clout of the poorest
four-fifths of humanity. They control well over a quarter of the
world’s economic activity. But nobody effectively controls them other
than their management - often not even their shareholders.

Many of these increasingly powerful and mobile TNCs can play one
country off against another in search of the best deal. The long-term
value of the kind of investment some of them are offering is questionable;
they will pull out at the slightest economic shock or change
in the regulatory environment; and they are unlikely to develop
strong links with the rest of the economy. This problem is especially
acute in low-skill industries such as garments and footwear, where
exit costs are low.

Unregulated, the labour market in the global economy will become
nothing more than a vast shopping mall for the TNCs, with countries
forced to cut their costs to bargain-basement levels.
The reality is that much sovereignty has already been surrendered and
policy is being shaped to an increasing extent by the demands of the
global market. The issue is not whether but how policy will be determined
internationally - by the market alone or with some real participation
from representative institutions.

A workers’ rights clause will help bring the TNCs under the rule of
law. It will create an environment where countries can compete without
fear, and where companies can invest for the long term.A workers’
rights clause would provide something of a counterweight to the
enormous economic muscle of TNCs.

A workers’ rights clause would be based on core labour standards,
and enforced within countries in the same way. This would put
sovereignty back where it belongs: with the people, rather than with
the TNCs or with the repressive governments which are often ready
to sacrifice the interests of their own people for the sake of profits.
A workers’ rights clause would give countries a powerful weapon
with which to assert their independence against the pressures of international
trade and investment.

*partie=titre PROTECTING WOMEN'S RIGHTS THROUGH THE WTO *partie=nil 
Often the expansion of trade is based on access to low wage female
labour. Historically trade liberalisation in the least developed countries
has tended to increase women's employment in labour intensive
industries like manufacturing of electronics, clothing and textiles.
Manufacturing plans are often located in special Export Processing
Zones, where stands of health and safety are low, working hours are
extremely long and workers have no rights to organise.

The ICFTU recently sent a researcher to study the flower producing
export sectors in Colombia and Uganda. Here, flower workers suffered
miscarriages and had been blinded because of the use of toxic
chemicals - banned in industrialised countries and shipped abroad -
in flower sprays. Garment workers in Bangladesh suffer gastric
ulcers, backaches, eyestrain and urinary infections because of their
poor working conditions, which include long hours, poor working
conditions, and lack of adequate sanitary facilities.

Women in maquiladoras in Central America are forced to give details
of the types of contraception they were using, and the timing of their
menstrual cycles. Minimum wage laws and other labour laws do not
cover these areas.

Sub-contracting is a typical strategy which multinational and national
corporations use because they can avoid being directly responsible
for the workers, since they can get out of paying health insurance or
other benefits. Subcontracting makes it very difficult for women to
organise on their own as they are not allowed to organise into unions.
Thereby, trade liberalisation may bring greater pay inequality
between men and women, and increasingly dangerous working conditions
for women.

At present economic liberalisation tends to consider most social regulation
as "trade barriers", but the WTO could help to protect
women's rights. It could begin to develop a statistical data baseline so
that the effects of trade liberalisation on women's well-being could be
monitored over a number of years.

Through the introduction of a workers' rights clause the WTO could
ensure that non-discrimination and equal pay was built into the world
trading system. In countries where there are no laws to make sure
women workers are treated equally to men, it would result in legislation
to make sure that multinational corporations as well as domestic
employers were required to apply ILO Convention 100 on Equal
Remuneration, and Convention 111 on discrimination in employment.

*partie=titre TACKLING CHILD LABOUR IN A WORKERS' RIGHTS CLAUSE *partie=nil 
According to even the most conservative estimates there are now 250
million children working who should be given the chance to go to
school and who should be replaced in the workforce with adults. Of
these nearly half work full time, and at least 60 million children are
engaged in extremely hazardous work.

There is a serious danger that if urgent and concerted action is not
taken, child labour will become a permanent part of the global economy,
as multinational companies, usually using complex subcontracting
arrangements, profit from child labour and other labour
rights violations. With the entry of new countries into the world
economy child labour is resurfacing in industrialised countries, as
well as increasing in the transition economies, especially in the CIS
and Central and Eastern Europe.

So far, the WTO has not felt that it was within its remit to look at the
inter-relationship between trade and child labour, even though at least 15
million children are producing goods for international markets, in agriculture
and in industrial production. The WTO could begin work now by
joining with the ILO to link programmes of assistance to measures to end
child labour through WTO action on the basis of ILO Convention 138
(minimum age of employment) and the new Convention 182 (on the
Worst Forms of Child Labour). With a workers' rights clause which outlawed
child labour no country could be more competitive in one field
than another country which did not use child labour.

Some developing country governments have consistently used the
argument in the WTO that Convention 138 sets unattainable targets
for poor countries. However, Convention 138 has now been ratified
by over 60 countries including many developing countries such as
Malaysia, Zambia, Niger and Uruguay. The Convention says that
countries must implement a policy to bring about the effective abolition
of child labour and that countries will set their minimum age for
employment at the age of at least 14 years. It adds that countries can
if necessary exclude certain branches or activities, provided that they
submit regular reports on their programmes to apply the Convention
there.

The trade union movement is campaigning world-wide for the ratifi-
cation and implementation of the new ILO Convention 182 which
will require immediate action on the Worst Forms of Child Labour,
and which targets the most hazardous and exploitative forms and sets
clear requirements for action. It provides important support to the
existing main ILO Convention 138 on the minimum age for employment.

The new Convention, along with the full application of Convention
138, provides the basis for a genuine international effort to rid the
world of the scourge of child labour.

*partie=titre THE WTO WORKING ALONGSIDE THE ILO? *partie=nil 
The ICFTU’s conception of the operation of workers’ rights in the
international trading system is that the ILO should be brought in to
work with the WTO. This uses the established competence of an
existing specialised international agency, which is also the only UN
agency which is tripartite.

Both the WTO and the ILO proceed by consensus. This can mean
that they move slowly at times; but it also means that they move very
surely – and that their legitimacy is unquestionable. The WTO negotiations
have a timetable designed to take account of the needs of
ministers to report back to their citizens, and to consult all their constituents.
Throughout the ILO’s 80-year history, it has developed
standards which are elaborated through a two-year process of discussion
and adopted by a full Conference of all its 180-odd memberstates.
In June 1998, the International Labour Conference adopted the ILO
Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. This
Declaration was strongly supported by trade unions, employers and
governments. It makes clear that all ILO member states have an obligation
to respect a number of fundamental rights including the freedom
of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective
bargaining, the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory
labour, the effective abolition of child labour, and the elimina-
tion of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.
These are the same fundamental rights which should be incorporated
in a workers' rights clause.

The Declaration makes it clear that the ILO must help its members to
attain these objectives and must encourage other international organisations
to support its efforts. Its follow-up mechanisms give it new
powers to supervise member states’ performance in respecting these
rights. For the first time the ILO will be able to examine the fundamental
rights situation in all countries - even if they have not ratified
the relevant ILO Conventions.

On this basis, each year the ILO will publish a Global Report setting
out a comprehensive review of one of the fundamental rights. This
could provide a good basis for the the WTO and the ILO to work
together.

At the same time, the experience of many years has made it clear that
in addition to such follow-up at the ILO, the international trading
community needs to devise procedures to resolve the question of
what to do about countries which continually disregard recommendations
from the ILO concerning their respect for core labour standards.
Such countries are, in effect, “free riders” on a world trading system
where the majority of countries do respect labour standards. Gross
and persistent abuse of labour standards is a form of trade restriction.
It creates resistance to trade barriers and it inhibits the spreading
of the potential benefits of open trade. The international community
has to come up with an effective and enforceable way of getting
the ILO’s core labour standards respected by all the world’s trading
partners. As trade tensions increase with countries world-wide facing
pressure to increase their exports in the aftermath of the Asian crisis,
the issue of labour standards is a priority issue for the next trade
round.

However, trade unions do not have a seat at the trade negotiations
and we need to seek the support of governments. The ICFTU, its affiliates,
and its regional organizations are making every effort to get
governments to examine and discuss our proposals. Some who have
done so have been convinced, others need to be.

