A HUMAN FACE FOR THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

MARKLEY ROBERTS

US businesses and policymakers have a moral
obligation to promote human rights around the world

Free trade is a great slogan, conjuring up happy images of unending benefits to buyers and sellers around the world. And globalization of the world economy has meant rapid changes in technology and communications, and also vast new markets for ever-cheaper products. But globalization of the world economy also has resulted in even more cutthroat competition among nations and multinational business firms. All too frequently, this scramble for global markets puts grinding downward pressures on workers’ wages and working conditions, and on labor standards and workers’ rights in every part of the world.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where giant multi-national corporations too often operate without regard for national or international rules of behavior. And we live in a world where some governments oppress their own citizens and violate the rights of their own working people. It is reasonable and moral to believe that more effective protection and promotion of human rights and workers’ rights will make the world a better place. After all, higher living standards, more democracy, and greater economic, social, and political stability are all necessary for greater global peace. For these reasons, the United States should use its key role in international trade and in international institutions like the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund to advance human rights and workers’ rights.

WORKERS' RIGHTS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 covers a wide range of issues and principles, many of which relate specifically to workers’ rights. For example, Article 23 declares:

    (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work, and to protection against unemployment.
    (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
    (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
    (4) Everyone has the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Many other articles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights relate to workers’ concerns, including, for example, protection of children, freedom of opinion and expression, protection against arbitrary arrest, and prohibitions against torture.

In 1998, the Labor Organization (ILO), a tripartite labor-business-government international agency affiliated with the United Nations, issued a “declaration on fundamental principles and rights at work.” There were 273 votes for the document, no votes against it, and 43 abstentions. The document commits ILO members to observe five “core labor rights,” even if their legislatures have not ratified the ILO conventions that pertain to these rights:

   (1) freedom of association;
   (2) effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;
   (3) elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labor;
   (4) effective abolition of child labor; and
   (5) elimination of discrimination with respect to employment and occupation.

Freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining are particularly important because they make it possible for workers to join together to form unions and, through collective bargaining, to protect and promote human rights and workers’ rights for themselves and for the society in which they live.

In some less-developed countries, governments and employers fear higher labor standards and expansion of workers’ rights will be used by more advanced economies to exclude their low-wage products in international trade. For this reason, the 1998 ILO declaration states that “labor standards should not be used for protectionist purposes” and that “the comparative advantage of any country should in no way be called into question by this Declaration and its follow-up.” At its best, the ILO is a standard-setting agency, able to pressure and mobilize governments to live up to the obligations of the ILO declaration. Like many international organizations, the ILO lacks the teeth to enforce its policies and priorities. Ultimately, though, the ILO can expel countries, like Myanmar, for continued gross official abuses of workers’ rights and human rights.

WORKERS’ RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS

The ILO recognizes, quite correctly, that workers’ rights and human rights are so closely related that it is impossible to draw any clear or useful distinctions between them. A 1998 ILO document, “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ILO Standards,” makes clear the mutual interdependence of these rights. In the United States, the annual State Department survey required by Congress, “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,” lays out in excruciating and horrifying detail abuses of human rights and workers’ rights around the world. The “Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights” by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) provides further examples of abuses of these rights.

For example, these reports detail that, in 1998, 123 people throughout the world were murdered for labor union activities, and another 1,650 union members were attacked or injured. In the United States, the ICFTU found at least one in ten union supporters campaigning to form a union was illegally fired.

ILO surveys report that exploitative child labor blights the lives of more than 250 million children under age 14 around the world. These surveys indicate that at least 50-60 million of these children are engaged in work that jeopardizes their health, safety, and morals. Children worldwide are involved in prostitution and pornography, the drug trade, active military service, and other hazardous work. In 1999, the US Senate ratified an ILO convention outlawing the worst of these forms of child labor, but did not address many other kinds of child labor, particularly farm work, which is among the most dangerous of occupations. Some 800,000 to 1 million children in the United States are engaged in seasonal and migrant farm work.

