The Dilemma And The Way Out Of Private Regulation Of International Labor Standards

For a long time,countries and intergovernmental international organizations have been regarded as the main actors in promoting the formation and development of international law.However,with the further development of economic globalization,the negative impact of international trade has gradually emerged,the distribution of trade benefits is unequal,employment,poverty,the environment and other problems have become increasingly prominent,and the unfair trade between developed and developing countries has further intensified.In this process,countries as global regulators are increasingly unable to effectively undertake the mission of solving global problems,and the traditional state-centered governance system cannot respond in time when faced with the realistic requirements of global governance,gradually causing a “governance deficit” situation.Under this predicament,private regulation undoubtedly provides a new model and approach for global governance,effectively filling the gap of traditional state regulation.The emergence of this method also provides new ideas for labor issues that have always been in an important position in global governance.The “soft law”nature of the governance mechanism of private regulation and the specificity of market-led forces make the implementation of international labor standards achieve certain results.However,as a non-enforceable private supervision method,the development of private regulation in the labor field also faces various problems such as legitimacy crisis and blue trade barriers,etc.How to solve these problems and how to maintain a relationship with traditional governance methods is of great significance to the development of private regulation in the future.This article is mainly divided into four parts for discussion: the first part,on the basis of the detailed introduction of the traditional international labor standard governance methods produced by the intergovernmental international organizations represented by the International Labor Organization and the developed countries represented by the United States and Europe,the limitations of the existing transnational labor governance approaches are analyzed,which leads to the rise of private regulation in global governance and the development status and trends of this way in the field of labor.The second part takes the Fair Trade movement,a typical representative of the private regulation model,as an example,and focuses on the specific mechanism of fair trade participating in the governance of international labor standards,including standard setting mechanism,supervision and enforcement mechanism,punishment mechanism and dispute settlement mechanism,so as to clarify how the private regulatory approach works in the labor field and enforces international labor standards.The third part further discusses the problems of private regulation in the process of governance,mainly from three perspectives: the legitimacy and effectiveness of private regulation in international labor standards,the blue trade barriers and the relationship with traditional governance.In-depth analysis of the defects exposed by private regulation under the impact of internal and external factors.Finally,on the basis of the previous analysis,it tries to put forward possible solutions to the dilemma of private regulation,and combined with China’s participation in global labor governance,it analyzes the impact of the rise of international labor standards on private regulation on China and the countermeasures that China should take.