The idea of a WTO working group to examine the case for such a
clause, has been supported at various times by governments from
Argentina, Honduras, Venezuela, Barbados, Chile, Mauritius,
Senegal, Gabon and Tunisia, in addition to virtually all the industrialised
countries.

*partie=titre WORKING TOGETHER, THE WTO AND THE ILO COULD GET
COUNTRIES TO RESPECT WORKERS' RIGHTS *partie=nil 
The aim behind a workers’ rights clause is to ensure that the promotion
of free trade goes hand in hand with the improvement of
workers' rights. Implementation should therefore be a joint operation
between the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the ILO.
The ILO has obvious competence in setting standards and in
supervising their application; and the WTO would make sure that
failure to enforce the basic standards does not lead to unfair competition.
Our proposal is that a joint WTO/ILO Advisory Body could be set
up to oversee the implementation of a workers’ rights clause. This
body would have the authority to undertake periodic reviews of
how countries were applying the principles enshrined in a workers’
rights clause; or to step in if there was a well-justified complaint.
This side of the operation would be the particular responsibility of
the ILO team on the joint advisory body; the ILO already does
much of this anyway, although there would be a need to reinforce
its existing procedures.

The reviews would typically show either that the standards were
being followed – in which case, no further action would be needed
– or that the country concerned was in breach of its obligations,
and certain changes in labour law and/or practice were necessary.
In the latter case, the ILO report would make recommendations to
the country concerned on these changes and, if necessary, offer
technical assistance and make additional resources available to
help countries put things right.

The government of the offending country would then have a period
of time in which to change its ways. We are suggesting two
years, following which there would be a second report. This second
report would typically reach one of three conclusions. It could
show that the country was applying the standards; or that while
the problem had not yet been solved, progress was being made; or
that the government had failed to co-operate with the ILO and that
the standards were still not being met.

So what exactly are the rights which would be included in a workers'
rights clause? The clause contains seven of the most universally
ratified conventions, universal standards applicable for all countries
whatever their level of development.How they are translated
into law and practice can vary according to the institutions and
customs of the country concerned. The ILO in its supervision of
the standards does not attempt to impose a global harmonization
of labour laws; it examines whether the effect of laws and practice
achieve the objective of ensuring that the principles are applied.

In terms of implementation, the ILO and not the WTO would be
responsible for reviewing the respect for the core ILO Conventions
concerned. The impartiality of the ILO and its expertise on international
labour conventions in law and practice is beyond question.
Because the ILO would have a key role in any workers’ rights clause,
that would give trade unions a right to launch complaints and representations
about the violation of workers’ rights.

In addition, practical measures are needed for strengthening co-operation
between the ILO and the WTO. The ILO should have observer
status in WTO General Council meetings, working parties and committees.
It should provide its expertise on core labour standards and
employment-related considerations as part of the WTO’s trade policy
reviews, meaning that the ILO should effectively take over the
work of producing reports on core labour standards for the WTO’s
Trade Policy Reviews which the ICFTU is doing at the moment.
The WTO, in conjunction with the ILO, needs to undertake social
impact assessments of the results of trade policy. For example the
WTO and ILO should collaborate on a gender impact assessment of
the effects of trade policy on women workers; collect gender disaggregated
data as a statistical baseline to follow future years; and promote
gender aware and sensitive policies, including technical assistance
that promotes technological and skill upgrading opportunities
for women and legislation and positive action programmes to ensure
that effect is given to international conventions on non-discrimination
and equal remuneration.

*partie=titre HOW INTERNATIONAL PROCEDURES WOULD DEAL WITH
WORKERS' RIGHTS TRANSPARENTLY AND EQUITABLY *partie=nil 
This is a crucial question at the heart of a workers’ rights clause.
If a workers’ rights clause is to command respect, it must be open
and transparent; and it must be strictly and fairly enforced. It must
not be seen as a stick with which aggressive countries can beat
their commercial competitors; nor must it be seen as simply a pious
declaration to which countries and corporations need only pay lip
service.

For many countries and many companies, it will be business as
usual. No country which is keeping to its legal obligations under
the UN Charter and which is applying the core conventions of the
ILO has anything to fear from a workers’ rights clause.
When it came to deciding on the appropriate measures, the WTO
should have a range of options which could be escalated over time
if the government carried on offending. A first step might be to suspend
the countries' right of access to the WTO’s new binding rules
for dispute resolution.

The procedure places the emphasis on helping countries reach the
required standard, rather than on punishing each and every failure.
Trade measures are only used as a last resort, and even there, the
measures would initially be quite mild. If, on the other hand, there
are countries which are wilfully profiting from repression; these
countries have to know that at some stage, there will be measures
taken to stop such actions.

This step-by-step procedure has all the elements of clarity, predictability
and objectivity that an effective multilateral system
requires. It builds on the established competence of an existing specialised
international agency – the ILO. It also provides enough
time for problems to be solved by dialogue. It avoids the danger of
the big players trying to dictate terms for market access to small
countries. And it is even-handed; because it refers to universal
standards, all countries would be subject to equally close scrutiny.
Fully transparent procedures would be used which would leave no
opening for misuse for protectionist purposes.

One of the complaints by some of the opponents of a workers'
rights clause has been that of this type of review places more
emphasis on punishment than on assistance. On the contrary,
experience of the WTO system has shown that it is not an organisation
which likes to work by sanctioning country's behaviour. It
works by suggesting measures to be followed to amend laws.
Exactly what our procedure is suggesting!

*partie=titre RESOLVING TRADE TENSIONS IN A CONSTRUCTIVE WAY *partie=nil 

It is increasingly clear that popular support for trade liberalisation
through the WTO in many countries is extremely fragile. Evidence of
rising social inequalities mounts and the pace of adjustment in employment
accelerates, particularly in the wake of the steep devaluations that
have taken place due to the Asian economic and financial crisis.
We believe that a workers’ rights clause will reinforce the global economy.
The universal application of basic labour standards will help to
ensure a more balanced expansion of world trade and a smoother process
of adjustment to changes in the global division of labour. Highwage
countries would still face the challenge of competition from lowwage
countries. But that competition would at least be based on a
broader-based expansion of markets and the knowledge that the women
and men who work in competitor countries were not being exploited or
abused, and weren’t being forced to subsidize the TNCs.
And a workers’ rights clause would make it impossible for some irresponsible
TNCs to leap from country to country in search of a government
prepared to violate workers' rights. If there was no reason to
move on, they might stick around. This would encourage a more sustainable
process of foreign investment which would bring increased
benefits to the host country, and long-term, stable profits to the
investor.

*partie=titre THE WTO IS THE ALTERNATIVE TO UNILATERALISM *partie=nil 
Many people in the industrialised world blame competition from
cheap manufactured goods from the developing countries for job
loses. This is increasing the support for populist demands for protection
in one form or another. If unemployment worsens, there is like-
ly to be increased public pressure to restrict the flow of what are perceived
to be “unfairly” produced goods. Whether these allegations
have an economic basis or not, they pose a serious threat to the world
trading system.

Recent years have seen an increase in national or regional laws linking
trade to labour rights and in codes of conduct in particular companies
or sectors. While being an important response to the lack of
a multilateral alternative, it is high time for the WTO, together with
the ILO, to create a multilateral framework for core labour standards
in the international trading system.

All women are entitled to equal treatment; all children should be protected
from child labour; all workers must be allowed to join trade
unions, and must be free from the threat of forced labour (often
described as a contemporary form of slavery). To argue that the rights
of workers in developing countries are inferior to the rights of workers
in the industrialized countries is to promote global economic
apartheid. It will divide the world as surely as a workers’ rights clause
will unite it.

To argue that the principles themselves are “Western values” is offensive
and dangerous. It splits the world’s workers into first- and second-
class citizens. It legitimizes the notion that workers in the “West”
are more “advanced” than workers in the developing world, while
the people in the developing world neither need nor deserve any protection
of their basic rights.

A workers’ rights clause could rein in unilateral measures and provide
a more open and fair means for settling disputes. It could resolve
rather than increase protectionist tendencies and help keep markets
open by sharing out the benefits of trade more fairly. By guaranteeing
fair trade, a workers’ rights clause would promote open trade.