TRADE SANCTIONS

And while US trade laws address some aspects of workers’ rights, these laws are not always enforced. Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, for example, defines violations of workers’ rights by trading partners of the United States as an “unfair trade practice,” subject to the same remedies under US law as other unfair trade practices. Section 301 authorizes the US Trade Representative to “suspend, withdraw, or prevent the application of benefits of trade agreement concessions” to any country that

    (1) denies workers the right of association,
    (2) denies workers the right to organize and bargain collectively,
    (3) permits any form of forced or compulsory labor,
    (4) fails to provide a minimum age for the employment of children, or
    (5) fails to provide standards for minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health of workers.

The law provides a broad range of sanctions, from setting a higher tariff on a single product, company, or industry, to removal of the entire country’s trade preferences. While other trade laws contain much weaker workers’ rights protections, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) sidesteps the issue of labor protections, although there are weak and unenforceable NAFTA labor and environment protection “side agreements.”

On paper, at least, US policy and trade law promote the rights of workers in our trading partners. And on a multilateral level, again in principle, the United States has a mandate to urge that workers’ rights be protected. Section 526-e of the 1994 foreign operations appropriations directs the secretary of the Treasury to use the “voice and vote of the United States” to press the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) “to encourage borrowing countries to guarantee internationally recognized worker rights,” as defined in US trade law. Supporters of workers’ rights have long criticized the World Bank and the IMF for putting “free markets” and “labor market flexibility” far ahead of human rights and workers’ rights. Though the United States is the biggest supporter of these international financial institutions, there is little or no evidence that any Treasury secretary has obeyed this mandate.

THE ROLE OF BUSINESS

One reason these laws and policies tend not to be enforced aggressively is because American companies chafe at US sanctions against foreign violators of human rights and workers’ rights. Abraham Katz, president of the US Council for International Business, told the Senate Finance Committee in 1999 that a “unilateral, sanction-based approach would undermine the rule-based trading system in which most countries have a stake, destroying the certainty and predictability that is essential to future growth.” Like many in the business community, he argued that, over the long term, growth through trade and investment would improve human rights more effectively than any sanctions.

In 1999, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, speaking at a conference in Davos, Switzerland, challenged the world’s business leaders to take action and “to embrace, support, and enact a set of core values in the area of human rights, labor standards, and environmental practices...” He urged companies to instill labor and environmental standards in their own operations worldwide. It would be encouraging to think that the business leaders at Davos gave tumultuous applause and promised to follow up, but there have been few reports that this appeal struck a responsive chord with the world’s captains of industry and commerce.

However, under pressure from Amnesty International USA, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, and the International Labor Rights Fund (and, no doubt, as a preemptive move to counter vague but recurring proposals of a business code of ethics issued by the US government), a few US companies have taken a proactive approach. Developed with input from these human rights groups and US companies with a China presence, the 1999 “US Business Principles for Human Rights of Workers in China” outlines basic labor standards as defined by the ILO, along with basic human rights as defined by the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Currently, Levi Strauss, Mattel, Cisco Systems, 3Com, Intel, KLA-Tencor, and Target are working to ensure their operations comply with the China Business Principles. Very specific language in this document commits these US firms to make sure their facilities and suppliers are not involved in child labor or prison labor. Many, but not all, “free trade” economists, business leaders, and government officials believe that engagement with China will lead to a more open, less repressive political system in that country. It’s possible, in the very, very long run. But John Maynard Keynes reminded us that in the long run we are all dead, and too many brave human rights activists in China may die too early.

While it remains to be seen whether the self-policing efforts of US business in China will promote workers’ rights and human rights, non-governmental actions have scored some small successes in other countries. The Rugmark campaign, for example, has been working for 20 years to end child labor in the rug-making industry by certifying rugs made without child labor. Hundreds of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in many different countries were involved in a threatened boycott, and many of the carpets sold in America today come with the Rugmark certification tag attached. But there is still a long way to go; only 15 percent of carpet looms in India, for example, are under the Rugmark license.

Another case where consumers were urged to fight child labor with their wallets was the “Foulball” campaign coordinated by the Washington-based International Labor Rights Fund. This very effective campaign left consumers incensed that children in Pakistan were employed to stitch soccer balls sold in America for American children to play with. Faced with the threat of consumer boycotts, sporting goods makers in Pakistan now employ women workers to make these soccer balls.

