- 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 organisers are forbidden entry. On average, 80% of the workers in the zones are young and unorganised women workers.
- 15 million children work to make items which enter into international trade. Forced or slave labour is used on a massive scale in some countries to produce textiles, gold, diamonds, agricultural exports and other commodities.
- Concurrently, the World Trade Organisation (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 labour standards includes regular policy statements to the WTO which comment on investment, services, development and many other areas of WTO policy. The ICFTU issues regular reports on the labour policies of particular countries and shows how these impact on trade. And the ICFTU has produced various publications on the links between labour standards and world trade.
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