Labour:

Labor is one of the most important factors of production that influence international trade. Weak labor market regulations in developing countries are a source of unfair competitive advantage, and low wages and labor standards violate the human rights of workers in the developing countries. The most commonly proposed solution to these problems is the international harmonization of labor market regulations by raising standards in developing countries to those in their more developed counterparts. Labor costs in the industrialized countries are much higher than those in the developing countries, although labor costs vary greatly within each group too. U.S. wages were well below those of Germany but above those of the United Kingdom. For medium-income countries such as Korea, labor compensation levels had reached nearly half those in the United States by 1995, while low-income countries such as India and Indonesia had labor costs less than 5 percent of the U.S. level. The vast expansion in trade and investment, particularly in the 1990s, has had equally profound effects on labour standards around the world. While some regions have benefited, the negative effects are most obvious in the 850 export processing zones around the world where minimum labour standards are regularly violated and trade union organizers are forbidden entry. On average, 80% of the workers in the zones are young and unorganized women workers. 15 million children work to make items which enter into international trade. Forced or slave labor is used on a massive scale in some countries to produce textiles, gold, diamonds, agricultural exports and other commodities. Concurrently, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has developed unprecedented powers to intervene in what were previously domestic policy concerns. This has been unaccompanied by any social, development, gender or environmental dimension to its actions. The ICFTU's work on trade and labor standards includes regular policy statements to the WTO which comment on investment, services, development and many other areas of WTO policy. The ICFTU has produced various publications on the links between labour standards and world trade.