Can Labor Standards Improve Under Globalization?

Can Labor Standards Improve Under Globalization? PDF Author: Kimberly Ann Elliott
Publisher: Peterson Institute for International Economics
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Get Book

Book Description
In this study, the authors move beyond the debate on the relative merits and risks of a social clause in trade agreements and focus on practical approaches for improving labour standards in a more intergrated global economy.

Can Labor Standards Improve Under Globalization?

Can Labor Standards Improve Under Globalization? PDF Author: Kimberly Ann Elliott
Publisher: Peterson Institute for International Economics
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Get Book

Book Description
In this study, the authors move beyond the debate on the relative merits and risks of a social clause in trade agreements and focus on practical approaches for improving labour standards in a more intergrated global economy.

Handbook on Globalisation and Labour Standards

Handbook on Globalisation and Labour Standards PDF Author: Elliott, Kimberly A.
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1788977378
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 464

Get Book

Book Description
This comprehensive Handbook explores the complex and volatile debate over globalisation and labour standards. It offers key insights into the impact of globalisation on workers, the obligations of corporations and international legal bodies in protecting workers’ rights and maximising the opportunities offered by international trade and investment.

International Labor Standards and International Trade

International Labor Standards and International Trade PDF Author: Mr.Stephen S. Golub
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1451845537
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 38

Get Book

Book Description
This paper reviews controversies regarding linkage of international trade and labor standards. Pressures for international harmonization of labor standards arise in the context of increased trade between countries with large disparities in wages, and also reflect the history of labor standards. A critical distinction is made between standards related to fundamental human rights and those related to employment conditions. The main conclusion is that trade sanctions to enforce labor standards should not be an option, but that international agreements on core labor standards, with voluntary compliance, may, apart from being worthwhile on ethical grounds, defuse calls for protection.

International Labor Standards

International Labor Standards PDF Author: Robert J. Flanagan
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804746908
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Get Book

Book Description
This book provides the most thorough empirical assessment to date of the impact of international regulation on labor standards and conditions, and critically analyzes the common race-to-the-bottom view that globalization and international competition can only further degrade labor standards.

Globalization and Labor Conditions

Globalization and Labor Conditions PDF Author: Robert J. Flanagan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190294280
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book

Book Description
This book explains how three major mechanisms of globalization international trade, international migration, and the activities of multinational companies have altered working conditions and labor rights around the world during the late 20th century. Drawing on analyses of a database on international labor conditions assembled for this project and a growing research literature on globalization and labor conditions, the book finds that trade, migration, and multinational companies are associated with improvements in world labor conditions.

Should Core Labor Standards Be Imposed Through International Trade Policy?

Should Core Labor Standards Be Imposed Through International Trade Policy? PDF Author: Keith E. Maskus
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
Weak provision of core labor standards in developing countries has complex effects on competitiveness and trade. The problem cannot be treated effectively by imposing trade sanctions, but should instead be approached through programs aimed directly at poverty reduction, education reforms, and disclosure of information. Numerous proposals have surfaced recently to incorporate a clause about labor standards in the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Such a clause would require each WTO member to recognize and enforce certain core labor standards: forbidding forced labor, discrimination, and the exploitation of child workers and guaranteeing the rights of workers to associate freely and engage in collective bargaining with employers. Failure to provide core labor standards would subject a country to international trade sanctions. Maskus analyzes links between core labor standards and international trade policy. He develops a series of simple models to see whether limiting core labor standards in export sectors of developing countries can improve the countries' price competitiveness in export markets. He concludes that deficient provision of core labor standards generally diminishes export competitiveness rather than improving it, because of the distortionary effects of those deficiencies. In other words, concerns about the negative impact on industrial countries of limited wage, employment, and labor standards in developing countries are largely misplaced - one exception: exploiting child labor could expand exports in highly labor-intensive sectors. But wage spillovers into industrial economy labor markets must be trivial, and there is no empirical evidence that the use of child labor provides measurable competitive advantages. Do international trade sanctions serve a legitimate, effective role in penalizing countries that fail to observe core labor standards? Maskus points out that trade restrictions are blunt, indirect instruments and may be counterproductive, harming the people they are designed to help and ineffective in achieving stated goals. Thus, including in WTO rules a social clause guaranteeing core labor standards would reduce global efficiency for a small gain. Some approaches - compensation programs from wealthy countries, focused on poverty reduction and better access to education- be more effective and less costly than trade restrictions. At the same time, the International Labor Organization could improve its monitoring and publicity efforts, to raise international consciousness about labor standards. This paper - a product of the Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to analyze trade barriers facing developing countries.

Odd Couple

Odd Couple PDF Author: Michael Huberman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300158769
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 253

Get Book

Book Description
It has become commonplace to think that globalization has produced a race to the bottom in terms of labor standards and quality of life: the cheaper the labor and the lower the benefits afforded workers, the more competitively a country can participate on the global stage. But in this book the distinguished economic historian Michael Huberman demonstrates that globalization has in fact been very good for workers’ quality of life, and that improved labor conditions have promoted globalization.

The Promise and Limits of Private Power

The Promise and Limits of Private Power PDF Author: Richard M. Locke
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107067677
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Get Book

Book Description
This book examines and evaluates various private initiatives to enforce fair labor standards within global supply chains. Using unique data (internal audit reports and access to more than 120 supply chain factories and 700 interviews in 14 countries) from several major global brands, including NIKE, HP and the International Labor Organization's Factory Improvement Programme in Vietnam, this book examines both the promise and the limitations of different approaches to actually improve working conditions, wages and working hours for the millions of workers employed in today's global supply chains. Through a careful, empirically grounded analysis of these programs, this book illustrates the mix of private and public regulation needed to address these complex issues in a global economy.

Globalization and Poverty

Globalization and Poverty PDF Author: Ann Harrison
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226318001
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 675

Get Book

Book Description
Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.

Blue Collar Blues

Blue Collar Blues PDF Author: Robert Z Lawrence
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 088132485X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Get Book

Book Description
International trade accounts for only a small share of growing income inequality and labor-market displacement in the United States. Lawrence deconstructs the gap in real blue-collar wages and labor productivity growth between 1981 and 2006 and estimates how much higher these wages might have been had income growth been distributed proportionately and how much of the gap is due to measurement and technical factors about which little can be done. While increased trade with developing countries may have played some part in causing greater inequality in the 1980s, surprisingly, over the past decade the impact of such trade on inequality has been relatively small. Many imports are no longer produced in the United States, and US goods and services that do compete with imports are not particularly intensive in unskilled labor. Rising income inequality and slow real wage growth since 2000 reflect strong profit growth, much of which may be cyclical, and dramatic income gains for the top 1 percent of wage earners, a development that is more closely related to asset-market performance and technological and institutional innovations rather than conventional trade in goods and services. The minor role of trade, therefore, suggests that any policy that focuses narrowly on trade to deal with wage inequality and job loss is likely to be ineffective. Instead, policymakers should (a) use the tax system to improve income distribution and (b) implement adjustment policies to deal more generally with worker and community dislocation.