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LABOR STANDARDS WITH TEETH?



Business Week
June 19, 2000

LABOR STANDARDS WITH TEETH?

By Aaron Bernstein; EDITED BY ROBERT McNATT

     For most of its 81 years, critics have derided the International Labor 
Organization (ILO) as a
toothless body that does little besides publish reports that no one reads. 
Now the U.N. agency, run by
Director-General Juan Somavia, may be ready to grow a few baby teeth. In 
mid-June, an ILO
conference in Geneva will vote on whether to sanction Myanmar (Burma) for 
forced-labor abuses
under a never-used clause in the ILO constitution.

If a majority of the ILO's 174 member countries agree, as seems likely, the 
agency's charges of labor
abuses could have new bite. How so? The clause would allow the ILO to 
officially send the charges to a
wider audience of member governments and other U.N. agencies.

It also would give governments legal cover to penalize the censured country 
with trade or investment
restrictions, says Thomas Niles, a U.S. ILO delegate. This might temper 
further eruptions like those last
year in Seattle, where unions wanted the World Trade Organization to 
enforce labor standards because
of the ILO's ineffectiveness.

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