TPP helps improve conditions on the ground in TPP countries, by using binding and fully enforce- able obligations to:
• Protect the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively.
• Eliminate exploitative child labor and forced labor.
• Protect against employment discrimination.
• Require laws on acceptable conditions of work related to minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health.
• Prevent the degradation of labor protections in export processing zones.
• Combat trade in goods made by forced labor in countries inside and outside TPP.
Establish a transparent and responsive process to allow for labor unions, advocates, and other stakeholders to raise concerns regarding any TPP country’s adherence to the labor commitments.
• TPP also includes separate, comprehensive commitments by Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei to ensure compliance with the high labor standards included in TPP.
• Mexico is also developing parallel labor reforms, including to better protect collective bargaining and reform its system for administering labor justice.
• TPP includes the strongest labor provisions of any trade agreement in history.
• TPP renegotiates NAFTA, putting fundamental labor rights at the core
of the agreement, and making those rights fully enforceable through the same type of dispute settlement as other obligations, including the option to impose trade sanctions.
• These rights include freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining, prohibitions on and effective elimination of child and forced labor, and protection against employment discrimination. And for the first time in a trade agreement, TPP requires countries to adopt laws on minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health.
• With respect to Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, who are first-time signatories to a trade agreement with the United States, TPP contains country-
specific labor reform commitments to meet their TPP obligations that are themselves subject to dispute settlement.
• Furthermore, TPP requires each TPP country to establish a public submission process to allow for labor unions, advocates, and other stakeholders
to raise specific concerns related to any TPP country’s adherence to the commitments under the labor chapter.
• By bringing enforceable commitments on fundamental labor rights into our trading relationships with TPP countries, TPP expands the fight for decent work around the world and creates a more fair and level playing field for American workers.
• TPP puts into place the largest expansion of enforceable labor rights in history, more than quadrupling the number of people outside the United States that are covered by enforceable labor provisions. This expansion helps make it more likely that strong labor provisions in trade agreements will become the new global standard.