The Analysis Of Issues Of Labor Standards In Free Trade Agreement And The Idea Of Improvement

Whether free trade and labor standards should be linked up, it still has been debated in theory, but in practice the pattern of"linkage"has formed in different forms and degrees, the governance of international labor standards towards diversification.In the development of international trade, WTO's negotiation have been becoming an impasse for that the interests of members are difficult to be coordinated, in the other side while the regional or bilateral free trade are developing in full swing. In the signed process of some new regional or bilateral trade agreements, where had involved matters related to the negotiation on the labor standards. These kinds of trade agreements were mostly signed in the drive of United States, Canada and other developed countries, especially the United States accelerated"linkage"in regional or bilateral free trade area when fell to get social clause into the WTO, These trade agreements include the clauses of labor standards, getting a agreement about the basic rules which parties should obey in the legislation and enforcement of labor law. Although these clauses has the same objectives in different agreements, there are showing a different governance structure.The provisions relating to labor standards, sighed by United States are worthy to be studied and drawn experiences from by us , as a big trading nation, China have been also speeding up to join the wave of regional trade. From the 2001 "Bangkok Agreement", China has respectively signed regional trade agreement with ASEAN, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, Pakistan, and Peru etc, and is negotiating with the Gulf Cooperation Committee, Australia, Iceland, and Norway etc for building free trade agreements, and is discussing to establish the feasibility of a free trade zone with South Korea, Japan etc. During the signed FTAs, some of has contracted labor standards issues in the form of memorandum, such as The Memorandum of Understanding on Labour Cooperation between New Zealand and China. The ongoing negotiations are protested by some trade unions in the negotiating parties for our cheap labor price. These are suggesting that it is unavoidable to have a discussion on how to deal with labor standards in the future, when China wants to attend more FTAs.With the reality of needs of restructuring China's economic development and protecting labor rights , combining with our existing labor standards, This paper argues that our country in the regional or bilateral free trade agreement (particularly in the negotiations with developed countries), we should actively respond to the labor standards, rather than choose to avoid them. We can learn from the patterns of United States to set the specific provisions in the trade agreements, as follows: adhere to the principle of legislative sovereignty, assume due duties of law enforcement, and actively carry out cooperation in labor matters, introduce third-party monitoring mechanism, establish a new model of responsibility which consists of the private responsibility and the national responsibility, clarify the boundaries between them. Only do this, can make our country achieve win-win outcome in the issue of labor standards.