Global Industrial Relations? Framework Agreements and the

In response to an absence of effective methods of international labor standards regulation, International Framework Agreements (IFAs) have emerged as a strategy promote labor rights in transnational supply chains. This article analyzes IFAs, with particular attention given to their capacities to move beyond the weaknesses of unilateral corporate codes of conduct. By facilitating social dialogue between transnational corporations and global union federations, IFAs hold potential to involve unions and workers in transnational labor standards regulation. Yet they are weakened by a top-down approach that needs greater connection local union organizing. To move beyond their limitations, they must more effectively combine a transnational focus with traditional union strategies such as organizing and collective bargaining. Keywords global political economy, international labor standards, international framework agreements, global unions Growing corporate power, the geographic fragmentation of production, and the pre-dominance of neoliberal policies have challenged and undermined traditional methods of labor market regulation. Globalization processes have produced a downward pres-sure on labor standards that neither nationally based labor laws nor international insti-tutions such as the International Labor Organization have been able to effectively counter. Thus, unions and other civil society organizations have pushed for new approaches to the regulation of labor standards, creating pressures for the emergence of new forms of transnational labor rights regulation—those that seek to eithe