[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 173 (Thursday, December 13, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Page S13153]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. HARKIN (for himself, Mr. Kennedy, and Mr. Baucus):
  S. 1827. A bill to provide permanent authorization for International 
Labor Affairs Bureau to continue and enhance their work to alleviate 
child labor and improve respect for internationally recognized worker 
rights and core labor standards, and for other purposes; to the 
Committee on Foreign Relations.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, laws are only as effective as their 
implementation and enforcement. That is why today I am introducing the 
Fair International Standards in Trade and Investment Act of 2001 along 
with my distinguished colleagues, Senator Kennedy, chairman of the 
Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and Senator 
Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
  This legislation will provide much-needed policy direction to the 
U.S. Labor Department DOL, and enhance the standing and capacity of the 
International Labor Affairs Bureau, ILAB, within that Department in the 
formulation and conduct of our nation's international economic 
policies. With these tools, ILAB can better inform and equip U.S. 
policy-makers in all three branches of our Federal Government to assist 
and induce our foreign trading partners to enforce their own national 
laws against abusive child labor and to comply with thirteen U.S. laws 
that have been enacted since 1983 which link U.S. trade, investment, 
and aid policies to the elimination of abusive child labor and growing 
international respect for the other internationally-recognized worker 
rights and core labor standards.
  Currently, ILAB does not have any underlying, permanent statutory 
authority for any of its international activities. It simply operates 
as an adjunct to the personal office of the Secretary of Labor. 
Practically speaking, this gives ILAB very little clout in inter-agency 
policy-making and no real voice to insist on better enforcement of the 
child labor provisions and other worker rights provisions in U.S. law, 
international law, or any of the bilateral trade and investment 
agreements that America has with more than 150 foreign countries.
  The time has come for better equipping our government and the rest of 
the world with urgently-needed tools to constructively link compliance 
with child labor laws and other basic worker rights to the conduct of 
continued trade and investment liberalization. We need new thinking and 
new resolve to crackdown on abusive child labor throughout the global 
economy and to beef up protection of internationally-recognized worker 
rights and core labor standards. If enacted, this legislation will lay 
a solid statutory foundation underneath ILAB. It will empower ILAB to 
help ensure that as our Nation enters into additional trade and 
investmennt agreements, that those new agreements as well as all of our 
pre-existing agreements serve to raise the living standards and protect 
the rights of working people as well as corporate managers and 
investors.
  I have spent more than a decade in this Senate leading the charge 
against the commercial exploitation of children in the workplace at 
home and abroad. Just last year, the Congress enacted provisions I 
authored in the Trade and Development Act of 2000 which prohibit trade 
preferences and duty-free access to the U.S. marketplace for any 
trading nation that is not meeting its international legal obligations 
to eliminate the worst forms of child labor. Now we have to make 
certain that these new provisions and our other trade-linked worker 
rights laws are practically enforced and that means improving ILAB's 
capacity to meet this increasingly-immportant responsibility.
  In the final analysis, increased trade and investment are not ends in 
themselves. They are means for achieving more broad-based, sustainable 
development and greater economic and social justice in the global 
economy. Our real choice is not between free trade or protectionism. 
Our policy challenge is to identify new and constructive ways in which 
the power of government can be used to manage globalization in ways 
that curb abusive child labor and protect worker rights as much as 
property rights. A well-grounded and enhanced ILAB within the one 
Cabinet department in our government that was created to advance the 
needs and protect the fundamental rights of working people everywhere 
can help us meet this challenge for the 21st century and beyond.
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