GATT and the fair wage: A historical perspective on the labor-trade link

This Note analyzes from a historical perspective the debates on linking labor standards to the trade rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Labor standards advocates have increasingly embraced a human rights based definition of labor standards. However, a review of the negotiating history from the GATT's early years and labor discussions during Japan's accession to the GATT in 1953 reveals that a quite different, wage based, view of labor standards was adopted by participants in the early GATT negotiations. This Note argues that such differences in the definitional understanding of labor standards may limit the value of the current WTO text as a tool to promote labor standards as human rights.