by Bama Athreya, Executive Director, International Labor Rights Forum

On July 16, US Trade Representative Ron Kirk announced a new initiative to monitor how US trade partners were enforcing the labor rights protections in bilateral trade agreements.  The USTR announced this initiative in a statement titled, "Trade Policy that Works for America's Workers and Businesses." We are extremely supportive of the new initiative, but why the protectionist framing?  Might this be a trade policy that works to help workers in other countries, too?

In a blog written for this site on the eve of the 2008 US election, I noted with dismay that we have borne witness to eight years in which the U.S. justified many new bilateral free trade agreements through clauses stating that developing countries would improve protections of their workers and the environment.  However, the U.S. did little to promote effective implementation of those labor rights promises among trade partners and indeed modeled bad behavior in degrading labor protections here at home.  It seems obvious and entirely consistent with a renewed respect for rule of law to engage our bilateral trade partners in a serious review of what they have done to implement their existing commitments to protect workers and environment (and indeed, any other existing commitments under treaties or trade agreements).

Why then should the news that USTR will proactively monitor compliance by trade partners with labor obligations seem so refreshing?  This is a win-win for both US workers and workers overseas.  At a moment of global consternation over possible returns to protectionist trade policies, not only by the US but by many of the world's major economies, this step signals continued US commitment to global economic engagement.  The new initiative includes important measures to provide capacity building, through the US Department of Labor, to countries seeking assistance to achieve compliance with labor obligations.  By highlighting this important 'carrot' the Obama Administration has signaled clearly that it does not intend the labor reviews to be punitive.  Rather, it reaches for the moral high ground, providing better protections for workers everywhere our global economic ties reach.  Importantly, Kirk has suggested that new efforts will extend to China, a country which is not party to a bilateral trade agreement but is nonetheless of overwhelming commercial significance to the US - and which has been subject to numerous calls for protectionist measures in the recent few months.  Promoting an effective labor dialogue with the country that represents the world's largest labor market will do far more to promote human rights in China than shutting down trade.

The downturn in U.S. consumer spending has had dramatic effects on millions of workers around the world, and developing country workers in export sectors reliant on the US market have been particularly hard hit.  There will be inevitable pressures to maintain exports in a failing economy by further debasing labor and environmental standards.  That is why this initiative to maintain and strive to improve labor rights among our trade partners is critically important at this time; we need to demonstrate our ability to lead simultaneously in improving markets AND improving welfare of workers around the world.  Trying to find ways to lower costs- a 'race to the bottom'- will not drive long term global economic growth.  Promoting policies that increase prosperity in 'emerging markets' makes better sense economically and, dare we note, morally as well.  Creating decent and sustainable jobs that raise developing country workers into the middle class is a win-win for workers and businesses, as it expands markets for global products.

U.S. Trade Representative Kirk is off to a promising start.  The fact is, however, that the Administration is turning around a battleship.  It will take time and sustained effort to make these promises real and meaningful to America's workers, and to workers around the world.

Bama Athreya is the Executive Director of the International Labor Rights Forum. Dr. Athreya joined ILRF in early 1998, just after returning from a two-year assignment in Cambodia as the AFL-CIO's Country Representative. While in Cambodia she directed worker education and labor law training programs and conducted extensive research on the problems of women workers and on child labor. She is a cultural anthropologist, and received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. She spent three years in Indonesia, first as a State Department official and later as an independent researcher, and wrote her thesis on Indonesia's labor movement. She has also lived and worked in China, Taiwan and India.