*{PART IV}
*partie=titre THE CAMPAIGN FOR WORKERS’ RIGHTS IN INTERNATIONAL 
TRADE AGREEMENTS *partie=nil 
Ever since world trade began, merchants have dreamt of a borderless
economy around which goods and capital could flow without let or
hindrance; a free-market Shangri-La, uncluttered by rules or restrictions.
Political and technological changes are at last making that
dream a reality. We are living in the global village with its own global
market-place. According to the free market acolytes, the role of
governments and international institutions now is to refine and accelerate
the process of globalization by removing all the remaining barriers
to trade. Anything else is irrelevant; it has no place on the
world’s economic agenda.

That might be how some people like to tell it; but it’s not how it is.
In fact, the kind of concerns being raised by the trade unions have
been connected with the whole globalization project from the very
beginning. They were raised during the attempt to set up the
International Trade Organization at the end of the Second World
War; and while it is true that the international business community
managed to sideline them during the years of the GATT, they have
remained central to wider attempts to create an international community
– as opposed to an international shopping mall. More and
more people are beginning to see that globalization will fail if it has
no social dimension.

*partie=titre THE HAVANA CHARTER *partie=nil 
Between 1946 and 1948, the United Nations held a conference on
Trade and Employment. The agenda was ambitious. The aim was to
create a third institution along with the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund that would handle international economic
co-operation. More than 50 countries were involved. The
new institution was to be a specialist United Nations agency known
as the International Trade Organization (ITO). Its charter would
cover employment rules, commodity agreements, restrictive business
practices, international investments and services. Known as the
Havana Charter, this draft document included a workers’ rights
clause that specifically linked economic progress and trade liberalization
to fair labour standards. The text read as follows:
1. The Members recognize...that all countries have a common
interest in the achievement and maintenance of fair labour standards
related to productivity, and thus in the improvement of
wages and working conditions as productivity may permit. The
Members recognize that unfair labour conditions, particularly in the
production for export, create difficulties in international trade and,
accordingly, each Member shall take whatever action may be appropriate
and feasible to eliminate such conditions within its territory.

2. Members which are also members of the International Labour
Organization shall co-operate with that organization in giving effect
to this undertaking.

3. In all matters relating to labour standards that may be referred to the
Organization....[under dispute settlement provisions of the Charter]
it shall consult and co-operate with the International Labour
Organization .

The unions which shortly afterwards became the ICFTU’s foundermembers
backed the ITO, and its Workers’ rights clause. Unfortunately,
although the draft was approved at the UN Conference on Trade and
Employment in Havana in 1948, some national legislatures refused to
ratify it. Opposition by the US Congress proved to be the fatal blow; the
US government, which had been one of the driving forces behind the
ITO, announced in 1950 that it would not seek Congressional ratification
of the Charter. The ITO was dead, and with it died a workers’
rights clause. For the time being.

*partie=titre GATT – THE PROVISIONAL ITO *partie=nil 
Even while the ITO talks were going on, 23 out of the 50 participants
began negotiations on reducing customs tariffs. With the war
having just ended, they wanted to give an early boost to liberalizing
the world economy, and to start hacking down all the protectionist
barriers that were still in place from the 1930s. The first round of
these negotiations, which took place in Geneva, brought about
45,000 tariff concessions affecting $10 billion worth of trade. The
participants also agreed that they should “provisionally” accept
some of the trade rules in the ITO Charter to protect some of the tariff
concessions they had negotiated. The “Geneva 23” became founding
members (known officially as “contracting parties”) to the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

Even though it was provisional, GATT remained the only multilateral
instrument governing international trade until the WTO was
set up in 1995. Its agenda was limited to traditional commercial
aspects of trade in goods and since it was assumed that the ITO
would eventually supersede GATT, the ITO chapter on employment
and labour (among many others) was not included in GATT.
Apart from Article XX(e) which permits governments to ban trade
in goods produced by prison labour, GATT makes no further reference
to labour standards – though the trade union movement has
pressed repeatedly for their inclusion.

The GATT did a great deal to promote the liberalization of trade,
as during the 1950s and the 1960s, tariff reductions alone boosted
world trade by an average of eight per cent per year. But a series
of recessions in the 1970s and the 1980s led to factories shutting
down, and unemployment soared, so governments sought new
protectionist devices to safeguard their industries, made bilateral
deals with other governments and extended subsidies to keep their
hold on trade. These tactics undermined the GATT’s credibility
and effectiveness.

While a workers’ rights clause would not have eliminated these difficulties
and the tensions they caused, such a clause would have
provided a potential mechanism for dealing with the problem. At
the very least, it would have removed any suspicion of unfair competition
based on violation of fundamental workers’ rights.
The most recent stage in the evolution of GATT was the mammoth
Uruguay Round of trade talks, launched in Punta del Este in
September 1986. It took seven and a half years; involved 125 countries;
and covered almost every product and service that could be
made and traded. It was the biggest trade negotiation in history –
probably the biggest negotiation of any kind.

The Uruguay Round ended in Marrakech in April 1994. The
Marrakech meeting was a significant success for the trade union
movement, as while there was no formal declaration referring to
the link between trade and labour standards; a workers’ rights
clause was firmly on the agenda, being the single issue that dominated
discussions all week long. The issue received extensive press
coverage, and there were at least 20 governments (not all from the
industrialized countries) who spoke in favour of discussing the
need for the clause. Another ten governments were receptive to and
interested in the idea, but concerned about whether the WTO was
the proper forum for this debate, and were anxious about protectionism.
Twenty-two countries spoke out in opposition to a workers’
rights clause.

In January, 1995, the agreements signed in Marrakech began to
take effect in Geneva with the creation of the World Trade
Organization (WTO).

*partie=titre THE WTO – A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY? *partie=nil 
The WTO is the legal and institutional foundation for a multilateral
trading system. It provides a contractual framework which determines
how governments shape and implement domestic trade laws
and rules. It is a platform on which trade relations among countries
can evolve through debate, negotiation and consensus.

It is a rules-based organization, dedicated to maintaining a system of
rules for open, fair and undistorted competition. Those rules will be
worked out in “trade rounds” where trade concessions are negotiated
in a package. This means that concessions which are necessary but
would otherwise be difficult to defend domestically can be made and
sold within a package which contains other politically and economically
attractive benefits.

It is a genuinely global organization. 76 governments became members
of the WTO on its first day, and by the end of 1998 the WTO
had 132 members. With talks underway with China and Russia, the
WTO is well on the way to becoming universal. It is no longer a club
of mainly developed countries.

Both the “package deals” and the way the WTO operates as an organization
mean that the ICFTU and our affiliates can target our lobbying
campaigns much more clearly. The recent pressure on the WTO
has led it to try to improve its cooperation with Non Governmental
Organisations. The WTO has had a number of meetings with the
trade union movement and its Director General has addressed a
number of ICFTU seminars.

The WTO also has a disputes mechanism.
The WTO monitors national trade policies through its Trade Policy
Review Mechanism (TPRM). The purpose of the TPRM reviews are
to increase transparency and understanding of trade policies, to stimulate
public and intergovernmental debate on the issues, and to assess
the effects of policies on the world trading system.
The reviews are conducted regularly. The four biggest traders - the
EU, the US, Japan and Canada - are examined approximately once
every two years. The next 16 countries in terms of their share of
world trade are examined every four years, and the remaining countries
every six years; with a longer interim period for most least-developed
countries.

The TPRM shows that the WTO is an organization that means to
monitor its members’ activities to make sure they are sticking to the
rules. One method by which the WTO, in cooperation with the ILO,
could reinforce internationally recognized core labour standards is
through the examination of the effects of non-observance in the context
of the regular country trade policy reviews. Labour standards
should be considered among the trade-related issues which are discussed
by the WTO General Council when it undertakes a debate of
the trade policies of WTO members. In 1997 and 1998 the ICFTU
produced 43 reports on core labour standards in the countries subject
to TPRs as a basis for encouraging an informed debate on the issue.

