The New Politics of Linkage: India\u27s Opposition to the Worker\u27s Rights Clause

This article examines why India has opposed a World Trade Organization (WTO) workers\u27 rights clause, and calls for a new way of thinking about international institutions and the link between trade and labor rights. Many labor rights supporters argue that labor rights principles should be integrated into the WTO, either via the addition of a workers\u27 rights clause or through a \u27judicial reading of labor rights values into the existing WTO framework. But India has led a large block of developing countries in opposing any link between labor rights and the WTO. This opposition has been based primarily on economic arguments that suggest linkage is motivated by protectionism, concerns about political sovereignty and neocolonialism, and structural arguments about the proper institutional roles of the ILO and WTO. These arguments, it is suggested, must be understood in both a contemporary and historical context. In light of this opposition by developing countries, the article proposes a transition from a WTO-centered view of trade and labor linkage o a paradigm based on bilateral and regional market-based agreements that utilize the ILO\u27s model that would engage more dynamically with the concerns presented by India and other stakeholders in the developing world. Globalization and the New Politics of Labor, Symposium. Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington, February 11-12, 2005

The Consumer Imaginary: Labor Rights, Human Rights, and Citizen-Consumers in the Global Supply Chain

Consumers are increasingly demanding that the goods and services they consume be produced in a way that meets their social expectations. By extension, they are exhibiting greater willingness to pay more at the cash register for products made in good working conditions, and they are willing to punish companies that do not satisfy these expectations. Driving these citizen-consumers is what this Article terms the consumer imaginary, which is defined as the narratives that consumers tell themselves about the people that make their things--people whom consumers will likely never meet, and whose lived experiences are distant from their own. Policymakers have attempted to extraterritorially improve working conditions in the global supply chain through public law in at least two ways: (1) incorporating labor standards into trade law and free trade agreements, and (2) corporate transparency laws. Using these two examples as case studies, this Article argues that both of these tools could be better tailored to beneficially exploit the consumer imaginary and mobilize citizen-consumers to compel lead firms to improve labor and human rights in their supply chains

Dialogic Labor Regulation in the Global Supply Chain

In May 2006, the government of Jordan was facing a crisis. A small U.S. labor-rights activist group had just released a damning report documenting extensive labor abuses in Jordan’s fledgling garment industry. Adding fuel to the fire, the New York Times published a front-page story about the report with its own field work that corroborated some of the allegations, such as long and abusive working hours, the confiscation of passports of foreign workers, horrendous living conditions, and sexual harassment. Although garment manufacturing was new to Jordan, after just several years of existence it already constituted an important part of Jordan’s total exports, and the country could not afford to lose the industry. Consumers and global activists took note of the report and mobilized to put pressure on companies sourcing from Jordan. The United States government also became involved, because the U.S. market was the primary destination of Jordanian garments and had extensive economic and political ties with the country. What resulted was a two-track strategy pursued by the Jordanian government. On the one hand, Jordan committed to improve its own public institutions of labor law enforcement. On the other, it agreed to implement a novel labor assessment and advising program called Better Work Jordan (BWJ), which operates more or less independently of the Jordanian government and has the participation of many large transnational garment corporations seeking to avoid more exposés of working conditions in their Jordanian supply chains

Dialogic Labor Regulation in the Global Supply Chain

In May 2006, the government of Jordan was facing a crisis. A small U.S. labor-rights activist group had just released a damning report documenting extensive labor abuses in Jordan’s fledgling garment industry. Adding fuel to the fire, the New York Times published a front-page story about the report with its own field work that corroborated some of the allegations, such as long and abusive working hours, the confiscation of passports of foreign workers, horrendous living conditions, and sexual harassment. Although garment manufacturing was new to Jordan, after just several years of existence it already constituted an important part of Jordan’s total exports, and the country could not afford to lose the industry. Consumers and global activists took note of the report and mobilized to put pressure on companies sourcing from Jordan. The United States government also became involved, because the U.S. market was the primary destination of Jordanian garments and had extensive economic and political ties with the country. What resulted was a two-track strategy pursued by the Jordanian government. On the one hand, Jordan committed to improve its own public institutions of labor law enforcement. On the other, it agreed to implement a novel labor assessment and advising program called Better Work Jordan (BWJ), which operates more or less independently of the Jordanian government and has the participation of many large transnational garment corporations seeking to avoid more exposés of working conditions in their Jordanian supply chains

The New Politics of Linkage: India\u27s Opposition to the Worker\u27s Rights Clause

This article examines why India has opposed a World Trade Organization (WTO) workers\u27 rights clause, and calls for a new way of thinking about international institutions and the link between trade and labor rights. Many labor rights supporters argue that labor rights principles should be integrated into the WTO, either via the addition of a workers\u27 rights clause or through a \u27judicial reading of labor rights values into the existing WTO framework. But India has led a large block of developing countries in opposing any link between labor rights and the WTO. This opposition has been based primarily on economic arguments that suggest linkage is motivated by protectionism, concerns about political sovereignty and neocolonialism, and structural arguments about the proper institutional roles of the ILO and WTO. These arguments, it is suggested, must be understood in both a contemporary and historical context. In light of this opposition by developing countries, the article proposes a transition from a WTO-centered view of trade and labor linkage o a paradigm based on bilateral and regional market-based agreements that utilize the ILO\u27s model that would engage more dynamically with the concerns presented by India and other stakeholders in the developing world. Globalization and the New Politics of Labor, Symposium. Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington, February 11-12, 2005

A Supply Chain Approach to Trade and Labor Provisions

As labor provisions in trade agreements have become increasingly ubiquitous, there remain questions about whether or not these provisions have been effective in improving working conditions in trading partner countries. Through an analysis of sample labor provisions in United States and European Union free trade agreements, this paper shows that both approaches, albeit using different methods, aim primarily to improve de jure labor law and de facto enforcement of that law by government regulatory institutions. This paper argues that instead, labor provisions ought to be grounded in a supply chain approach. A supply chain approach shifts the focus from impacting de jure and de facto labor law as administered by the state though sanctions or dialogue, and towards context specific, experimental, and coordinated private and public regulatory interventions that operate in key export industries that are implicated in trading partners’ supply chains. It does so in part by recognizing the potential regulatory power of consumer citizenship

Re‐Embedding Trade in the Shadow of Populism

In the last 75 years of international economic cooperation, we have witnessed tremendous changes. The global trade and investment regime is under pressure and undergoing a significant transformation. Supply chains are being restructured, new trade blocks are forming based on strategic and political considerations, support for trade among citizens is weak and inconsistent, and populist opposition to the global economic and political order is ascendant. In this time of uncertainty about the future of the world order, the articles for this thematic issue address how and if the global trade and investment regime can be re-embedded into society

Trade, Monitoring, and the ILO: Working To Improve Conditions in Cambodia\u27s Garment Factories

The U.S.-Cambodia Bilateral Textile Trade Agreement, signed on January 20, 1999, was remarkable for its inclusion of a labor standards provision that created incentives for the Cambodian garment industry to bring itself into substantial compliance with international labor standards and Cambodian labor law. The labor standards provision provided the impetus for the creation of a novel program, to be operated by the International Labor Organization (ILO). This program combined trade-related incentives to enforce workers\u27 rights with an unprecedented plan to have the ILO conduct factory-level monitoring of working conditions. This Article examines how the program was designed and implemented and evaluates the proposals and conceptions that preceded the final project document. This analysis provides a case study on how to construct and implement future programs that combine trade and factory monitoring to improve working conditions and enforce core labor rights along the global supply chain