ASEAN rejects trade and labor standards link

ASEAN rejects trade and labor standards link

HANOI (Reuter): Labor ministers from ASEAN member countries
reaffirmed their stand against linking labor conditions to
international trading rules, Vietnamese Labor Minister Tran Dinh
Hoan said yesterday.

"There should not be any ... link between labor standards and
economic and trade issues," Hoan told Reuters after a meeting in
Hanoi of labor ministers from the Association of South East Asian
Nations (ASEAN). "And we reached a consensus on that."

ASEAN groups Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Hoan said the ministers, who met behind closed doors Tuesday,
wanted to reaffirm their position in a dispute which took center
stage at a World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in
December.

The U.S. and other Western nations have argued that
international trade rules should be used to raise Third World
labor standards, eradicate sweatshops and stop an estimated 250
million children from working, often in appalling conditions.

Backed by France and Canada, Washington has said it wants the
issue to be thrashed out at the WTO, which has its own court to
resolve trade disputes.

Other countries, mostly from the developing world, argue that
the U.S. is trying to protect jobs at home from cheap Third World
labor.

At the WTO conference in Singapore, member countries agreed to
observe "internationally recognized core labor standards",
confirming that the International Labor Organization (ILO) was
"the competent body to set and deal" with them.

Both sides in the argument went away from that meeting
proclaiming history.

Vietnam's official media, in reports on the ASEAN ministers'
informal meeting in Hanoi, said it had been agreed that the ILO
was "the only world agency responsible for setting labor
standards -- not the WTO".

Recently, U.S. sportswear firm Nike Inc came under fire
following allegations of labor abuse at a factory near Vietnam's
Ho Chi Minh City which is operated by a Taiwanese subcontractor.