ISDS Case Map
labour | workers' rights
The agreement announced today is a fundamental shift in US trade policy and clears the way for broad, bipartisan congressional support for the Peru and Panama FTAs.
South Korea and the European Union made good progress this week in their first round of negotiations to forge a major free trade pact, chief negotiators from both sides said on Friday, but they conceded sensitive issues were barely touched.
Congressional Democratic leaders say they have forged new trade policy guidelines with the Bush administration that will elevate labor and environmental rights to key components in future free trade agreements.
The Bush administration and Democratic leaders have struck a compromise that would insert stricter labor rules into future trade treaties, potentially lending fresh momentum to the global effort to promote free trade, sources briefed on the talks said yesterday.
Colombia must resolve US concerns about a paramilitary scandal and the unsolved murders of trade unionists if it wants Congress to approve a free trade agreement, a spokesman for the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on Thursday.
Korea's two umbrella labor groups are split about the free trade agreement with the United States. KCTU is against the FTA altogether. FKTU has taken the position that the agreement needs "followup" measures.
Labor activists on Monday accused the government of selling out Indonesian workers by signing free trade agreements with foreign countries.
Rejection of the approval of the free trade agreement with the US will be a main motivation for Colombians to celebrate the International Worker's Day.
Unions have given Labor the go ahead to negotiate a free trade deal with China after the ALP agreed to address fears about potential job losses in Australia.
Prospects for passage of Bush's free trade agreement (FTA) with Colombia are dwindling in the face of pressure on Congress from U.S. and Colombian unions coupled with widespread reports of anti-labor atrocities, and new evidence of Colombian paramilitary and government collusion with the violent union repression.
