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Introduction

On May 10, 2007, congressional leaders and the US Trade Representative (USTR) reached an historic agreement on a “new trade policy template” (template) that has the potential to be an important step towards ensuring that workers’ rights are better protected in US trade accords.¹ The template applies to the US-Panama and US-Peru Free Trade Agreements and could also apply to other pending and future US free trade accords. Human Rights Watch is concerned, however, that ambiguities in the template could prevent it from reaching its full potential. 

Human Rights Watch generally takes no position on the desirability of free trade per se,²  but we believe that trade agreements can be valuable tools to protect workers’ rights when meaningful, enforceable labor rights protections are built into the fabric of the accords. We believe that the template could lead to just such protections. 

The final complete text of the template is not publicly available, however, and the two public summaries—one from USTR and the other from congressional leaders—contain important inconsistencies and ambiguities. To ensure that future free trade agreements comply with the spirit animating the creation of the template, we believe this lack of clarity needs to be remedied in the manner most respectful of workers’ basic rights. We fear that, if it is not, the template could result in only minimal gains for workers.

In this paper, Human Rights Watch explains and identifies our concerns. We also propose free trade accord provisions on workers’ rights that we believe are faithful to the template. The proposed language would make clear that parties to free trade agreements must adopt, maintain, and enforce in their labor laws and practice the fundamental workers’ rights identified in the International Labour Organization Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (ILO Declaration) and defined in ILO conventions and jurisprudence. 

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