Negotiating trade agreements with labor and environmental standards aims to promote global sustainability and fair working conditions. Supporters believe these standards could lead to higher global welfare. Critics argue they might make EU companies less competitive and complicate trade negotiations.
@ISIDEWITH12mos12MO
Yes
@9ZWH5TZ4mos4MO
When we start seeing the application of standards as a restriction to profit-drive. economy, we have to ask ourselves why we prioritize an abstract system of monetary gain over the very real standards of working and living of the workers, and the world they live in.
@ISIDEWITH12mos12MO
No
@9ZWH5TZ4mos4MO
How can someone prefer to leave things unchecked in a global economy that is already so skewed towards the top earners? If we do not become the defenders of the environment, we will choke on the exhaust gases of very real, unchecked labour at the service of very dumb, abstract economic gains. If we do not preserve and improve the working conditions of laborers, what will we say when our bosses will nibble on the corpse of our free time and private lives, prying for any crumb of free labour and energy they might have left in us? Who will we turn to when our brothers and sisters are too busy scraping by to pay a rent they can't afford? To not protect standards of labour for workers is to give up on the social contract, and hand the game to our economic jailors.
@9ZWFB364mos4MO
Completely. Companies need to have more respect for their workers, and not enough western countries follow this, and as such prevents much of the rest of the world to keep up unless they do the same (i.e. entire supposedly 'communist' countries basically behaving like one big corporation, even though that is not what communism truly is. The same goes for environmentalism. Much of the west do not care about this, and again encourages others to follow. For example, I really dislike the hyper-consumerism sites that are developing from China, but they're only trying to get a piece of the pie, taking advantage of the negative habits of other parts of the world. even with such a move by China, they have made a point of ensuring as much of a reduction of their carbon footprint as they can, something we aren't doing at all.
@9ZSF3CG5mos5MO
Better employment standards yes, not environmental
@9ZQWZHF5mos5MO
Environmental standards should be below reduction of poverty in the decision making
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