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20 Lab. Stud. J. 30 (1995-1996)
NAFTA and the EC Social Dimension

handle is hein.journals/labstuj20 and id is 30 raw text is: NAFTA and the EC Social Dimension Manfred McDowell Opponents of the North American Free Trade Agreement have cited the European Community as a model of economic integration that suc- cessfully joins considerations of equity and efficiency in its social charter commitments to workplace rights and social protection. In a critical re- view of the EC social dimension, which draws in part on the debate triggered in Britain and France by the so-called Hoover affair, the article observes that beneath a relatively thin layer of supranational regulation, the EC approach to labor issues is effectively governed by the same broad principle embodied in the North American agreement. Rather than har- monization, the operative principle is a mutual recognition of labor mar- ket norms that enlarges the scope for competitive devaluations of rights and standards. In addition to the evident weakness of labor as an inter- national actor, on both sides of the Atlantic the terms of integration re- flect the limitations inherent in a social market approach to labor issues that is supplemental to a free-trade agenda. In the early 1980s, references to Eurosclerosis, a critical theme in advancing the project of a post-1992 Single European Market (SEM), were in great measure driven by invidious comparison with the United States. Prodigious job growth in the United States demonstrated that Europe's un- employed were victims of a discriminating and complex system of workplace rules and social benefits which, limiting both the freedom of action of employers and perceived need for mobility on the part of workers, prevents wages from performing a market clearing function.' It is an argu- ment which an enlargement of the employment gap with the United States has revived in the 1990s. The EC Commission white paper on employment and competitiveness endorsed by the EC summit in December 1993 has been Manfred McDowell is affiliated with the Department of Political Science, DePauw Uni- versity, Greencastle, IN 46135. 1. OECD, The Economic Outlook (Paris, OECD, July 1982).

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