Eventually the ICFTU would like to see these reports replaced by similar
ones from the ILO itself and this could be one method of developing
cooperation between the two organisations. In the meantime,
the ICFTU will continue its complementary reports which are a
reminder to the WTO of the need to address the relationship between
core labour standards and trade.

The Marrakech meeting followed by the creation of the World Trade
Organisation in January 1995 provided progress towards incorporating
rules on workers rights into the world trading system. In March
1995, the United Nations Social Summit provided yet another sign of
the way the pendulum is swinging in our direction.

*partie=titre THE UN SOCIAL SUMMIT *partie=nil 
In March 1995, leaders from 115 countries gathered in Copenhagen for
the United Nations World Summit for Social Development. Known as
the “Social Summit”, this meeting was the first time that world leaders
had sat together and held a thorough discussion on how to put social
concerns at the centre of economic and political development. It was a
massive international endorsement of a social dimension for the world
economy.

At the end of the Summit, governments signed up to a series of commitments
that entailed both international obligations, and action at
home.

The extracts below are taken from the commitments which relate to the
ICFTU campaign for a workers’ rights clause:
“We commit ourselves to create an economic, political, social, cultural
and legal environment that will enable people to achieve social development.”

Internationally, governments promised to:
• Promote social development through international co-operation in
economic policies and agreements on trade, investment, technology,
debt and development aid; Reaffirm and promote all human rights,
which are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated.
• The national action promised under this commitment includes a
promise that governments will provide: full respect for human rights,
freedoms and the rule of law; equality and equity between women
and men;transparent and accountable government;and that they will
work in partnership with free and representative organizations.
“We commit ourselves to promoting the goal of full employment as a
basic priority of our economic and social policies, and to enabling all
men and women to attain secure and sustainable livelihoods through
freely chosen productive employment and work.” (Commitment 3)
Internationally, governments promised to:
Ensure that migrant workers are protected against exploitation, in line
with international instruments on migrant workers;
Promote sustained economic growth through international co-operation
on economic policy, trade and investment, and through exchange of
experiences on successful approaches. The national action promised
under this commitment includes a promise that governments will:
• put job creation at the centre of government policy, with full respect
for workers' rights and with the participation of employers, workers
and their organizations, and with special attention to long term
unemployed people, the disadvantaged and those subject to discrimination;
expand work opportunities, productivity and access to
resources in the rural and urban sectors, including in the informal
sector and small and medium enterprises; ensure that workers and
employers have the education, information and training needed to
adapt to changing conditions; ensure that women have access to
employment, protection in the labour market and equal treatment,
especially equal pay; promote quality jobs, and safeguard workers'
rights in line with relevant ILO Conventions and to this end, freely
promote respect for relevant ILO Conventions, including on forced
and child labour, freedom of association, the right to organize and
bargain collectively and the principle of non-discrimination.
“We commit ourselves to promoting full respect for human dignity and
to achieving equality and equity between women and men, and to recognizing
and enhancing the participation and leadership roles of women
in political, civil, economic, social and cultural life and in development.”

Internationally, governments promised to
• Promote and protect women's rights and encourage the ratification
of the Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination
against women and other relevant instruments; Recognize the full
extent of women's work and all their contributions to the national
economy, including unpaid and domestic work; Assist developing
countries to achieve equality and equity and the empowerment of
women.

The national action promised under this commitment includes a
promise that governments will:
• promote gender balance and equity in decision-making and integrate
a gender perspective in economic and social policies; promote equal
partnership between women and men and full and equal access of
women to education;
• Work to eliminate all obstacles to human dignity, equality and equity;
Enhance the equality of girls; combat and eliminate discrimination,
exploitation, abuse and violence against women and girls; support
gender equality in the labour market through positive action,
legal protection, child care and other support services.
The trade union movement is campaigning and lobbying to make sure
that governments keep their word on these commitments. It has presented
a set of proposals for implementing the Commitments to the
Preparatory Meetings of the 'Copenhagen + 5' Special Session of the
UN, to be held in June 2000. This Special Session will be looking at how
far the 10 Commitments have been put into practice.
In the proposals the ICFTU stresses that the commitments governments
entered into at the Social Summit will never be fully realized unless inter
national agencies including the IMF, World Bank, the regional development
banks and the WTO observe core labour standards based on the
ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, which
are the standards in the workers’ rights clause. No country, however
much it acknowledges the importance of the social dimension, will take
an initiative which it thinks may threaten its economic well-being. A
workers’ rights clause will enable the international community to move
forward collectively on the commitments made at Copenhagen as a
community.

*partie=titre FROM COPENHAGEN TO SINGAPORE *partie=nil 
The Social Summit gave a powerful boost to a workers’ rights clause
campaign. The UN Fourth World Women’s Conference in Beijing in
September 1995 reaffirmed the principles adopted in Copenhagen,
especially respect for basic workers’ rights including the core ILO
labour standards. The next key date was the WTO Ministerial
Summit in December, 1996.

Singapore was a difficult meeting. But the final Declaration that came
out of the meeting included a paragraph as follows:
“We renew our commitment to the observance of internationally recognized
core labour standards. The International Labour
Organization is the competent body to set and deal with these standards
and we affirm our support for its work in promoting them. We
believe that economic growth and development fostered by increased
trade and further trade liberalization contribute to the promotion of
these standards. We reject the use of labour standards for protectionist
purposes, and agree that the comparative advantage of countries,
particularly low wage developing countries, must in no way be put
into question. In this regard, we note that the WTO and ILO secretariats
will continue their existing collaboration.”

Both sides were giving their own views of this text after the meeting.
But what is unquestionable is that for the first time in the fifty-year history
of GATT, a commitment to core labour standards had been made.

*partie=titre THE SECOND MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE OF THE WTO AND THE
ILO DECLARATION *partie=nil 
In early summer 1998 two significant meetings took place in Geneva.
The first was the Second Ministerial Conference of the WTO (May
18 - 20), and the second was the Annual International Labour
Conference (June 2 - 16).

Prior to the WTO Conference, a special three-day ICFTU Conference
was held in Geneva on the eve of the Ministerial itself. The ICFTU
Conference was addressed by the Director-Generals of the WTO, and
the ILO, the Secretary-General of UNCTAD , the trade ministers of
South Africa and Italy and the US Ambassador to the WTO.

The Ministerial Meeting focused mainly on a Commemorative Session
marking GATT’s 50th Anniversary, with speeches by Heads of
Governments. However, several heads of Governments and Ministers
made speeches supporting including references to workers’ rights in trade.

President Clinton:
I propose the WTO, for the first time, provide a forum where business,
labour, environmental and consumer groups can speak out and
help guide the further evolution of the WTO. The WTO and the
International Labour Organisation should commit to work together to
make certain that open trade lifts living conditions and respects the core
labour standards that are essential not only to workers’ rights but to
human rights everywhere.

President Mandela:
It is imperative that we build confidence in the system. It would be
unwise to ignore the increased frustration of ordinary people... There
can be no refusal to discuss matters such as labour standards, social
issues and the environment.

This viewpoint was also supported by Jacques Santer, then President of the
European Commission, as well as Romano Prodi, Italian Prime Minister
who is now the President of the European Commission. Norwegian Prime
Minister Kjell Magne Bondvik offered to organise a forum outside the
WTO to review the effects of globalisation.

Against the backdrop of the Asian crisis which put globalisation on trial,
this Ministerial was an opportunity for world leaders to show that they
were ready to meet the challenge of building a new stronger, fairer system
for the governance of trade and investment. It is clear that a significant
number wanted to find a way forward to boost the authority of the ILO
and discourage countries from trying to extract a competitive advantage
from the gross and persistent abuse of basic human rights at work.
In June 1998, the International Labour Conference, the annual
Conference of the ILO with its tripartite structure, after many hours of
debate and dissention, adopted a Declaration on Fundamental Principles
and Rights at Work and its Follow-up, which the ICFTU saw as a historic
step in that it established workers' fundamental rights as the ground rules
of globalisation.

The Declaration was important because it makes it clear that all ILO member
states have an obligation to respect fundamental workers’ rights. The
Declaration also gives the ILO important new powers to supervise the
performance of all member states in respecting fundamental rights, such as
giving them to right to examine the fundamental rights situation in all
countries - even if they have not ratified the relevant ILO Conventions.
Addition support for promoting core labour standards came with the June
1998 Conference discussion on the new Convention on the worst of child
labour which was adopted at the ILO Conference in 1999.

