Workers assembling women's shoes at a factory in southern Vietnam. CreditAaron Joel Santos for The New York Times

In Pacific Trade Deal, Vietnam Agrees to U.S. Terms on Labor Rights

International New York Times | 5 November 2015

WASHINGTON — The Communist government in Vietnam has agreed to American terms to grant potentially far-reaching labor rights to the country’s workers, including the freedom to unionize and to strike, in return for expanded trade between the former adversaries, according to the newly released text of a vast Pacific trade agreement.

Those terms were disclosed early Thursday, along with all 30 chapters and side agreements that make up the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a pact reached a month ago by 12 Pacific Rim nations that would be the largest regional trade accord in history. The agreement would end most tariffs and other trade barriers among countries that account for 40 percent of the global economy.

With the release of the text, Congress begins months of review and then debate. Votes for approval in the House and Senate next spring, amid a presidential contest in which the trade pact is an issue in both parties, are likely to be close.

For President Obama, the effort to sell the potentially legacy-making agreement may be the last big battle of his tenure. He will have to rely mostly on Republican votes, while holding on to support from the few Democratic allies willing to confront organized labor and other liberal groups that are skeptical about trade globalization.

“We have a whole-of-government, whole-of-White-House effort underway,” said Michael B. Froman, Mr. Obama’s trade representative, who has negotiated the voluminous agreement since 2009.

In recent weeks, Mr. Froman and other cabinet members have met with lawmakers in Congress, and Mr. Obama has hosted both supportive Democrats and displeased pharmaceutical executives at the White House. The president’s campaign will ramp up now that the agreement’s text is finally in hand.

Opponents of the trade accord — on the political left and the Tea Partyright, as well as some business leaders — will also step up their efforts after holding their fire pending the release of the full agreement. Lawmakers who have withheld judgment will come under renewed pressure to take sides.

“Now it will be homework time for members of Congress to be actively engaged and to take the time to study up on these provisions to determine if the agreement does make sense for their collective districts, states and, ultimately, for our country,” said Representative Ron Kind of Wisconsin, a leader among the 28 House Democrats who indicated tentative support for the trade pact by voting during the summer to give Mr. Obama so-called fast-track authority for expedited congressional consideration.

The Obama administration is hoping that the accord’s labor protections, along with separate bilateral labor and human rights agreements between the United States and Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, will help persuade some Democrats to back the deal. The administration is especially eager to promote the agreement with Vietnam.

“Without reservation, I think this is the best opportunity we’ve had in years to encourage deep institutional reform in Vietnam that will advance human rights, and it will only happen if T.P.P. is approved,” Tom Malinowski, the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, said in an interview.

While most trade agreements “have been a leap of faith when it comes to human rights,” Mr. Malinowski said, “these are highly specific commitments that Vietnam has made to change laws.” Vietnam will not get the economic benefits of closer trade with the United States, as provided in the broader 12-nation pact, unless it abides by the two countries’ separate agreement, he said.

That bilateral agreement would require Vietnam to change laws or enact new ones to allow workers to form unions independent of the government, and they would be empowered to strike not only over wages and hours but also over working conditions and rights.

The grass-roots unions would not have to join Vietnam’s government-sanctioned labor confederation, but they could affiliate with each other and seek assistance from any “international worker organization,” like the A.F.L.-C.I.O., for help and training. The agreement also calls for Vietnam’s government to educate workers and employers about the labor changes.

Trade between the United States and Vietnam has grown significantly since formal trade relations began in 2001, and so has American investment in Vietnam.

According to a State Department report this year, Vietnam exported nearly $30 billion worth of goods to the United States in 2013, and the United States exported $5.5 billion worth of goods and services to Vietnam in 2014. Administration officials said the Trans-Pacific Partnership would open markets in Vietnam — and in other member nations — to more American-made goods.

The other nations that are parties to the trade partnership, besides the United States, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, are Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Chile and Singapore.

The United States will monitor Vietnam’s compliance with the labor requirements, under their separate agreement, and an independent panel of three labor experts — one each from the United States, Vietnam and the International Labor Organization — will also conduct reviews. Five years after the agreement takes effect, the United States could withhold trade benefits if it is determined that Vietnam has not met its obligations.

Some labor and human rights groups, however, said they were not sold on the Vietnam agreement, based on what they had learned before the text’s release.

John Sifton, the Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said that while the bilateral agreement was enforceable in theory, “it is not enforceable in practice.”

The record of the Office of the United States Trade Representative, he said, does not suggest that it would enforce the terms. What is needed, he added, is for workers to have the same right that corporations have under this trade agreement and others: to take complaints directly to a dispute settlement panel.

“Are trade unionists who actually produce all the capital that we’re talking about here allowed to bring complaints against a country for violations?” he asked. “No, of course not.”

But Human Rights Watch and other left-leaning advocacy groups are more incensed that separate provisions of the overall agreement protect for several years the patents of brand-name drug companies for so-called biologics, which are state-of-the-art drugs made from living organisms that have promise for treating cancers.

While drug companies and their Republican allies in Congress wanted 12 years of patent protection before the data must be released for producing generic versions, the public advocacy groups have deplored the five- to eight-year process that the trade agreement outlined.

“This agreement is going to kill people, literally,” Mr. Sifton said. “As a direct result of that, health care systems will not be able to provide lifesaving medicines for all people who need them.”

For the first time in a trade accord, the Pacific partners agreed to language in a “joint declaration” that commits them to avoid manipulating their currencies for trade advantage, to report interventions in foreign exchange markets and to meet at least once a year to air any concerns or complaints.

But the declaration, which is not part of the official trade text, is unlikely to placate members of Congress, many of them Democrats, who say that Japan and other nations underprice their exports by manipulating the value of their currencies.

Nonetheless, a senior Treasury official, who asked not to be identified because he was speaking before the text’s official release, said of the joint declaration, “I think this will be seen by people as a meaningful step in terms of holding countries accountable for their currency practices” and guarding against the unfair use of exchange rates “to drive a better advantage with regard to trade.”