| Free trade policies have provided the impetus for economic development,promoted industrial development,and increased domestic employment opportunities in many countries.However,workers,who are important contributors to global production supply chains,often do not receive the same income as other participants,while the quality of their working environment is not guaranteed due to the weak level of labor rights protection in some countries.Because of the intrinsic link between free trade and labor,developed economies,led by the US and Europe,have proposed the use of trade measures to regulate the labor protection behavior of individual countries.Free Trade Agreements have become the most common solution for trade-labor linkage due to their small number of participating countries and flexible negotiation.After more than two decades of development,the inclusion of labor provisions in regional free trade agreements has become a consensus and common practice.At present,developed economies are still the dominant players in signing labor provisions,and different countries have different focuses when incorporating labor provisions.The EU provisions mostly do not contain compulsory obligations and exclude the application of the general dispute settlement mechanism in FTA,hoping to improve the capacity and level of labor protection in other countries through soft mechanisms such as exchanges and cooperation;while the US has a more assertive attitude,emphasizing the soundness of labor protection mechanisms,applying labor disputes to dispute settlement and sanctions mechanisms on the same footing as other economic disputes,and promoting the reform of labor laws in contracting states through the "conditional entry into force" approach.The U.S.,on the other hand,has taken a stronger stance by emphasizing the soundness of labor protection mechanisms,applying labor disputes to dispute resolution and sanction mechanisms on the same footing as other economic disputes,and promoting the reform of national labor laws by means of "conditionalities".Despite the lack of uniformity,there are common features in the development of labor provisions with the emergence of large regional free trade agreements.Currently,the new labor provisions have increased in both rigor and breadth of content.The new labor clauses are expected to improve the implementation of labor clauses and the level of protection of labor rights and interests of countries by refining the substantive provisions,improving the implementation and supervision system,strengthening the cooperation among countries and civil society,raising the awareness of civil society on labor protection,and establishing a deterrent dispute settlement mechanism.It can be expected that the labor provisions will be upgraded continuously in the future,putting forward higher requirements to countries.With the development of China’s economy,we already have a set of perfect legal system and mechanism for labor protection,but the content of labor provisions in China’s FTA is still different from that of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership(CPTPP).Partnership(hereinafter referred to as CPTPP)and other FTA labor provisions have a large disconnect,which may make China’s foreign trade policy challenged by developed economies and may become one of the thresholds for China to join large regional free trade agreements,including CPTPP.Therefore,it is urgent to find out the gap between our labor laws and the provisions of CPTPP and analyze the possible obstacles to China’s accession due to labor issues.The countermeasures that China should take are to take the initiative to negotiate labor provisions,to propose acceptable labor standards for China according to national conditions,and to continuously improve China’s labor legislation internally and strengthen law enforcement supervision in practice for labor issues to continuously improve the level of protection of labor rights and interests. |
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