Work represents one of the major vectors connecting trade regimes to social welfare goals or objectives. Because work is a central marker of social status and because labor markets function as key nodes or transfer points in the diffusion of economic gains, for most people, access to work and the terms and conditions on which it is available are central to the promise of trade liberalization. To the extent that this relationship holds, in either direction, issues of work are inseparable from the general issues of welfare and distributive justice that trade agreements engage. For the same reason, debates around trade– labor linkage can be understood as a subset of the general inquiry into a fair— that is, ethically and politically defensible— globalization.

Notwithstanding its importance, the suggestion here is that the principal way we have approached the relationship between trade and labor so far— seeking to make trade regimes more worker friendly through the inclusion of labor standards and rights at work— has been unduly limited. Other possibilities of trade– labor linkage remain, accordingly, unexplored, and the goals of labor-focused trade agendas have been somewhat mistargeted as a result.

Yet whatever the limits of conventional standards-focused strategies in achieving the goals of better work and greater worker empowerment, trade agreements do play a critically important role, both in affecting the terms and conditions of work and in determining workers’ general fates in the labor market. This is because of the myriad direct and indirect channels through which trade agreements influence domestic rule and policy choices; alter social, industrial and organizational norms and practices; affect the presence and viability of economic activities; and thereby alter the distribution of gains and losses among the actors involved.

Imagining trade regimes in this alternative way points to a broader trade and labor agenda, one that connects labor issues to a host of trade rules and concerns beyond rights at work. Rather than a point of irretrievable division, moreover, such an agenda potentially joins workers and citizens in the Global North and Global South on many issues, even in the face of ongoing conflict among states.