ISDS Case Map
labour | workers' rights
While the labour movement supports the negotiation of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the Caribbean and the European Union (EU), there must be greater discussion with trade unions and civil society, and specially included treatment for women.
Why would the business community be applauding an agreement that guaranteed workers' rights in FTAs -- something they'd been fighting against for years? Because they'd been given assurances, relative to American workers, "that the labor provisions cannot be read to require compliance with ILO Conventions."
Free trade agreements with Peru and Panama now seem headed toward approval in the US Congress, after the Bush administration agreed to incorporate the basic labor standards long insisted upon by House Democrats. But a separate trade pact with Colombia rightly remains in legislative limbo over a much starker labor problem.
The full impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on the working people of Mexico, the US and Canada has yet to be assessed, but this slender volume makes a major contribution to our overall understanding of this disastrous economic treaty that was imposed on the people of all three nations by governments which routinely subvert democracy in the service of big capital.
A coalition of Mexican unions has now proposed a strategy of struggle that could open up the door to a more class-wide and continental approach to union and workers' struggles, starting in the three NAFTA countries.
Full text of the bipartisan trade deal reached between the US' Democrat-led Congress and the Bush Administration
Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa released the following statement today about new trade policy guidelines forged by House Democratic leaders in Congress and the Bush administration:
Washington plans to demand renegotiations on several areas of the Korea-US free trade agreement (FTA) signed on April 2, according to US media reports.
The Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development last week delivered materials to local educational offices to encourage them to promote the Korea-U.S. FTA, a move which has brought criticism from Korea's teachers' union, which says the move is biased and one-sided in nature.
