Working beyond the border? : a new research agenda for the Evaluation of Labour Standards in EU trade agreements

The European Union (EU) has approximately fifty bilateral trade agreements in place with partners across the world, and more than twenty more that are at various stages of the negotiating process. At the same time as they increase in number, these agreements also increase in scope. EU trade agreements now cover a wide range of regulatory measures, including ‘Trade and Sustainable Development’ chapters, which, among other things, contain obligations in relation to labour standards. These labour standards provisions follow a common model (with limited variations) and adopt an approach which has been described as ‘promotional’ rather than ‘conditional’. In the context of the broader debate about the purpose and efficacy of the labour and trade linkage, this article examines the possibilities and limitations of the EU's new provisions on labour standards. It draws attention to the limited research on the impact of existing provisions ‘on the ground’ with respect to different types of agreements, and why this is problematic. It then concludes with proposals for a research agenda that can fill this gap, involving a set of methodologies requiring greater concern for firm and country-level assessment of changes arising from the implementation of this new breed of EU bilateralism and directed to the question of whether EU labour standards can really work ‘beyond the border’

Workers’ rights are now a basic element of trade deals. What stance will Britain take?

Labour rights are now a basic component of many of the kinds of trade agreements the UK wants to sign post-Brexit, but there has been little discussion of what sort of provisions the UK wants to see in them. James Harrison and colleagues have found that commitments to workers’ rights on paper are not always enforced. They suggest what a labour rights agenda might look like as the UK prepares to leave the EU’s trade deals

Governing labour standards through free trade agreements: limits of the European Union's trade and sustainable development chapters

The EU has established a new architecture of international labour standards governance within the Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) chapters of its Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). To examine the operationalization of this framework, we draw upon 121 interviews undertaken with key informants in three FTAs signed with the Caribbean, South Korea and Moldova. We engage with wider debates over external governance and the projection of EU power by showing how operational failings, including a lack of legal and political prioritization of TSD chapters and shortcomings in the implementation of key provisions, have hindered the impact of the FTAs upon labour standards. We also identify significant limitations to the EU's ‘common formulation’ approach when applied to different trading partner contexts, alongside ambiguities about the underlying purpose of the trade–labour linkage. Reflection about the function and purpose of labour standards provisions in EU trade policy is therefore required

The trade-labour nexus: global value chains and labour provisions in European Union free trade agreements

Labour standards provisions contained within the European Union’s (EU) free trade agreements (FTAs) are a major iteration of attempts to regulate working conditions in the global economy. This article develops an analysis of how the legal and institutional mechanisms established by these FTAs intersect with global value chain governance dynamics in countries with contrasting political economies. The article formulates an original analytical framework to explore how governance arrangements and power relations between lead firms in core markets and suppliers in FTA signatory countries shape and constrain the effectiveness of labour provisions in FTAs. This analysis demonstrates how the common framework of labour provisions in EU trade agreements, when applied in a uniform manner across differentiated political-economic contexts, face serious difficulties in creating meaningful change for workers in global value chains

Governing labour standards through free trade agreements: limits of the European Union's trade and sustainable development chapters

The EU has established a new architecture of international labour standards governance within the Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) chapters of its Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). To examine the operationalization of this framework, we draw upon 121 interviews undertaken with key informants in three FTAs signed with the Caribbean, South Korea and Moldova. We engage with wider debates over external governance and the projection of EU power by showing how operational failings, including a lack of legal and political prioritization of TSD chapters and shortcomings in the implementation of key provisions, have hindered the impact of the FTAs upon labour standards. We also identify significant limitations to the EU's ‘common formulation’ approach when applied to different trading partner contexts, alongside ambiguities about the underlying purpose of the trade–labour linkage. Reflection about the function and purpose of labour standards provisions in EU trade policy is therefore required

Labor regimes, global production networks, and European Union trade policy: labor standards and export production in the Moldovan clothing industry

This article examines the relations between workplace and local labor regimes, global production networks (GPNs), and the state-led creation of expanded markets as spaces of capitalist regulation through trade policy. Through an examination of the ways in which labor regimes are constituted as a result of the articulation of local social relations and lead-firm pressure in GPNs, the article examines the limits of labor provisions in European Union trade policy seeking to ameliorate the worst consequences of trade liberalization and economic integration on working conditions. The article takes as its empirical focus the Moldovan clothing industry, the leading export-oriented manufacturing sector in the country. Trade liberalization has opened up a market space for EU lead firms to contract with Moldovan-based suppliers, but in seeking to regulate labor conditions in the process of trade liberalization, the mechanisms in place are not sufficient to deal with the consequences for workers’ rights and working conditions. Indeed, when articulated with national state policy formulations seeking to liberalize labor markets and deregulate labor standards, the limits of what can be achieved via labor provisions are reached. The EU’s trade policy formulation does not sufficiently take account of the structural causes of poor working conditions. Consequently, there is a mismatch between what the EU is trying to achieve and the core labor issues that structure social relations in, and labor regimes of, low-wage labor-intensive clothing export production for EU markets

"Boring formal methods" or "Sherlock Holmes deduction methods"?

This paper provides an overview of common challenges in teaching of logic and formal methods to Computer Science and IT students. We discuss our experiences from the course IN3050: Applied Logic in Engineering, introduced as a "logic for everybody" elective course at at TU Munich, Germany, to engage pupils studying Computer Science, IT and engineering subjects on Bachelor and Master levels. Our goal was to overcome the bias that logic and formal methods are not only very complicated but also very boring to study and to apply. In this paper, we present the core structure of the course, provide examples of exercises and evaluate the course based on the students' surveys.Comment: Preprint. Accepted to the Software Technologies: Applications and Foundations (STAF 2016). Final version published by Springer International Publishing AG. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1602.0517

Development of a tool to predict outcome of Autologous Chondrocyte Implantation

Objective. The study had 2 objectives: first, to evaluate the success of autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI) in terms of incidence of surgical re-intervention, including arthroplasty, and investigate predictors of successful treatment outcome. The second objective was to derive a tool predicting a patient’s arthroplasty risk following ACI. Design. In this Level II, prognostic study, 170 ACI-treated patients (110 males [aged 36.8 ± 9.4 years]; 60 females [aged 38.1 ± 10.2 years]) completed a questionnaire about further surgery on their knee treated with ACI 10.9 ± 3.5 years previously. Factors commonly assessed preoperatively (age, gender, defect location and number, previous surgery at this site, and the preoperative Lysholm score) were used as independent factors in regression analyses. Results. At final follow-up (maximum of 19 years post-ACI), 40 patients (23.5%) had undergone surgical re-intervention following ACI. Twenty-six patients (15.3%) underwent arthroplasty, more commonly females (25%) than males (10%; P = 0.001). Cox regression analyses identified 4 factors associated with re-intervention: age at ACI, multiple operations before ACI, patellar defects, and lower pretreatment Lysholm scores (Nagelkerke’s R2 = 0.20). Six predictive items associated with risk of arthroplasty following ACI (Nagelkerke’s R2 = 0.34) were used to develop the Oswestry Risk of Knee Arthroplasty index with internal crossvalidation. Conclusion. In a single-center study, we have identified 6 factors (age, gender, location and number of defects, number of previous operations, and Lysholm score before ACI) that appear to influence the likelihood of ACI patients progressing to arthroplasty. We have used this information to propose a formula or “tool” that could aid treatment decisions and improve patient selection for ACI