Trade Conditions and Labor Rights: U.S. Initiatives, Dominican and Central American Responses.

Frundt, Henry J. Trade Conditions and Labor Rights: U.S. Initiatives, Dominican and Central American Responses. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida. 1998. ISBN: 0-8130-1621-5

This book makes an important contribution to the debates concerning the benefits or realities of economic globalization. The author examines a wide range of evidence, including extensive interviews with labor leaders themselves, in order to test his two fundamental hypotheses: 1) labor-rights provisions codified in trade agreements positively influence national labor-rights legislation, and 2) enforced national labor rights legislation improve a society's labor conditions. As the author explains, proof of these two hypotheses rebuts the neo-liberal, or neo-classical, assertions that governmental "meddling" in national labor markets only constrains the market's ability to generate more rapid economic growth and, in turn, more rapid improvements in wages and working conditions for a larger number of people. Specifically, Frundt examines the impact on labor conditions in the Caribbean and Central America of the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) that became a part of both the U.S. Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) and the later Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (CBERA). The first half of the book examines both the arguments for enforced labor regulations versus neo-liberal market solutions as well as the history of U.S. trade conditions in the 1980s-1990s. The case studies, which make up the second half of the book, include El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Panama and Nicaragua.

Frundt finds that the impact of the GSP on labor conditions in the ...