*partie=titre THE GENERALISED SYSTEMS OF PREFERENCES (GSP) *partie=nil 
The trade union movement’s final goal is to get a workers’ rights
clause enacted within the WTO. But the WTO is not the only show
in town, just the biggest. The battle to defend workers’ rights is being
fought on several other fronts.

There are the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) arrangements
operated by the USA, the European Union and other industrialised
countries. These are deals by which certain developing countries get
preferential access to US and European markets. The US and EU
GSPs include references to observance of basic labour standards.

The idea of preferential trading systems between countries is not new.
It developed in the 1960s, an era when many former colonies became
independent countries. In order to help new countries get in on international
trade and promote their economic growth, the UN
Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) suggested that
industrialised countries reduce or remove customs duties on goods
from developing countries. This system was accepted by GATT in
1971 and the first GSP was created by the European Community in
1971.

*partie=titre THE GSP OF THE UNITED STATES *partie=nil 
The GSP was adopted by the US Congress in 1974. It provides dutyfree
treatment to certain products from developing countries. A country
cannot get GSP status if it “has not taken or is not taking steps to
afford internationally recognized worker rights to workers in the
country”.

Organizations and individuals can petition the government at public
hearings to review the behaviour of countries benefiting from GSP
status. The Committee examining these petitions looks at information
on workers’ rights in the State Department annual Country
Reports on Human Right Practices, findings of the ILO, reports from
US Embassies and Consulates, and US International Trade
Commission reports on the economic effects of GSP decisions. In a
number of countries of Central America and the Caribbean, and most
notably in the Dominican Republic, the threat of US GSP sanctions
brought about changes to the labour code and improved rights to collective
bargaining and freedom of association for workers. There is
no doubt that potentially, the GSP is a powerful instrument for
enforcing international labour standards.

At present six countries are suspended from the US GSP for violating
workers’ rights: Burma, Liberia, Maldives, Mauritania, Sudan and
Syria. In the case of Pakistan, violations of core labour standards in
three sectors led to those products - surgical instruments, carpets and
footballs - being made ineligible for GSP benefits.

Further petitions filed by the AFL-CIO on Belarus, Swaziland,
Indonesia and Thailand are under investigation , and the AFL-CIO
has two other petitions in the process which the US government is
considering whether to investigate, on Cambodia and Guatemala.

*partie=titre THE GSP OF THE EUROPEAN UNION *partie=nil 
In 1994, the European Union integrated some workers’ rights into its
own GSP. Countries which respect core labour standards can get
additional GSP benefits, while countries denying certain core labour
standards face suspension.

As from 1 January 1995, countries which tolerate forced labour, or
which export goods made by prison labour could face trade sanctions
in the form of temporary suspension from the GSP scheme.
Investigation by the European Commission can be initiated by member
states or any natural or legal persons or associations able to
demonstrate a bona fide interest in the case. Sanctions, if any, cannot
be implemented before a year of investigation and a decision by the
qualified) majority of the Council.

In March 1997, the European Union formally suspended Burma’s
trade privileges on the grounds that Rangoon’s military regime sanctions
the use of forced labour. This action set a precedent in the
Commission’s bilateral trade relations by linking trade and core
labour standards for the first time.

Since 1995 international trade union organisations have been trying
to get the European Union to investigate Pakistan under the GSP
mechanism for the use of forced labour. In February 1998 they submitted
filmed and written evidence of the use of bonded labour in the
brick kilns. However, so far the European Union has accepted
Pakistan's promises of making improvements, and has refused to
open an investigation.

From May 1998, countries have been able to apply for “special
incentive arrangements in the form of additional preferences”, provided
that they have adopted and apply the substance of ILO standards
concerning freedom of association and collective bargaining
and the minimum age for employment.

*partie=titre THE NAFTA SIDE AGREEMENT ON LABOUR *partie=nil 

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is a further
stage in the process of economic integration in North America. There
is much evidence that NAFTA is bringing downward pressure to
bear on wages and working conditions. However, NAFTA does contain
a “side” or “parallel” agreement on labour standards. The
North American Agreement on Labor Co-operation (NAALC), also
commonly known as the NAFTA Side Agreement on Labor, came
into force at the same time as NAFTA on 1 January 1994.
The NAALC provides for a commitment to uphold existing labour
laws in basic areas of workers’ rights including freedom of association,
the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike; prohibition
of forced labour; discrimination; protection of migrant workers;
health and safety; child protection; and minimum employment
standards. In the areas of minimum wages, safety standards and child
labour, fines of up to $20 million can, in theory, be levied on countries
that allow their companies to gain a competitive advantage by
violating labour laws in these areas. There is no effective enforcement
mechanism to protect freedom of association and the right to collective
bargaining.

As of June 1999, twenty submissions had been filed for review under
the NAALC, but so far without any positive results. The findings of
the first four cases at Honeywell, General Electric, Sony and Sprint,
largely concerning dismissal of workers as a result of their efforts to
organise in unions, did not help to get the sacked workers reinstated.
To date, the NAALC has failed to protect freedom of association or
to promote its objective of “compliance with, and effective enforcement
by each party of, its labour law.”

*partie=titre INTERNATIONAL COMMODITY AGREEMENTS *partie=nil 
Some international commodity agreements also refer to core labour
standards: the International Sugar Agreements, the Tin Agreement of
1981, the Cocoa Agreement of 1986 and the International Rubber
Agreement of 1987.

These clauses are essentially statements of intent. They contain no
special sanctions or control mechanisms. They are therefore of limited
use, but they do nevertheless add strength to the trade union argument
that there is nothing unprecedented about linking trade to
labour standards.

*partie=titre CODES OF CONDUCT *partie=nil 
Codes of conduct for international business activity are not new. In
the 1970’s concern over the growing power of multinational companies
led to calls for an international code of conduct governing the
behaviour of multinational companies. The United Nations established
a Commission on Transnational Corporations which conducted
negotiations for a "UN Code of Conduct for Transnational
Companies". Although these negotiations failed and a UN Code was
not adopted, two international organisations did adopt codes of conduct
for international business during this period: the OECD
Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises in 1976 and the ILO
Tripartite Declaration of Principles Concerning Multinational
Enterprises and Social Policy in 1977.

These international instruments sought in part to protect the
sovereignty of countries by defining the social responsibilities of international
business. Unfortunately, international business has
interpreted the "voluntary" nature of these instruments to mean
that they were "optional." Both instruments have follow-up procedures
that fell into disuse due to the opposition of business and
for other reasons. However, in terms of the behaviour expected of
TNCs, these instruments were meant to be definitive. - they are
voluntary only in the sense that they are not legally enforceable.
The ILO Declaration is important for several reasons: it is the only
comprehensive and universally applicable code defining the social
responsibilities of TNCs. Because the Declaration is based on ILO
standards and their accompanying jurisprudence, its meaning is
especially clear. It also shows that although ILO Conventions are
meant to apply to governments, the principles embodied in these
standards can be applied by multinational companies.

Beginning in the early 1990s, companies involved in the marketing or
manufacturing of brand-name goods produced internationally
through outsourcing began to formulate and adopt codes of conduct
covering labour practices that were meant to apply to their subcontractors
and suppliers. The companies adopting these codes were
responding to negative publicity generated by reports of dangerous
working conditions, inhumane working hours, starvation wages,
brutality and the widespread use of child labour involved in the production
of clothing, footwear, toys and other labour-intensive manufacturing
as well as in the production of many agricultural products.
Companies operating in other sectors are now adopting similar
codes. Indeed, throughout the 1990's the number and variety of company
codes of conduct covering labour practices proliferated and
they became an important issue in larger debates over corporate
responsibility and over globalisation. Many NGOs campaigned for
companies to adopt codes and codes attracted both support and
opposition from business and trade unions. Codes also attracted the
attention of governments and international organisations some of
which began to promote them. Codes became the object of study by
academics and they spawned an entire new industry of consultants
and enterprises offering “social accountability” services to companies.
Labour practices are central to these codes which constitute a significant
departure from earlier codes of conduct for multinational companies.
Although the ILO and OECD codes were voluntary, they are
part of an international framework of principles agreed to by governments,
employers and trade unions and recommended to companies.
The new codes are being formulated and adopted by individual
companies. Indeed, when formulating the earliest new codes, most
companies ignored established standards in favour of creating their
own. Also different is that the purpose of the new codes does not
include protection of the sovereignty of governments but is to
address situations created by the failure of national governments and
of the international community to adopt or enforce acceptable
labour standards.

