The concern for labor rights has played a role in many of the political, social and economic movements of the past few centuries. Although Marx's clarion call on behalf of laborers is perhaps the most well known, there have been several more inclusive attempts to secure workers' rights against the perceived injustices of free trade. In the past decade the debate in Western countries, and in the United States in particular, has shifted to whether labor and environmental standards should be included in multilateral, regional or bilateral trade agreements. This paper proposes a framework for linking labor standards with trade agreements.

The early 20th-century movement for greater worker rights helped spawn the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 1919. Since its formation, the ILO has been responsible for monitoring and enforcing labor standards across the globe, though many argue that it has failed in this regard. In 1998 the ILO issued a Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, which identified four "core labor standards": freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining; elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labor; effective abolition of child labor; and elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation. These core standards represent the starting point for most modern discussions of labor rights. Many recent U.S. free-trade agreements either incorporate some reference to the ILO standards, such as NAFTA, or attempt to make them binding, such as the United States�¢??Peru Trade Promotion Agreement.