ISDS Case Map
labour | workers' rights
A deal on labor mobility could spur the movement for a broad Canada-EU trade alliance
In the wake of the resumption of cross-strait dialogue, officials of both Taiwan's restored right-wing Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) government and the Chinese Communist Party-ruled People's Republic of China have touted plans for the signing of a "closer economic partnership agreement" between the two sides. Largely absent from the debate has been concrete discussion of the experience of Hong Kong.
The Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD) reiterated today its warning that the ratification of Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) had institutionalized abuses against Filipino health personnel.
The Organisation of African Trade Unions Unity (OATUU) has joined in the crusade against the signing of the EPA, stating several claims which it believed would cripple the economies of member countries, if they go ahead to sign the agreement.
Four labour organisations -- the African Regional Organisation of the international Trade Union Confederation, the African Trade Network, Ghana Trades Union Congress and the Federation of Labour -- have called on leaders of the Africa, Carribean and Pacific countries not to ratify the Economic Partnership Agreement they have signed with the European Union.
"Increasingly we hear about proposals in the EU for levy of carbon tax on imports into EU, ban on imports on allegations of labour law violations and use of child labour etc. Any effort to combine trade with other social issues would prove to be disastrous for bilateral trade" says India's commerce minister about the EU-India FTA.
Since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993, the US Congress has debated and passed several new bilateral trade agreements with Peru, Jordan and Chile, as well as the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Congressional debates over immigration policy have proceeded as though those trade agreements bore no relationship to the waves of displaced people migrating to the United States, looking for work.
The only way the Colombian deal will remain the first accord of its kind defeated in Washington, it's clear, is if organized labor continues to play the central role in establishing the terms of debate around basic human rights and keeping Democratic members of Congress in line.
The President of the National Union of Public Workers says the Barbados trade union movement missed a golden opportunity to make its views known on the proposed economic partnership agreement between Caricom and the European Union.
The Philippine government has used the annual entry of 400 Filipino nurses and 600 caregivers under the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) as one of main reasons why the Senate should ratify the free trade accord. Yet foreign nurses and caregivers who want to work in Japan may find working conditions there exploitative or even discriminatory, according to a study.
