Trade and Workplace Health and Safety: From NAFTA's Failure to the ILO-IFC ‘Better Work' Program

Economic globalization and global trade agreements over the past 20 years has shifted manufacturing from the developed world to developing countries that often have neither health-protective regulations nor the resources and capacity to enforce existing regulations or to promulgate new ones. The export of hazardous production process to basically unregulated workplaces in the developing world has resulted in an increase of worker fatalities, injuries and illnesses. Governmental efforts to include worker protections in trade agreements – starting with the 1994 NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement – have failed to increase the scope or effectiveness of national regulatory systems. Private sector “corporate codes of conduct” have generated a global cottage industry to “monitor” nominal supply chain compliance with code requirements, but working conditions in global factories have only marginally improved. Current efforts to join government trade policies and private sector “corporate social responsibility” programs will succeed only if a “floor” of minimal regulations to protect workers' health and safety is established, and is universally respected, and if workers on the plant floor are integrated into enterprise-level healthy and safety programs as trained, empowered, and active participants. The presentation will evaluate the failed experience of NAFTA, the mixed performance of the “Better factories” program in Cambodia, and the current efforts by the International Labor Organization and international financial institutions to establish a “Better Work” program in global supply chains and factories