The new codes address situations created by the changing organization of
business in the global economy. Traditionally company policy with respect
to labour practices was based on national law and practice but the new
codes are meant to be applied internationally regardless of where the work
is being performed. In this the most significant feature of many of the new
codes is that they are supposedly meant to protect workers whether or not
they are employees of the company adopting the code and, in particular,
they are meant to apply to the labour practices of the company’s suppliers
and subcontractors. The international treatment of labour practices and
their application to enterprises other than the company that has adopted
the code are the two most significant characteristics of the new codes of
conduct and distinguish them from company personnel policy or more traditional
statements of a company's "mission" or philosophy.

The new codes are central to an expanding concept of corporate responsibility
in part driven by increasing public access to information about
working conditions in developing countries and evidence that significant
numbers of consumers do not want to buy products made by exploited
and abused labour. Also behind the unilaterally-adopted codes is the widely
held belief by business that a company’s reputation and image of its
brand-name products are significant assets to be protected.
The new codes have been surrounded by controversy concerning what
provisions should be included in them, what the company should do to
give them effect and whether or how they should be monitored and their
observance verified. For trade unions another question is the relationship
of the new codes to collective bargaining.

With respect to content there is a growing recognition that multinational
companies should not make up their own standards but should base their
codes on internationally-recognised standards including all of the fundamental
ILO standards. The ICFTU/ITS Basic Code of Labour Practice has
been developed by the international trade union movement for use as a
benchmark in evaluating company codes of conduct.

A frequent criticism of the new codes is that most are public relations exercises
and that the companies adopting them appear to have little intention
of doing anything to make good on what essentially are their promises
to the public. This failure led to calls for independent monitoring
of codes. It is generally recognised that a company must be responsible
for monitoring workplaces as part of implementing its code but
that code compliance and the company's implementation programme
must be subject to some form of verification if the code is to be credible.
It is also generally accepted that verification should be rule-based
but what these rules should be and who should establish them remain
controversial.

Codes of labour practice should not become a substitute for collective
bargaining but should promote collective bargaining by among
other means creating space for workers in repressive conditions to
form their own trade unions. The low level of trade union organisation
in many of the industries and countries where codes are meant
to apply suggest that insisting that codes must always be negotiated
with trade unions is not realistic. The international scope of the new
codes makes it questionable whether it is either practicable or appropriate
for national trade unions to seek to negotiate these new codes.

Trade unions cannot ignore codes of conduct covering labour practices
even if they are not negotiated agreements. For this reason the
ICFTU believes it is useful to distinguish between unilaterallyadopted
company codes of conduct and framework agreements. A
framework agreement is an agreement negotiated between a multinational
company and an International Trade Secretariat (ITS) concerning
the international activities of that company. Although an
international code of conduct can be part of a framework agreement,
the main purpose of a framework agreement is to establish an
ongoing relationship between the multinational company and the
ITS which can solve problems and work in the interest of both parties.

*partie=titre GUIDELINES FOR THE MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS *partie=nil 
International negotiations took place at the OECD over 1995 to
1998 on a global investment instrument (Multilateral Agreement on
Investment — MAI) to set rules governing the treatment of foreign
direct investment.. The Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC)
to the OECD was working to ensure that any new agreement
should contain a clause to stop governments promising cheap
labour and a union-free environment to attract investors. Trade
unions in OECD countries kept pressure on their governments to
ensure that trade union demands on the MAI were taken into
account. However, because of the lack of balance in the agreement
and very strong opposition from a number of non-government
organisations, and a shift in interest by some of the large corporations
which had initially supported the MAI, some countries within
the OECD, such as France, withdrew their support for the MAI,
and negotiations ended.

The failure of negotiations at the OECD has increased the pressure
for the third WTO Ministerial Conference to put investment onto the
agenda of the WTO. UNCTAD is also involved in the consideration
of how a global instrument might be negotiated.

The ICFTU considers that international investment policies should
also include strong workers’ rights and environmental clauses to
ensure that incentives for TNC investment do not include violation of
core labour standards or lax enforcement of environmental protection.
The ILO Tripartite Declaration of Principles on Multinational
Enterprises and Social Policy and the OECD Guidelines on
Multinational Companies should inform the drafting of any WTO
agreement on investment. Furthermore, any international framework
agreement on investment should include a development clause allowing
developing (and transition) countries which respect fundamental
workers’ rights to create time and space for national companies to
develop before full exposure to the force of global competition from
large and well-established multinational companies.

*{PART V}
*partie=titre THE WAY FORWARD. THE NEXT STEP *partie=nil 
The campaign for a workers’ rights clause is now at a critical phase.
The trade union movement made significant gains from the
Marrakech, and Singapore meetings. These gains were the result of
careful planning, a lot of media work and intensive lobbying during
the negotiations. Trade ministers left the 2nd WTO Ministerial in
Geneva knowing that core labour standards and their relationship to
the WTO would figure prominently in talks about the next round of
multilateral trade negotiations.

The third WTO Ministerial Conference will be held in the United
States from November 30 - December 3 1999. The purpose of this
meeting will be to review progress in the implementation of the
Uruguay Round of trade talks and to consider launching a new round
of WTO negotiations, which will last into the next decade.
Campaigning around the issues to be raised at this meeting has
already started, and will intensify over the intervening months.
The ICFTU’s aims are to keep up the pressure for core labour standards
and trade nationally and at world level, and to create and use opportunities
to keep the issue in the headlines, such that the Seattle meeting
takes decisive measures to move forward on labour standards The
ICFTU is further calling for development, environment, gender and
other social issues to be fully included when the decisions are taken at
Seattle on the content of the new round (see Chapter Two).

*partie=titre THE RIGHT TIME FOR WORKERS’ RIGHTS *partie=nil 
Support for a workers’ rights clause is growing. Public awareness of
international social issues is high. The growth in media and communications
technology has shrunk the distance between countries.

The Asian crisis has illustrated the flaws in trying to build up an
economy without taking into account the views and needs of civil
society, including trade unions. Governments have learnt that they
cannot simply pursue growth, without taking human and trade union
rights into account. And that the free market cannot simply be left to
operate unchecked and ungoverned. As we have argued earlier, the
international business community itself campaigns vigorously for
global regulation when it comes to matters like copyright control, or
the manufacture of counterfeit goods that affect corporate profits.
This sits rather uneasily alongside their opposition to a workers’
rights clause.

Globalisation is a key concern of the whole spectrum of NGOs - and
trade unionists have found that at most meetings they attend,
whether organised by environmental or women’s groups, globalisation
is discussed.

Women’s organizations have begun campaigning on these issues
because of their awareness of the negative links between the global
economy and exploitation and discrimination against women. There
have been a number of campaigns to raise awareness about equal
wages and treatment for women workers, improving their working
conditions and organization into trade unions, including the ICFTU’s
international campaign on the rights of working women and the campaigns
of the ICFTU Asian and Pacific Regional Organization,
ICFTU/APRO on “Women Know Your Rights” and “1 + 1 = Women
Power”. Women trade unionists and women’s organizations were
effective at the United Nations Fourth World Women’s Conference in
Beijing in 1995, in ensuring that the final declaration included a
strong reference to the importance of guaranteeing workers’ rights,
including rights to protection against discrimination, in international
trade agreements.

Ethical consumerism, fired in part by energetic and imaginative campaigning
from the trade union movement and other civic groups has
also helped dispel the image of the all-powerful, all-conquering TNC.
People are beginning to see that activism can generate political will.
All this has created a fertile environment to address workers’ rights in
the international trading system.

