Linking Trade and Worker Rights
International trade, which should lead to better working and living standards has, in practice, created enormous problems for workers. While many countries have become major exporters, most of those employed have seen little,
if any, improvement in their living standards, as discrimination and gross exploitation in violation of fundamental workers’ rights have increasingly become part of global commerce. Indeed, as competition between countries has intensified, efforts by workers to share the benefits of growing export trade are often met with resistance or repression.
As a result, sectors which were once seen as the engine of development now often mean little more than short term insecure exploitative employment which can disappear overnight leaving nothing behind, no resources, no skills and no future. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the textile and clothing sectors where trade liberalisation from the beginning of 2005 is forecasted to result in the destruction of emerging and struggling industries with the consequent loss of millions of manufacturing jobs in some of the world’s poorest countries.
Development does not just involve economic growth. Growth must be accompanied by social progress, which in turn will result in increased purchasing power and increased prosperity.
Linking Trade and Workers Rights
International trade, which should lead to better working and living standards has, in practice, created enormous problems for workers. While many countries have become major exporters, most of those employed have seen little, if any, improvement in their living standards, as discrimination and gross exploitation in violation of fundamental workers’ rights have increasingly become part of global commerce. Indeed, as competition between countries has intensified, efforts by workers to share the benefits of growing export trade are often met with resistance or repression.
As a result, sectors which were once seen as the engine of development now often mean little more than short term insecure exploitative employment which can disappear overnight leaving nothing behind, no resources, no skills and no future. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the textile and clothing sectors where trade liberalisation from the beginning of 2005 is forecasted to result in the destruction of emerging and struggling industries with the consequent loss of millions of manufacturing jobs in some of the world’s poorest countries.
Development does not just involve economic growth. Growth must be accompanied by social progress, which in turn will result in increased purchasing power and increased prosperity.
The ITGLWF will:
- demand action to halt the massive disruption likely to occur after the end of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing on December 31 2004, including:
- the continuation of trade regulation after the end of the Textile and Clothing Agreement in 2005 and its extension to footwear;
- strategies for the future that ensure that the benefits of production are fairly shared, where the workers involved can afford to become consumers, thus oiling the mechanisms for sustainable development;
- tripartite involvement in all trade negotiations;
- the inclusion of labour standards conditionalities in all international trade agreements;
- measures designed to help emerging and struggling industries, particularly in developing countries, adjust to meet the threat posed by dominant producers such as China, including clear restraints on such dominant producers;
- the promotion of trade based on respect for international labour standards through rewards and sanctions-based mechanisms;
- an urgent review of trade liberalisation particularly its impact on employment and working conditions in labour intensive industries such as textiles, clothing and footwear;
- seeking commitments from multinational retailers and brand names that they maintain their existing country supply base; source only from suppliers respecting national law and international labour standards; ensure that workers displaced as a result of consolidation are re-employed by new or expanded suppliers and where, for geographical reasons, this is not possible ensure that such workers have opportunities for retraining and re-skilling with support services for workers and their communities.
- insist that any strategy for the future be based on providing support to help the industry adjust to meet the demands of international competition, which include providing a good quality product, priced affordably price, and produced in decent conditions, such a strategy to provide for intervention in areas such as:
- respect for international labour standards;
- worker development especially for women;
- skills enhancement;
- technology diffusion;
- productivity;
- improved management;
- enhanced quality;
- market development both internally and externally.
- continue to campaign for the incorporation of workers’ rights clauses in the agreements and procedures of the World Trade Organisation, such a clause to include freedom of association and protection for the right to organise, prohibit forced labour and child labour, and outlaw discrimination;
- demand, as a first step, that the WTO establish a formal, permanent working group, with the full involvement of the ILO, which should be given formal consultative status at the WTO, with a defined work programme including:
- a mandate to undertake analysis and to propose procedures and instruments for the treatment of core labour standards in the international trading system;
- the examination of how to associate trade with respect for core labour standards, including positive incentives and assistance;
- the consideration of measures to be taken where trade liberalisation was associated with violations of core labour standards;
- review of the mechanisms of the WTO in order to promote openness and transparency and ensure consistency of trade negotiations and agreements with respect for core labour standards within the work of the WTO.
- insist that the WTO agree upon a range of measures to tackle the priority concerns of developing countries, including improved market access and positive incentives for all developing countries, especially the least developed, which respect core labour standards;
- demand that the WTO establish full transparency and openness towards other relevant agencies, in particular the ILO, and create consultative structures for trade unions and business, as well as ensuring opportunities for consultation and dialogue with non-governmental organisations and other elements of civil society;
- reject the use of any workers’ rights provisions for protectionist purposes, while insisting that the systematic violation of fundamental workers’ rights for the purpose of providing a competitive advantage over other countries which respect those rights is a particularly cruel form of protectionism;
- work to ensure that the United Nations ‘Global Compact’ helps to build global partnerships by creating an effective framework of multilateral rules for the global economy;
- encourage cooperation between developing countries to ensure that they secure for themselves a reasonable return for their exports;
- campaign to ensure that workers in the textile, clothing and leather sectors, through their trade unions, have the opportunity of participating in all national, regional and international negotiations on economic and trade matters;
- support pressure on governments and intergovernmental organisations to strengthen the framework for monitoring and operation of international financial markets, constraining the volatility of short-term financial flows, and mobilising financial resources for social development;
- support pressure on the International Financial Institutions to act more consistently and more in coherence with the UN system, and to develop operational practices that are consistent with stated commitments in areas such as poverty reduction, gender equality, core labour standards, quality public services, and an international financial system that is supportive of stable and sustainable development in all regions;
- insist that all International Financial Institutions’ loans for private sector development projects relating to the textile, clothing or footwear industries include conditionality clauses requiring respect for international labour standards by the companies involved;
- press international agencies to ensure that aid contributes toward balanced, equitable development by attacking unemployment and raising economic and social standards through practical projects involving education, housing, health care, water supply, sanitation, etc, as well as to strengthen public procedures for monitoring the implementation of aid programmes, including the active involvement of trade unions;
- support pressure on governments to re-assess their macro-economic policies with the aim of greater employment generation and reduction in poverty levels;
- press international agencies to cancel outright the debt of the poorest countries and provide for greater reductions in debt and interest payments for other indebted countries, and to increase multilateral aid to replace excessively expensive loans from the private banking sector;
- put pressure on international agencies to take action to halt illegal practices in trade in textile, clothing leather and footwear products, including the transhipment of goods to illegally circumvent quotas, the pirating of designs and the faking of labels and brand names, which destabilise the industry and threaten employment provided by legitimate manufacturers and traders;
- campaign for used clothing donated for charity to be used for that purpose, and distributed free of charge instead of being traded in ways which destroy jobs in developing countries and impoverish textile, clothing, shoe and leather workers and their families;
- continue to monitor developments in international trade in textiles, clothing, and leather;
- continue to support the joint ICFTU/GUF representation in Washington to lobby the IMF and the World Bank to ensure a social dimension in international economic policy.
