Labor Standards In The Context Of Global Economic Integration Controversial Legal Research

With the development of economy globalization, the benefits between nations become unbalanced, which results in the contradictions and conflicts, most relating to the social affairs tied up with international trade, such as polarization between the rich and the poor, human rights and labor force problems. This article gives a brief introduction on the labor standards relating to trade in 4 chapters.Chapter one introduces the history, concept and contradictions of labor standards. It indicates that the labor standards matters originated with the development of productivity and have become an international problem tied up with the economic benefits between nations accompanying the gradual expanding of international trade. In chapter one, it also introduces the long existing contradictions between the developed countries and developing countries, and then analyses the virtual cause.Chapter two indicates that the development of economic globalization and expanding of international trade do not bring benefits to nations and labors, but aggravate the long existing contradictions between the developed countries and developing countries. The contradictions include whether the international labor standards should connect to the international trade, which means whether the social items should be added in the international trade agreement. It introduces the point of views and reasons of developing countries and developed countries respectively and puts forward that the development of economy naturally requires the development of the society. As the biggest organization of multilateral trade system, to mainly constitutes its regulations after the developed countries. Determined by many complications, connecting the labor standards and international trade is inevitable requirement and tread. In this chapter, the writer offers a new suggestion to settle the disputes.The third chapter analyses the legal related with voluntary labor standards. The core labor standards cannot 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 labor standards world-widely, which signifies the era of non-official or society-based solution to the problem of core labor standards. Voluntary labor 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 labor 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 labor standards——SA8000, the dissertation analyses execution mode of voluntary labor standards and the related legal aspects.In the last chapter, the author pointed out that as the one of the largest developing countries, Chinese government is always working actively in the treatment of labor rights. However, in the same time of enjoying our achievement, we should face up to our discrepancy with the international labor standards. When constitute our own labor standards, we should refer to the core labor standards of International Labor Organization and strengthen the enforcement of law and protection to appropriately deal with the labor standards affairs in order to build a favorable international environment for future development.