Gerard Greenfield, Core Labor Standards in the WTO, Working USA, Summer 2001:

The U.S. government has signed only one of the five core labor standards proposed under the social clause. It signed the Abolition of Forced Labor Convention in 1991 (thirty-four years after the convention was introduced) and has still not signed the ILO conventions on freedom of association, the right to organize and bargain collectively, equal pay for equal work, and minimum wages.

Even this core ILO convention on forced labor is constantly violated in the United States. The U.S. prison system has been privatized and commercialized so that prisoners are a cheap source of labor, making products for the consumer market, and a growing source of corporate profit. But since these prison-made goods are not exported, this practice will never be challenged by a social clause in the WTO. The clause is concerned only with goods that are traded internationally.

Since core labor standards haven’t been incorporated into the WTO and are unlikely to be any time soon, why does this matter? Democrats’ demands in renewing trade promotion authority raise the same thorny issues, write Gary Hufbauer and Theodore Moran in the FT:

An inconvenient truth poses a huge obstacle to the proposed “bargain”: US labour laws are either openly inconsistent with core ILO standards, or they could be challenged by lawyers if ILO standards trumped established statutes and long-standing interpretations. A trade agreement that enthroned ILO standards would not only alter federal labour law, it would also override state laws – triggering a constitutional howl from Sacramento to Albany. The practical effect would be to stop US trade negotiations. Few legislators would want to subordinate huge swaths of labour law to broad principles enunciated in trade agreements.

Joel Trachtman seems to agree, while Henry Farrell isn’t impressed.