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Within the present day globalization context there are three Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) in which the labor issues forma part of the Labor Cooperation Agreement (LCA), accompanied by a text that contains "labor principles" : the FTA of North America with its ACLAN, the Canada-Chile FTA with its ACLCC, and the FTA of Canada and Costa Rica with its ACLCCR. There are also two FTAs in which no labor agreement is incorporated: the United States and Chile (FTAEUCHI), and the USA, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Dominican Republic (FTAEUACARD). In this paper the purposes, principles and labor agreements in these FTA and LCA were analyzed, interrelating them with the principles and norms of the ITO and the labor principles adopted by the UN and the OAS. In the conclusions certain considerations related to the impact of these contents in labor relations were formulated. The paper does not refer to globalization as such, or to the non-labor contents of the FTAs. It likewise did not examine constitutional contents, or solutions to controversies, nor the application of sanctions [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labour market and social policies both affect and are affected by the process of trade liberalization and globalization. This two-way interaction and the feedback effects are the focus of this paper. The analysis is mainly conceptual—but examples are illustrated throughout, based mainly in the context of labour markets in North America, Latin America and the Caribbean basin. Attention is paid to outlining the mechanisms whereby globalization and trade liberalization affect labour market and social policy initiatives, and the extent to which these pressures will lead to a harmonization of legislative and policy initiatives, and if that harmonization will necessarily be downward to the lowest common denominator. The paper concludes that: (1) the pressures will lead towards policy harmonization; (2) the harmonization generally will be downwards; (3) such harmonization is not always negative as generally perceived; (4) efficient regulatory and social policy initiatives will survive and indeed expand, with the ‘rent-protecting’ ones under most pressure to dissipate; and (5) pure distributional or equity-oriented initiatives that have no positive feedback effect on efficiency, unfortunately, will also be under jeopardy to dissipate, and this is a serious policy concern. Alternatives for addressing this concern are discussed, as are their associated problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]