Trade and labour interface in the context of regional economic integration, the case of the Southern African Development Community

grantor: University of TorontoThis thesis explores the normative and empirical case for the inclusion of labour standards in trade regimes using the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as a case study. It investigates the extent to which the race to the bottom thesis, unfair trade claims and human rights arguments for trade and labour linkage in the context of economic relations between developed and developing countries are valid justifications in the SADC context. The thesis assesses the implications that the prevailing socio-economic, legal, political and historical situation in SADC have for the assumptions underlying these arguments. The thesis suggests that the economic efficiency analysis of the motivations for free trade is a major conceptual obstacle to the resolution of the trade-labour debate. This analysis sees other values, besides economic efficiency and welfare, as non-trade issues whose realization should best be achieved by utilizing the benefits that flow from unhindered free trade. This is a segregated view which creates a dichotomy between economic and socio-political aspects of human development. The segregated view assumes that any meaningful exercise of labour rights depends on the attainment of economic development and so must be deferred until the later has been realized. In this thesis I propose that the best way to make a compelling normative and empirical case for trade and labour linkage both at the global level and in SADC in particular, is to adopt an integrated approach to the objectives of free trade. According to this approach, free trade and labour rights share the same normative foundation. It is the need to ensure human autonomy and freedom. The approach accordingly considers the pursuit of economic efficiency and labour rights as being the integrated purpose for the liberalization of trade. Once it is accepted that free trade and labour rights share the same normative foundation, the perceived dichotomy between "pure-trade" and "non-trade" issues, which has hitherto served as a conceptual bulwark to the establishment of the trade-labour linkage disappears. Most fundamentally, the integrated approach puts to rest the notion that there is a contradiction between free trade (and the consequent economic gains) and respect for labour rights.Ph.D