Documents free trade 84 results

"Opposition to capital's promotion of free trade and deregulated markets should be a unifying factor binding together the transnational labour movement. Yet the predominant stance of European trade unions has been to support the free trade agenda promoted by the European Union, while calling for social conditionalities to offset its most negative impacts. This article seeks to draw out the ambivalent positioning of the European trade union movement over and against free trade, and to explain its contradictions as evidence of tension between the instrumental and expressive tendencies faced by trade unions in their pursuit of self-interest in the globalised economy. The analysis concludes that a more radical articulation of the labour movement's political interests is required if this tension is to be resolved in favour of transnational solidarity."

"‘Free trade' strategies have increasingly become a problem for the international labour movement. While trade unions in the North especially in manufacturing have supported free trade agreements to secure export markets for their companies, trade unions in the Global South oppose these agreements, since they often imply deindustrialisation. Especially the expansion of the free trade agenda into services, public procurement, investment, intellectual property rights as well as investor to state dispute settlement provisions are considered to be problematic.

The purpose of this volume is to understand better these dynamics underlying ‘free trade' policy-making in order to explore possibilities for transnational labour solidarity. Bringing together labour academics with trade union researchers and social movement activists, this volume moves from conceptual reflections about the impact of ‘free trade' via the analysis of struggles around free trade agreements to considerations of concrete alternatives."

"The European Union (EU) has concluded close to 50 bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs), with around 10 more under negotiation. EU FTAs now include “trade and sustainable development” chapters, which contain labour provisions based on a “promotional” rather than “conditional” approach. In the context of the debate on the purpose and efficacy of the trade–labour linkage, the authors examine the possibilities and limitations of these provisions, drawing attention to the lack of research on their effect “on the ground”. To bridge this gap, they propose a new research agenda for evaluating the effects of labour provisions in EU FTAs."

"This paper examines the long-run effects of globalization, financialization, and European integration on union density in 18 affluent capitalist democracies between 1981 and 2010. After appropriate controls, imports from developing and imports from advanced countries and financialization negatively affect, and capital mobility positively affects, unionization. Immigration has no consistent effect on unionization. Also, European integration—measured as logged years of membership in the European Union (EU)—negatively affects unionization. Interactions of EU membership with globalization and financialization variables reveal a complicated pattern with distinctive effects for EU and non-EU countries. Overall, our findings contribute to the ongoing stream of scholarly research about the causes of union decline among affluent democratic countries in the neoliberal period."

" Labour provisions in trade agreements do not lead to a reduction or diversion of trade flows, and ease labour market access, a new study of the International Labour Organization (ILO) finds.



The research shows that a trade agreement which includes labour provisions actually increases the value of trade by 28 per cent on average, similar to 26 per cent for an agreement without labour provisions.



The study also finds that labour provisions support labour market access, particularly for working-age women. Labour provisions impact positively on labour force participation rates, bringing larger proportions of both, male and female working age populations into the labour force.



These are the main findings of the new ILO Growth with Equity report entitled “Assessment of labour provisions in trade and investment arrangements” which analyses the design, implementation and outcomes of labour provisions in trade agreements.



The study produced by the ILO Research Department highlights a significant increase in the number of trade agreements worldwide, showing that in 2014 almost 55 per cent of exports took place within the framework of bi- and plurilateral trade agreements – compared to just 42 per cent in 1995."