A research consortium led by Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations has been awarded a two-year $400,000 grant from the Ford Foundation for an international project titled "Workers in the Global Economy."

"The project will address and examine the challenges faced by working people and trade unions in a changing global economy," said the project's principal investigator, Maria Lorena Cook, an assistant professor in the ILR School's Department of Collective Bargaining, Labor Law and Labor History. Assisting Cook will be project director Lance Compa, a senior lecturer at the ILR School and a former labor law director of the NAFTA labor commission in Dallas.

In addition to the ILR School, the project consortium includes the Institute for Policy Studies, the Economic Policy Institute and the International Labor Rights Fund. All are non-governmental organizations based in Washington, D.C., with extensive experience in international labor rights and human rights issues.

The grant will enable researchers and labor rights advocates in developed and developing countries to analyze trade and investment policies and their effects on working people and trade unions. Research findings will be publicized through seminars, conferences and published reports and policy briefs.

Other issues to be addressed by the project include:

• labor rights and labor standards in trade agreements
• "sweatshop" production and corporate codes of conduct
• international labor solidarity initiatives
• the debate over a "social clause" in the World Trade Organization
• the role of the International Labor Organization in enforcing labor standards
• the environmental implications of a "global growth" strategy for raising labor standards
• the effects on labor of the World Bank and other international financial institutions.

"The research and dialogue agenda is designed to bring concerns of working people from the margins to the center of trade and investment debates," Cook said. "Project participants hope to shift the terms of public policy discussions of global economic integration and to fashion alternative policy choices to promote labor rights in the global economy."