한미자유무역협정 노동조항의 내용과 해석

There have been many attempts to put fundamental labor rights into the category of human rights, which can be accepted by the international society since the ILO was founded in 1919. To date, the ILO has adopted many conventions and recommendations to require member countries maintaining humane labor conditions in their own labor laws, which is based on the Preamble of ILO Convention. The ILO Declaration(1998) is a legal basis for the concept of fundamental labor rights and core labor standards, which must be observed by member countries regardless of the ratification status. But the ILO does not have the procedures for remedies and enforcements enough to enforce the rights and standards against member countries. Some advocators for labor rights in the international society have take more interest in the linkage between trade and labor, pursuing bilateral trade agreements including labor provisions. They expects that the settlement procedures in most bilateral trade agreements could work to effectively enforce the fundamental labor rights. Recently, the U.S has entered into many free trade agreements, American style of bilateral trade agreements, all of them include enforceable labor provisions with the disputes settlement procedures. Such a trade agreement strategy have been introduced, because the U.S Senate has agreed to make a implementation act for international trade agreements subject to labor provisions. KOR-US FTA, like another FTAs, covers labor provisions by the trade strategy of the U.S. government, but it is not clear whether labor provisions in the FTA could contribute to improve labor conditions of employees in Korea and the U.S. It depends on both the governments to apply and enforce the labor provisions.