Free Trade Agreements and Labour Rights: Recent Developments

By Cleopatra Doumbia-Henry and Eric Gravel

The debate over whether international trade and respect for certain labour rights should be linked to is an old one.

In fact, it dates back to the very first attempts to establish international labour regulations in the nineteenth century. During the industrial revolution the charitable urge to impose constraints on appalling working conditions was set against a preoccupation that was economic in nature. Entrepreneurs who wished to introduce better working conditions would find themselves at a great competitive disadvantage. They therefore sought to secure generalized minimum guarantees for wage earners and regulations that were applicable to everyone. Reviewing these early attempts to regulate conditions, the authors move on to recent bilateral and multilateral initiatives to promote labour standards under free trade agreements. It is too early to tell whether fair labour clauses in free trade agreements are having a beneficial impact on labour rights.

(International Labour Review; vol. 145, no 3, 2006)