Overview For some time now, the governments of a few advanced countries,as well as their unions and some parts of the business sector, have been pressing proposals to establish multilateral rules permitting punitive trade measures to be taken against countries deemed to be failing to uphold core...

When this chapter was originally written for the Handbook of Globalisation (Michie, 2003) the burning issue regarding labour standards was the attempt by advanced country governments and unions, particularly the US, to establish multilateral rules in the World Trade Organization (WTO) to enforce...

This policy study seeks to move the debate on labour standards beyond the present stalemate onto a more constructive plane. While closely examining the economic arguments in this controversy, it is also concerned with the broader political and moral dimensions. The authors suggest that...