Monitoring International Labor Standards Summary of Domestic Forums (2003) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 4-11
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From page 4... ...
CODES OF CONDUCT There was general agreement among the panelists at both forums that corporate codes of conduct are not an adequate substitute for the binding laws and regulations laid down by national and local governments. The recent privatization of labor rights enforcement that these codes represent was acknowledged to be a serious matter of concern.
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From page 5... ...
Other participants argued that although codes have had a beneficial effect overall, there is considerable room for improvement. Indeed, the problems associated with the proliferation of codes and monitoring regimes led Marcela Manubens (Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation EPVH]
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From page 6... ...
and Marcela Manubens, among others, noted that the efforts of employers, unions, and NGOs to enforce labor standards represent the privatization of labor rights enforcement and are supplanting the role of government authorities. Although all the panelists considered this to be an unhealthy situation, they also believed it to be currently unavoidable because global economic structures are not being balanced by global rules and enforcement mechanisms.
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From page 7... ...
Linking labor standards to trade agreements is a strategy that has generated an enormous amount of academic research, policy debate, and public commentary. Contrary to the common perception, the United States has been linking trade privileges with labor rights compliance for years.
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Numerous panelists stressed that governments should not view monitoring as a threat to their economies or as a mechanism for imposing western values, but as a method of increasing growth prospects through higher standards. There was universal agreement that the most credible types of monitoring with consumers and advocacy groups are external independent and labor union monitoring.
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From page 9... ...
Local groups can also help overcome frequent problems with "compliance slippage," a problem whereby factories fail to implement agreed-upon remediation efforts and relapse in their compliance with labor standards. Labor standards monitoring is a complex and time-consuming endeavor; many components of the process still face substantial technical difficulties.
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From page 10... ...
said that the complexity of creating and maintaining such a database should not lead to inaction and that, once the National Academies database is created, there will be no comparable database in terms of credibility and coverage. Most panelists supported the idea of a database, but Anna Walker and Robert Zane voiced concern about the cost of the database and the lack of specificity about potential uses for the information.
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From page 11... ...
Mike Grace noted that CWA's previous efforts to highlight worker exploitation in developing countries were attacked on the grounds that CWA's information was biased, but this will not be the case with the National Academies database. It will provide a complete picture of the labor rights climate in many foreign countries, and this information could be used in bargaining with management to pressure companies to comply with ILS.
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