The 1998 ILO Declaration: responding to globalization and impacting corporate labor behavior

Following the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and with the advent of increasing globalization, the ILO moved to promoting worker rights in the new economic order. The 1998 ILO Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work was designed to reinvigorate the ILO's tripartite constituents' commitment to these principles through the traditional modes of ratification of conventions and government action. The perceived threat to globalization proved propitious for the UN in 2000 announced its Global Compact which included the ILO's four fundamental principles and promoted them to companies, who in turn included them in their corporate codes of conduct. The four principles were also inserted into free trade agreements, but with uncertain impact as the meaning of the principles was unclear and enforcement mechanisms ineffective. The 2020 USMCA has the potential to be he first trade agreement that ties trading privileges to observance of worker rights because of an enforcement mechanism that targets companies and a clearer definition of the principles.