*partie=titre THE MESSAGE *partie=nil
One reason that the message on a workers’ rights clause is making
progress is that it is a very simple message. Despite (or, perhaps, because
of) the vehemence of the opposition, few people doubt that trade and
labour standards are connected in just the way that the trade unions
maintain – that unscrupulous employers and governments are paying
low wages and oppressing workers to maximize profit. It sounds like
common sense - and it matches people’s experience.

Many of the abuses of workers’ rights take place behind closed doors
and barbed wire. The abusers are always on the defensive; ministerial
pronouncements about “traditional culture” ring hollow when set
against images of young children toiling their childhood away in sweatshops
and factories; and claims by big companies that they have no control
over what happens all the way down the production chain rarely
convince. TNCs cannot at the same time boast to their customers about
the rigours of their quality control, while maintaining they have no control
over what goes on in their sub-contractors’ factories.

*partie=titre BUILDING ALLIANCES *partie=nil 
Because of the growing concern among different groups in civil society,
the time is now ripe for the trade unions to broaden their agenda
and to build alliances. The ICFTU is increasingly working together
with NGOs on issues of common concern such as debt write-off,
transparency; environmental issues; food security and human rights.
This is also a means of emphasising the importance of enlarging the
circle of participation in decision-making.

*partie=titre EMERGING AREAS OF CONSENSUS *partie=nil 
As this document has shown, the debate about whether and, if so,
how to encourage the simultaneous improvement of basic workers
rights and the opening up of global markets is not new. It was a
major topic of discussion and agreement in 1947 in Havana at the
first post-war international conference on trade. It gained significance
since the signing of the Uruguay Round agreements in 1994 in
Marrakech. The ILO, UNCTAD, the World Bank and the OECD
have discussed the issue extensively and a number of serious studies
have been produced. There are some signs of an emerging, if partial,
consensus upon which trade ministers can build.

Firstly, there is widespread agreement on the ICFTU’s proposals for
the following seven core ILO standards, supported by the
Copenhagen UN Social Summit, the Beijing UN 4th World Women’s
Conference, the Singapore (1996) and the Geneva (1998)
Declarations by WTO trade ministers, and the ILO Declaration of
Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. As points of reference:
• Conventions 29 and 105 on the abolition of forced labour;
• Conventions 87 and 98 on the rights to freedom of association
and to bargain collectively;
• Conventions 111 and 100 on the prevention of discrimination in
employment and equal pay for work of equal value; and
• Convention 138 on the minimum age for employment (child
labour).
These standards are amongst the most highly ratified of the ILO.
Over 100 states have ratified at least six of the seven. They are
not industrialised country standards; they constitute the most
accepted standards in the world for the following reasons:
• they assert the right of workers to form and join unions and to
negotiate conditions of employment that are fair and appropriate
for their country's level of development;
• they outlaw forced labour or slave labour, which prevent workers
from having any say in where they work or in the terms of their
employment;
• they seek to end discrimination in employment which stops particular
groups of workers such as women or migrant workers,
from benefiting from trade growth; and
• they seek to end the commercial exploitation of children, and will
lay the foundation for a programme of aid aimed at communities
and families who presently depend on child labour to survive.
Adherence to the seven basic ILO standards would prevent the most
extreme forms of exploitation and cut-throat competition. It would
not end developing countries' comparative advantage, but it would
establish a process by which conditions of employment could gradually
be improved as trade increases. This would encourage the
growth of consumer markets, stimulating both domestic and foreign
investment and, most importantly, jobs.

This would help to ensure a more balanced expansion of world trade
and a smoother process of adjustment to changes in the global division
of labour. At the Copenhagen Social Development Summit in
1995 there was a very broad consensus that these are core labour
rights to which all countries should and can commit themselves.
Furthermore, as stated in the Programme of Action adopted at the
Summit (paragraph 6), “...social progress will not be realized simply
through the free interaction of market forces. Public policies are necessary
to correct market failures, to complement market mechanisms,
to maintain social stability and to create a national and international
environment that promotes sustainable growth on a global scale.”

A second point of growing consensus is that the global market is set
to enlarge and will affect significantly an ever increasing number of
workers. Such intensification of competition is already causing trade
tensions to rise between states. This calls for a much closer interaction
between trade policy and policies in such fields as the environment,
foreign direct investment, business practices and labour. The
WTO therefore must adapt to these pressures and increase its collaboration
with other agencies, such as the ILO.

The third area of consensus is that the international community should
exert pressure on countries that violate basic standards not only out of
concern for basic human rights but also because such violations call into
question the legitimacy of a trading system that allows unscrupulous
companies to gain short-term competitive advantage by abusing fundamental
workers’ freedoms. Already a number of governments and some
socially aware companies and trade associations are responding to such
concerns by introducing workers’ rights provisions into national or
regional trade laws or into codes of conduct. However such actions cannot
provide a general solution. It is high time for the WTO, together with
the ILO, to create a multilateral framework to stave off the danger that
even well intentioned unilateral measures could be used for protectionist
purposes.

A fourth area of common ground is that fears that core labour standards
could negatively affect economic performance are unfounded. Studies of
the relationship between trade liberalisation and labour standards show a
positive two-way relationship over time in which improved observance of
basic workers’ rights acts as an incentive to raise productivity through
investment, especially in education and training, and helps to create a
more stable social framework attractive to foreign direct investment.
Nevertheless efforts to extend basic labour standards can be undermined
by governments which seek to gain a short-term advantage by suppressing
labour rights, typically in Export Processing Zones. The countries
most at risk from such behaviour are typically developing countries with
similar levels of labour productivity and which are consequently under
pressure to weaken established workers’ rights. International action is
therefore needed to promote adherence to basic standards and prevent
destructive competition which is damaging both for the country and the
workers concerned as well as the international system.

*partie=titre THE ILO *partie=nil 
The link between the ILO and the WTO is crucial to the success of a
workers’ rights clause. The final declaration of the Singapore meeting
clearly gives the WTO a mandate to co-operate with the ILO.
The ILO’s pre-Seattle work programme will therefore provide some
vital occasions to follow-up on the gains made at the Trade Ministers’
Meetings in Marrakech, Singapore and Geneva. The ILO Governing
Body Working Party on the social dimensions of globalization meets
regularly. The priority at the ILO Governing Body will be to continue
the pressure to enhance ILO supervision of the core conventions.
The ILO Conference itself brings together representatives from all the
main players in the workers’ rights clause debate – governments,
business, and unions. It is a perfect platform from which to highlight
the link between trade liberalization and labour standards. One of the
main centres of attention in 1998 was the debate on strengthening
the supervisory mechanisms for the core Conventions which led to
the adoption of a Declaration on Fundamental Workers Rights, and
of new supervisory mechanisms which give the ILO the capacity to
examine the situation in respect of those rights in countries which
have not ratified the relevant conventions.

It is also significant for the ILO's future that its new Director General
is Juan Somavia, past Chilean Ambassador who was the moving force
between the UN Social Summit and its "Ten Commitments" to
uphold social standards.

In the late 1990's, the ILO was thrust into the international spotlight
as attention worldwide focused on the issue of child labour. A major
factor in this was the hugely successful Global March Against Child
Labour, a coalition of non-government organisations and trade
unions which mobilised millions of people in every continent.
In 1998, the ILO's annual Conference started debating a new international
treaty on the subject and on the opening day of the
Conference, children from all over the world marched into the opening
session and Kailash Satyarthi, the leader of the Global March,
addressed the delegates in front of the world's media.
In 1999, the new treaty, ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of
Child Labour was adopted by the tripartite Conference, for the first
time in living memory that an ILO Convention was approved by
unanimous consent. Trade unions, supported by the NGO's, managed
to push through a range of key proposals, which bind governments
to take immediate action on child slavery, forced military service,
sexual exploitation and hazardous work. Children involved in
these forms of exploitation must be withdrawn from work and put
into school. The new Convention works alongside the existing
Convention 138 on minimum employment age, and reinforces the
role of the ILO in dealing with exploitation and abuse in the global
economy. Unions are now planning their strategies, along with
NGO's, to hold governments to the promises they made at the ILO
and to make sure that the work of the WTO and other international
institutions supports the ILO's efforts to end child labour.

