Using international law to strengthen the progressive labor movement abroad
by David Atkins
My first post up at the UN Global Dispatch blog went up today, about the need for stronger international treaties and regulations to advance the goal of worker protections abroad. I used the example of Bangladesh as a case in point, due to the devastating factory collapse and subsequent reactions by international state and non-state actors.
In the wake of the collapse, two different agreements took shape: one of them was a more toothless American-style approach crafted by the “Bipartisan Policy Center” (why is it that “bipartisanship” must so often align with corporate interests?) in which corporations made voluntary commitments to worker safety without independent investigators or consequences. There was also another agreement, created by international labor organizations and signed on to by more Eurozone companies, that did feature independent investigations of factory safety as well as real consequences for failure to provide better working conditions.
However, as I noted in my post, not even the stronger approach will be adequate to the task:
However, it’s clear that even the more labor-friendly response has serious problems. First, it only applies to Bangladesh, even though many other developing countries where multinational corporations have factories have frightening labor and safety conditions as well. Second, it’s essentially reactive: the commitments were only made after the deaths of over a thousand people had shocked the conscience of the world, potentially causing PR headaches for the manufacturers in question. Third, it puts Bangladesh itself in a precarious position: the country must walk the line between delivering too little in the way of protections and wages for its workers, and delivering enough that production costs lead manufacturers to look elsewhere for expendable labor—including in nations whose conditions may or may not be worse than those in Bangladesh.
The lesson should be obvious: the more international and legally binding the agreement, the more helpful it will be to workers in developing nations. The more expansive and multi-party the treaties are, the less competitive labor arbitrage risk will entail for any nation that improves factory conditions. Voluntary commitments from multinational corporations will do little to prevent the next tragedy.
Labor and worker protection agreements are in their infancy at the highest international levels. But with multinational corporations increasingly able to use labor arbitrage to manufacture products in nations with the weakest worker protections, the international community must take a stand in creating legally binding, global treaties that are proactive in nature, and carry negative trade consequences for those nations that choose to flout or ignore them.
Neither an increase in protectionism by developed nations nor a piecemeal patchwork of voluntary corporate deals will be adequate to protect workers in either the developed or the developing worlds. There is no way to put the multinational corporate genie back into the national bottle.
The only way to control their behavior is to embrace stronger and more effective international organizations with the power to enforce supranational treaties and obligations that protect workers and minimize the damage of global labor arbitrage.
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