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Lance Compa

Lance Compa, a senior lecturer at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, is the author of the Human Rights Watch report, A Strange Case.

Recent Articles

Slumming in America

Human-rights arguments are effective tools for shaming European companies into good labor practices in the U.S.

Lance CompaNov 05, 2010

Get back to work, or we'll hire permanent replacements to take your jobs! That's what management at Robert Bosch, a German multinational firm with 270,000 employees worldwide, told union members who exercised their right to strike in December 2005.

Wary Allies

Lance CompaDec 19, 2001

Corporate codes of conduct offer a "third way" to promote labor rights in the global economy--a civil-society alternative to first-way government regulation or second-way trade-union organizing and collective bargaining. Supporters argue that such codes can harness the market power of informed consumers to halt abuses against workers in developing countries, given that national laws vary and governments cannot possibly inspect every workplace and prevent every abuse.


A Fast Track for Labor

Saying no to trade agreements won't stop trade. Labor's advocates need to support realistic proposals for modifying NAFTA and other pacts.

Lance CompaDec 19, 2001

At the latest Geneva meetings of the World Trade Organization and the International Labor Organization, the Clinton administration and the U.S. labor movement championed greater international scrutiny of forced labor, child labor, and other violations of fundamental workers' rights. This is only the beginning of real linkage between reciprocal open trade and the most minimal of social standards, but it is a start. Can the labor movement and the administration build on it and move toward a general trade policy that truly advances workers' rights in global trade?