Monitoring Compliance with International Labor Standards: How Can the Process Be Improved, and What Are the Implications for Inserting Labor Standards into the WTO?

Abstract

The Report of the National Academy of Sciences Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information shows that assessing compliance can be carried out in a thorough, transparent fashion, allowing alternative evaluators to identify where they disagree in assessment. Drawing on the Report and written by the Chair of the Committee that produced it, this paper offers a short overview of the principal challenges in assessing compliance with the ILO core labor standards, and offers a simple framework for investigating compliance. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for trying to include labor standards in trade agreements.