The Case for Linking a Right to Adjustment with the NAFTA
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Description
This essay argues that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) should be accompanied by a right to adjustment for workers. Such a right would entitle workers who are displaced as a consequence of trade liberalization within North America to adjustment assistance from their governments. It would not, however, commit these governments to a particular form or level of assistance. Instead, they would be required to provide sufficient aid to facilitate re-employment of displaced workers under conditions of dignity and without undue hardship on the workers and their families. Governments would be free to choose the most appropriate means to this end, which could include mandatory notice periods for plant closings, training subsidies or programs, income maintenance, job search facilities, counselling, and relocation assistance. Available institutional mechanisms within each country would enforce the right to adjustment, with the possibility of extraordinary appeal to a new trinational dispute settlement mechanism, before which workers and unions would have standing. Among the main reasons for including a right to adjustment in the NAFIA is the opportunity it would offer to address in an appropriate way the inherent connection between adjustment and trade policies. A right to adjustment could exempt genuine adjustment measures (such as retraining subsidies) from retaliatory trade actions, such as countervailing duties, by NAFfA partners. Compliance with the right to adjustment could also become a precondition for any member state being permitted to take safeguard or emergency clause action against imports from another member state. Thus, the reimposition of tariffs or other protectionist actions would become a recourse of last resort, acceptable only where adjustment measures proved insufficient to cope with the dislocation affects from rising imports. Here, it is important to emphasize that, under domestic trade law in each country, a protectionist response is now readily available through courts and tribunals where free trade causes particular harm to domestic firms and their workers. Adjustment assistance for specific groups can only be arranged, however, by petitioning political authorities, a much less direct and uncertain avenue of relief. Creating a right to adjustment assistance would correct this protectionist asymmetry.
Source Publication
Ties Beyond Trade: Labor and Environmental Issues Under the NAFTA
Source Editors/Authors
Jonathan Lemco, William B. P. Robson
Publication Date
1993
Recommended Citation
Howse, Robert L., "The Case for Linking a Right to Adjustment with the NAFTA" (1993). Faculty Chapters. 897.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/897