*partie=titre THE NEED FOR DIALOGUE *partie=nil 
There is clearly a need for further dialogue. The ICFTU and its affiliates
have had extensive discussions with governments, international
organizations, employers and many other interested experts and nongovernmental
organizations. These have revealed widespread recognition that 
a problem exists and that practical solutions need to be
found which reinforce the integrity of the open trading system and
improve the observance of basic workers’ rights. We are convinced
that the elements of consensus that are emerging could be enlarged
through a deeper and more considered examination of the options
and in particular the procedural mechanisms for co-operation
between the ILO and the WTO.

Developing countries working to improve the rights of their citizens
at work at the same time as increasing their participation in the global
market have most to gain from a reinforcement of basic workers’
rights. Responsible business, that recognises that the security and
productivity of their investments ultimately depends on the degree to
which the system in which they operate produces social justice, would
also benefit. In 1998, the European employers’ confederation UNICE
said in their statement on “Forthcoming WTO Multilateral
Negotiations - Preliminary UNICE Objectives” that, “In order to win
balanced results, that can be supported by political leaders to secure
the widest possible endorsement by public opinion, the negotiators
should aim simultaneously at reconciling liberalisation of international
trade and investment with realisation of other objectives of
general interest, such as economic development of the least developed
countries, application of internationally accepted labour standards
and protection of consumers or the environment”.

Support could also be expected from industrial country governments
that are trying to adapt to a new global world economy and
stave off the dangers of a protectionist backlash. And workers
everywhere would be able to face rapid and sometimes intimidating
changes with a greater degree of confidence. This basis of support
was and remains vital to the GATT system and for the future of the
WTO.

The ICFTU, for its part, is more than ready to participate in an
open dialogue with all concerned. What is needed is an organized
forum for such discussions so that by the time ministers or heads of
state and government meet again at the WTO for the first time in
the 21st century, they can examine specific policy options for the
international community. A WTO Working Party should therefore
be set up with a remit to study and report on how the Organisation
can contribute to furthering the observance of basic international
labour standards in an open trading system with well-defined nondiscriminatory
mechanisms for action.

The promotion of trade and enabling workers to exercise their basic
rights are mutually reinforcing. There is no evidence that respect for
workers’ rights weakens the competitive position of developing
countries, indeed by laying the foundations for co-operation
between workers and employers, core labour standards contribute
positively to trade and development. A workers’ rights provision
would strengthen the political authority of the WTO and break,
rather than build, barriers to world trade. It would provide a
means of solving disputes that, if allowed to persist, might increase
pressures for protectionism. And it would serve to reinforce the
case for enlarged access for developing countries to world export
markets. A workers’ rights provision in the WTO would need to be
backed up, where necessary, by international financial and technical
assistance through the ILO, particularly to fund programmes
designed to eliminate child labour through the expansion of education
facilities and increased income-generating opportunities of the
poorest families.

The Seattle Trade Ministers’ Conference of the WTO in November
1999 is an opportunity to move on the process of finding a way
forward on a issue which threatens to provoke serious disagreement.
What is required is a cool objective examination of how the
WTO, working closely with the ILO, can take action to improve the
likelihood that the benefits of trade growth will be more broadly
spread within and between countries, thus widening the constituency
of support for trade liberalisation. Such an initiative is vital to
ensuring a non-protectionist means for securing basic workers’
rights in an increasingly competitive world market.

*partie=titre THE NEXT WTO SUMMIT: AN OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE PROGRESS *partie=nil 
The WTO talks in Seattle should incorporate a range of issues including
strengthened provisions for preferential treatment for developing
countries and for internationally-recognised core labour standards
and environmental clauses. An assessment is needed of the effects of
trade liberalisation on economic growth, income and wealth distribution,
respect for human and democratic rights and the ability of
countries to determine and pursue their own social and economic
objectives.

The 3rd WTO Ministerial Conference should explicitly make provisions
to:-
• include core labour standards on the agenda of future WTO negotiations;
• start an examination of how to incorporate the issue of labour
standards and trade into WTO mechanisms and processes. Such a
work programme should enhance ILO-WTO collaboration, on an
equal basis, in areas such as WTO trade policy reviews and disputes
settlement procedures and oversee the incorporation into
the WTO’s existing mechanisms of core labour standards. It
should consider issues such as the gender implications of trade liberalisation.
A monitoring committee should meet at regular intervals
to review the results of the process and make recommendations
to ensure its success.

The 3rd WTO Ministerial should therefore establish a WTO committee
on the relationship between trade (and investment) and core
labour standards, along the lines of the WTO Committee on Trade
and Environment (CTE) established at the Marrakech Ministerial
Conference in 1994. The CTE has accomplished significant progress
during its six years of existence, clarifying the issues surrounding the
relationship between trade and environment and laying the basis for
a likely consensus at Seattle on the establishment of a negotiating
group on outstanding trade and environment issues. It provides a
promising precedent for the establishment of a committee on trade
and labour standards which would similarly seek to clarify the issues
and arrive at a consensus for WTO decision-making. In view of the
subject matter and the acknowledged expertise of the ILO in monitoring
and reporting on observance of core labour standards, the
WTO should provide a full role for the ILO in such a committee’s
work.

*{CONCLUSION}
The campaign for a workers’ rights clause is probably the most wideranging
in the history of the trade union movement. It is a campaign
that goes a long way beyond the confines of that movement. It touches
every aspect of the global economy at every level.
In this campaign, the trade unions are asking governments and corporations
whether the global economy as it stands now really represents
the kind of a world they want to create; or whether they have
the courage to face a different vision; and whether they have the
courage to face the facts about the global economy, rather than the
fantasies; to look behind the sound-bites and the buzz words at the
reality of globalization.

the WTO’s existing mechanisms of core labour standards. It
should consider issues such as the gender implications of trade liberalisation.
A monitoring committee should meet at regular intervals
to review the results of the process and make recommendations
to ensure its success.

The 3rd WTO Ministerial should therefore establish a WTO committee
on the relationship between trade (and investment) and core
labour standards, along the lines of the WTO Committee on Trade
and Environment (CTE) established at the Marrakech Ministerial
Conference in 1994. The CTE has accomplished significant progress
during its six years of existence, clarifying the issues surrounding the
relationship between trade and environment and laying the basis for
a likely consensus at Seattle on the establishment of a negotiating
group on outstanding trade and environment issues. It provides a
promising precedent for the establishment of a committee on trade
and labour standards which would similarly seek to clarify the issues
and arrive at a consensus for WTO decision-making. In view of the
subject matter and the acknowledged expertise of the ILO in monitoring
and reporting on observance of core labour standards, the
WTO should provide a full role for the ILO in such a committee’s
work.

The global economy is asking people too many people to make too
high a sacrifice for too uncertain a reward. The injustice of all the
trappings of the global economy - the export processing zones, child
labour, discrimination, persecution of trade union activists - could
not be plainer. We have to confront the international community with
those injustices, and we have to ask them to choose between that
vision and between ours; between looking backwards and facing the
future.

The global economy needs global rules. In an era when multinational
corporations have more money, better technology, and more raw
power than many nation-states, it makes no sense to pretend otherwise.
Responsibility must come with opportunity.

There is a wide consensus that such rules should apply to tariffs,
standards, and all the practical paraphernalia of getting goods and
services across borders and into as many market places as possible;
there is broad, if grudging agreement that they need to cover the environment
- no country can keep its own air pure, and few can keep
their own water clean; and there is passionate agreement (especially
among the multinationals) that they should cover copyright and the
protection of intellectual property. Why should these rules not cover
workers’ rights?

The ICFTU is focusing its efforts on the Seattle meeting in December
1999. The events of the last year - the WTO Meeting in Geneva, the
ILO Declaration of Principles, and the heightened interest in fighting
child labour are all signs that the tide is flowing in our favour. And
we intend to achieve a commitment that workers’ rights are important
and are discussed in the next round of WTO trade negotiations.
It is no longer possible to separate trade policy from equally vital
issues such as progress on international workers’ rights, development,
environment and gender. The 3rd WTO Ministerial Meeting must
reach agreement to integrate trade policy with development goals and
social and environmental issues, including core labour standards.