Broken Promises:
Decades of Failure to Enforce Labor Standards in Free Trade Agreements
Prepared by the Staff of Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Executive Summary
The Senate will soon vote on the Bipartisan Congressional Trade
Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015 – also known as “Fast Track.”
President Obama has requested Fast Track authority from
Congress to ease the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade agreement with 12
countries that account for nearly 40% of the global economy. President
Obama has repeatedly stated that the TPP is “the most progressive trade
bill in history” because it has high labor, environmental, and
human rights standards. The President claims the TPP will
have “higher labor standards, higher environmental standards,” and “new tools to hold countries accountable.”
But proponents of almost every free trade agreement (FTA) in the last
20 years have made virtually identical claims:
• In 1993, President Clinton claimed that “the North American Free
Trade Agreement [NAFTA] is the first agreement that ever really
got any teeth in environmental standards, any teeth in what another country had to do with its own workers
and its own labor standards…There’s never been anything like this
before.”
• In 2005, U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman claimed, “[t]he
[Central American Free Trade Agreement] has the strongest
labor and environmental provisions of any trade agreement ever negotiated by the United States.”
• In 2007, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab claimed that the
Peru, Colombia, and Panama trade agreements contained
“unprecedented protections for labor rights and environmental standards.”
• In 2010, President Obama said that the South Korea agreement
included “groundbreaking protections for workers’ rights.”
• In 2011, the White House insisted that the Colombia trade agreement
“include[d] strong protections for workers’ rights, based on the
May 10, 2007, bipartisan Congressional-Executive
agreement to incorporate high labor standards into America’s trade
agreements.”
President Obama said in 2012 that “this agreement is a win for our
workers and the environment because of the strong protections
it has for both – commitments we are going to fulfill.”
• A few months later, the White House made nearly identical claims
about the Panama Free Trade Agreements.
Broken Promises
However, the history of these agreements betrays
a harsh truth: that the actual enforcement of labor provisions of past U.S. FTAs lags far behind the promises. This analysis by the staff of Sen. Warren reveals that despite decades of nearly identical promises, the United States repeatedly fails to enforce or adopts unenforceable labor standards in free trade agreements.
Again and again, proponents of free trade agreements
claim that this time, a new trade agreement has strong and meaningful protections; again and again, those
protections prove unable to stop the worst abuses. Lack of enforcement by both
Democratic and Republican presidents and other flaws with the treaties
have allowed countries with weaker laws and standards and widespread labor and environment abuses to undermine
treaty provisions, leaving U.S. workers and other interested parties with no
recourse. This analysis finds:
• The United States does not enforce the labor
protections in its trade agreements. A series of reports by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO), as well as reports by the
Department of Labor (DOL) and the Department of State, document
significant and persistent problems with labor abuses in
countries with which we have FTAs. While GAO acknowledged progress by partners in implementing
commitments and by agencies in tracking progress and engaging on
problems, their analysis concluded that the USTR and DOL “do not systemically monitor and enforce compliance with FTA labor provisions,” and that the
U.S. agencies generally have not been “identifying compliance problems,
developing and implementing responses, and taking enforcement actions.”
• The U.S. pursues very few enforcement actions.
Prior to 2008, the Department of Labor had
not accepted a single formal complaint about labor abuses in free trade
agreements.
Since then, the Obama administration has conducted in-depth investigations into complaints and
issued fact-finding reports and recommendations. However, DOL has
accepted only five claims against countries for violating
their labor commitments, and it only agreed to restart the first ever labor enforcement case under
any free trade agreement in 2014, six years after the initial claim was
filed. This reveals both the cumbersome nature of complaint process and the overall enforcement problems
with these agreements.
• Widespread labor-related human rights violations. The United States has 14 free trade agreements
with 20 countries. While some of these countries have made progress
in improving labor conditions, problems with labor rights and other abuses are widespread.
U.S. agencies or other investigators have identified significant problems with use of child labor or
other labor-related human rights abuses in 11 of the 20 countries.
• Failure to curb even the worst abuses. Case
studies of several countries that have signed U.S. free trade agreements reveal continuing horrific
labor abuses. Guatemala was named “the most dangerous country in the
world for trade unionists” five years after entering a trade
agreement with the U.S. In Colombia, despite the existence of a special “Labor Action Plan” put in
place to address long-standing problems and secure passage of the
Colombia FTA, 105 union activists have been murdered and 1,337
death threats have been issued since the Labor Action Plan was finalized four years ago.
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