Transnational Labor Rights Regulation: The Limits and Potential of International Framework Agreements.

Growing corporate power, the geographic fragmentation of production, and the predominance of neoliberal policies have challenged and undermined traditional methods of labor market regulation. Globalization processes have produced a downward pressure on labor standards that neither nationally based labor laws nor international institutions such as the International Labor Organization have been effectively able to counter. Thus, unions and other civil society organizations have pushed for new approaches to the regulation of labor standards. In this context, privatized forms of regulation have emerged as alternatives and/or supplements to legislative mechanisms. This paper assesses International Framework Agreements (IFAs) - labor standards agreements negotiated between TNCs and Global Unions - in attempt to determine their capacities to construct effective mechanisms of transnational labor rights regulation. The paper argues that by facilitating social dialogue between TNCs and global unions, IFAs show potential to provide stronger accountability mechanisms than do unilateral corporate codes of conduct. Yet IFAs are limited by a top-down, voluntaristic approach to labor rights regulation. For mechanisms of transnational labor rights regulation to move beyond these limitations, they must more effectively combine emergent privatized initiatives with traditional regulatory strategies such as local labor laws and collective agreements to ensure the enforcement of international labor norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]