Labour Rights as Human Rights: Evaluating the Policy Coherence of USA, EU and Australia through Trade Agreements and their Participation in the Universal Periodic Review

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to find policy coherence, or lack thereof, in the labour provisions contained in the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) of the United States of America, the European Union and Australia when compared to their interactions in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Sessions with their trade partners and to the official trio of UPR documents made available during these sessions. Over the past decade these countries have entered into various free trade agreements with developing and developed countries alike. However, it is their trade agreements with developing countries that are of particular interest.

This study was conducted in order to ascertain how these leading actors approach labour clauses in their FTAs. First, the labour provisions and social clauses of these trade agreements were analysed. Second, the participation of these actors and their dialogue with their FTA partners in UPR Sessions were assessed along with the reports compiled by the United Nations (UN entities and relevant stakeholders for use during these sessions. Lastly, these two analyses were deconstructed under the prism of labour rights as a subset of human rights in order to evaluate policy coherence of the main actors.

The core findings of this study are that the USA and Australia lack a clear direction in their policy while approaching UPR sessions. Their recommendations during these sessions tend to be misaligned with that of the official UPR reports. USA tends to make generalised recommendations while not targeting specific areas of labour rights. Australia lacks labour provisions in most of its FTAs, thus making it harder to evaluate its policy. While the European Union (EU does make detailed recommendations to its trade partners and maintains consistency with the official reports, there is still scope for involving the major members of the EU in dialogue.

It is the recommendation of this study that these countries, particularly the USA, EU and Australia, align their recommendations during UPR sessions with the official reports in order to present a coherent and unified front in combating labour rights violations. The study suggests that one way of tracking progress would be to develop a quantitative human rights index that records and ranks countries based on their commitment to human and labour rights.