Another example of private NGO activity is the campaign of students at more than 25 colleges and universities for guarantees that sweaters and caps licensed by the colleges and sold in campus stores are not made in exploitative foreign or domestic sweatshops. These students are using their moral pressure and the financial power of their colleges to bring about changes to benefit workers in overseas production of college name items. All of these actions by non-governmental organizations and individuals are proving that many Americans and many people in other countries believe the claims of morality should lead to moral action.

THE ROAD AHEAD

All of these actions are promising, but there are no simple solutions in the fight to put a human face on the global economy. The United States cannot do it alone—but it can lead the fight. Supporters of workers’ rights and human rights must press for action on a number of different fronts. The ILO, for instance, can set standards, and serve monitoring and reporting functions to influence workers’ rights practices to some extent in many countries. At a minimum, the United States, which has a terrible record of not ratifying ILO treaties, should ratify all the ILO “core worker rights” conventions.

Unfortunately, employers in this country tend to be suspicious of ILO treaties they fear may supersede state and federal labor laws. US business representatives supported the general propositions of the ILO-approved “core worker rights,” but the specifics that give substance to the general propositions are more controversial. This helps to explain why theoretical recognition of the crucial role of higher labor standards, workers’ rights, and human rights in the economic and social progress of nations is so slowly, if at all, followed by concrete political and governmental action, even in an advanced industrial democracy like the United States, where opposition by business and some conservatives blocks action by the US Senate on most ILO treaties.

American businesses, in recent years, have become more sensitive to human rights and workers’ rights as a result of pressures and publicity from US and international human rights and workers’ rights-oriented NGOs. Public policy and private exhortation should encourage and support US corporations operating abroad or using foreign contractors to require their local operators or foreign contractors to protect and promote human rights and workers’ rights with written policy documents and independent follow-up monitoring and enforcement. Voluntary cooperation and industry agreements by US business firms and related US labor unions should be encouraged to work together to set codes of conduct with independent monitoring and reporting procedures and effective follow-up enforcement of workers’ rights in foreign subsidiaries and foreign contractors.

Non-governmental organizations in the United States and on the international scene have a key role in pressing business firms and governments in the United States and in other countries to improve their human rights and workers’ rights practices and policies. To publicize violations of human rights and workers’ rights, these NGOs must organize demonstrations and boycotts when necessary. While the labor union demonstrations at the 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Seattle took much of the world by surprise, protests about human rights and workers’ rights will continue to be waged wherever global trade policy is being negotiated— as the world witnessed just this past summer in Genoa at the Group of Eight Conference. These protests, in subtle and incremental ways, help shape world opinion and help bring about small changes in the short run. Over the long run, these changes can be a powerful force for widespread labor protections.

For the United States, the challenge is to implement and enforce US trade law provisions aimed at promoting human rights and workers’ rights, including the existing workers’ rights provisions under Section 301. To be a moral nation, the United States must make human rights and workers’ rights principal trade negotiating objectives. In a recent US trade pact with Jordan, for example, labor protections were included. The United States must insist in all WTO and NAFTA trade negotiations that strong workers’ rights protections are necessary if agreements are to be reached. And the United States should use its clout with the World Bank and the IMF to encourage both international institutions to make protection and promotion of human rights a condition for loans and loan guarantees to borrowing countries.

America can, and should, deliberately use its foreign trade and investment policies to put a human face on the global economy. This is not a short-term project and it is not a job for the faint-hearted. But it follows a noble and honorable American tradition. It is consistent with Woodrow Wilson’s idealism, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s internationalism, and Eleanor Roosevelt’s passion for human rights.

Additional Resources: Greider, William. One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism. New York: Simon & Shuster, 1998. Tharoor, Shashi. “Are Human Rights Universal?” World Policy Journal, Winter 1999/2000, XVI: 4, 1-6.

Additional Resources:

Greider, William. One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism. New York: Simon & Shuster, 1998.
Tharoor, Shashi. “Are Human Rights Universal?” World Policy Journal, Winter 1999/2000, XVI: 4, 1-6.

Markley Roberts (CC ’95) worked on legislation and economic policy for more than 30 years at the AFL-CIO labor union federation.

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