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36 Comp. Lab. L. & Pol'y J. 347 (2014-2015)
ILO Labor Standards and Trade Agreements: A Case for Consistency

handle is hein.journals/cllpj36 and id is 391 raw text is: ILO LABOR STANDARDS AND TRADE
AGREEMENTS: A CASE FOR CONSISTENCY
Jordi Agusti-Panareda,t Franz Christian Ebert,tt and Desir6e LeClercqttt
I.       INTRODUCTION
Labor standards are an increasingly common feature in instruments of
international economic law.1 Perhaps the most significant and most
controversial development in this respect concerns the inclusion of
provisions that contain labor standards (labor provisions), in trade
agreements.2 While attempts to include labor provisions within the
t Senior Legal Officer, Office of the Legal Advisor, ILO.
tt Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law.
ttt Legal Officer, International Labor Standards Department, ILO. The views expressed in this
Article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the aforesaid institutions. The
authors would like to thank Lance Compa, Cleopatra Doumbia-Henry, Sarah Fox, Eric Gravel, Francis
Maupain, and Jeffrey Vogt for inspiration and commentary. Any remaining mistakes are of course to be
attributed to the authors alone. An earlier version of this Article was published as a Background Paper in
the context of the ILO Research Department's Project on Social Dimensions of Free Trade
Agreements; see Jordi Agusti-Panareda, Franz Christian Ebert & Desir6e LeClercq, Labour Provisions
in Free Trade Agreements: Fostering their Consistency with the ILO Standards System (ILO
Background Paper, 2014), available at http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---inst/
documents/genericdocument/wcms_237940.pdf. Some of the findings of the draft Background Paper
were fed into the project's synthesis report; see ILO, SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS
107-09 (2013).
1. These instruments include, e.g., development finance arrangements, corporate codes of conduct
of private companies, and framework agreements between multinational companies and global union
federations. See CHRISTINE KAUFMANN, GLOBALISATION AND LABOUR RIGHTS: THE CONFLICT
BETWEEN CORE LABOUR RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC LAW (2007); Dara O'Rourke,
Outsourcing Regulation: Analyzing Nongovernmental Systems of Labor Standards and Monitoring, 31
POL'Y STUD. J. 1 (2003); SHAPING GLOBAL INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: THE IMPACT OF INTERNATIONAL
FRAMEWORK AGREEMENTS (Konstantinos Papadakis ed., 2011).
2. Different aspects of this development have been analyzed by a number of authors. See The
Use, Scope and Effectiveness of Labour and Social Provisions and Sustainable Development Aspects in
Bilateral and Regional Free Trade Agreements VC/2007/0638 (Sept. 15, 2008), available at
http://ec.europa.eu/socialVBlobServlet?docld=2112&langld=en; Cleopatra Doumbia-Henry &  Eric
Gravel, Free Trade Agreements and Labour Rights: Recent Developments, 145 INT'L LAB. REV. 185
(2006); Sandra Polaski, Protecting Labor Rights Through Trade Agreements: An Analytical Guide, 10
U.C. DAVIS J. INT'L & POL'Y 13 (2004); JACQUES BOURGEOIS ET AL., A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF
SELECTED PROVISIONS IN FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS (Oct. 2007), http://trade.ec.europa.eu/
doclib/docs/2008/march/tradocl138103.pdf; Peter Bakvis & Molly McCoy, Core Labour Standards and
International Organizations: What Inroads Has Labor Made? (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Briefing Paper
No. 2008/6, 2008), available at http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/05431.pdf; Franz Christian Ebert &
Anne Posthuma, Rebalancing Globalization: The Role of Labor Provisions in Existing International
Trade Arrangements and Development Finance Policies, in WORLD OF WORK REPORT 2009: THE
GLOBAL JOBS CRISIS AND BEYOND 63 (Int'l Inst. for Lab. Stud., 2009), available at http://www.ilo.org/
public/english/bureau/inst/download/wow_09.pdf; Pablo Lazo Grandi, Trade Agreements and their

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