Question

What are the issues brought about by the concept of "labor law" in an international distribution agreement? How do importers and exports work together?

Answer 1

The concern of labour campaigners is that the augmented imports from nations in which labour standards are apparently not enforced at an adequately high level will be harmful to compensation & working environments in the industrialized importing nations.

Labour standards are multidimensional & may differ from nation to nation depending on the phase of development, average income, and the social, political & cultural situations & institutions. It may be tough therefore to differentiate clearly those labour standards which all would deem to be universal rights from other labour norms which will depend on particular national contexts. Nonetheless, attempts have been made to recognise & obtain consensus on a cluster of supposed core labour norms which preferably should be applied universally. For instance, according to OECD fundamental labour standards incorporate: (1) banning forced labour, (2) liberty of association, (3) a right to bargain collectively, (4) eradication of child labour abuse, (5) non-discrimination in hiring

The ILO should be made more powerful so that it can take up the role of enforcing core labour standards worldwide. In recent times, labour provisos as a trade policy instrument to help the labour market in obtaining gains from trade liberalization / investment liberalization, have been incorporated increasingly in bilateral trade & regional trade & in investment agreements by both the developed & the developing nations members.