Trade Labor Link: A Post Seattle Analysis
(In Drabek, Zdenek, Globalization under Threat, Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar 101-123). The demand for a WTO working party on labour standards by the US at Seattle returned the contentious issue of the link between trade and labour standards to the center stage of multilateral trade negotiations. This paper offers a detailed and systematic analysis of the subject. I begin first by dissecting the intellectual case for the link. I then describe the so-called 'core' ILO Conventions. In section 4, I identify the sources of pressures for higher labour standards that led to the failure in Seattle as also the pressure being exerted within the current system on some developing countries to raise labour standards to preserve their privileges under the Generalized System of Preferences.