Research On Labour Standards In The International Trading System

With the economic globalization the issue of labour standards in international trade is getting more and more important and becoming the focus of governments and academia all over the world. Meanwhile, this issue has also become a tough bifurcation in the new round multilateral trade negotiation between developed countries and developing countries. developed countries put forward the so called "social clause" which meant to protect labour rights as a new entry of WTO. In this way, they link labour standards and international trade together. According to them, countries which don't abide by the international labour standards shall receive trade sanction. However most of the developing countries are against this proposal. The issue of labour standards hasn't been incorporated into the multilateral trade system due to the strong opposition of developing countries. Nevertheless, the dispute on the social clause is still going on. In the bilateral trade field the link between labour standards and international trade has developed substantially. The entries of labour protection has been brought into the free trade agreement signed between the U.S and Jordan, the U.S and Singapore, the U.S and Chile. Besides, in the non-official level the issue of trade and labour standards exists also in the code of conduct of multinational corporations. It can be foreseen that the issue of labour standards will be incorporated into the WTO multilateral trade system will be an irresistible trend due to the combination of all the complicated international social factors. China is a big country of trade and a member of WTO, at the same time, it's also the country of most labours and the biggest labour market, so the labour standards is a problem unavoidable. Therefore, research on the issue of labour standards of international trade is of great theoretic and realistic significance.Based on the perspective of international law, this dissertation takes the multilateral trade liberalization as the general background, circles around the relation between trade and labour right protection, follows the historic evolution of trade and labour standards and focus on the construction of labour standards system, the legal issues related with voluntary labour standards. Comprehensively Applying the research method of systematic analysis, comparative analysis, historical analysis, sociology of law and economics of law, the dissertation systematically expounds, analyses and demonstrates the issue of labour standards in international trade.The paper consists of three parts: introduction, body and conclusion. The body part is composed of five chapters. The whole paper consists of around 160,000 words.In the introduction part, the author expounds the following questions: the general background, the significance of research, the means of research and other points which need to be stated.The first chapter mainly concentrates the basic theoretic research of the issue of labour standards. After defining labour standards, international labour standards, core labour standards and social clause, the author expounds the legal origin, content, formulation, execution and supervisory system of international labour standards.The second chapter analyses the relation between international trade and labour standards. The author reviews first the historic revolution of the trade - labour standards in and out of the framework of GATT / WTO. He indicates that with the economic globalization and the development of trade, the dispute on this issue between developed countries and developing countries will become fiercer. Then, the author analyses the different positions held by developed and developing countries and their respective reasons. He believes that the two positions are to some degree self-regard despite their rationality. However, the essence beneath the hot dispute is the intense conflict of economic interests and values between developed and developing countries under the background of the imbalance of economic development and trade liberalization. Next, the author differentiates and analyses the rationality of relating labour standards with international trade. According to the author, labour standards and international trade are necessarily and practically connected from the economic angle; From the perspective of protecting human rights, although improving the labour standards through trade sanction requires to pay and the effect is limited, a formulation of unified international labour standards and mandatory execution through trade sanction can exert pressure from external on the countries and enterprises which vie with one another to gain competitive advantage and thus has a certain positive effect on the overall enhancement of human rights protection of the world.therefore, the proposal of relating the labour standards and international trade is rational if we exclude trade protection and politic intervention.The third chapter studies the possible system construction of labour standards issue within the framework of WTO. First, the author demonstrates the possibility and necessity of incorporating this issue into WTO. Then he treats the concrete system construction after incorporation of labour standards issue into WTO: 1. the incorporation should take the form of specialized labour standards agreement within the WTO framework; 2. the content of incorporation can only be core labour standards; 3. the particularity of trade dispute system related with labour rights protection, the limitations and the substitute of trade sanctions; 4. the cooperation basis, cooperation level and cooperation mechanism of labour standards of WTO and ILO in multilateral trade.The fourth chapter analyses the legal aspects related with voluntary labour standards. The core labour standards can not be incorporated into the multilateral system of WTO due to the great difference between developed countries and developing countries. In this situation, multinational corporations adopt the voluntary labour standards world-widely, which signifies the era of non-official or society-based solution to the problem of core labour standards. Voluntary labour standards originates from the rise of corporate social responsibility movement, so the dissertation also covers an overview of the origin, definition and international law foundation of corporate social responsibility. The concrete form of voluntary labour standards is the multinational corporation codes of conduct, for this reason the dissertation studies also the contents and types of the multinational corporation codes of conduct, its relation with worker rights protection and its legal nature. And finally with a typical example of voluntary labour standards——SA8000, the dissertation analyses execution mode of voluntary labour standards and the related legal aspects.The fifth chapter first summarizes the labour standards related trade disputes that we have encountered; then the author reveals our basic position and attitude in the labour standards issue while analyzing our activities in ILO and approval of ILO labour convention. Based on this, in order that the international labour standards can be executed efficiently in China, the dissertation discusses how to perfect our labour legislation which covers four aspects of core labour standards, namely, freedom of association and collective bargaining right, the abolition of forced labour, prohibition of child labour and elimination of discrimination in employment.In conclusion the author presents a very concentrated and compact summary of the paper.