The Politics of Pro-Worker Reforms with Alice Evans

 

Discussants

 

Gawain Kripke, Director of Policy, Oxfam America

 

Kimberly Elliott, Visiting Fellow, Center for Global Development

 

Host

 

Cindy Huang, Co-Director, Migration, Displacement, and Humanitarian Policy Program, Center for Global Development and former Deputy Vice President for sector operations at the Millennium Challenge Corporation

 

The Center for Global Development and Oxfam are hosting a discussion on the Politics of Pro-Worker Reforms with author Alice Evans. Alice will present her paper on the drivers of pro-worker reforms in Vietnam, including how rich countries can use the tools of trade and aid to support workers’ rights, social activism, and decent pay. Specifically, she examines the relative roles of the Better Work program and US demands for labor reform during negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in encouraging Vietnamese labor market reforms. The paper can be found here, and a blog summary here.

 

Alice Evans is a lecturer in the Social Science of Development at King’s College, and has written widely about inequality, social change, and the global politics of decent work. Center for Global Development Visiting Fellow Kimberly Elliott and Gawain Kripke, Director of Policy at Oxfam America will provide brief comments. The discussion will explore the importance of domestic and transnational politics through strikes, responsible business practices, trade deals, and geopolitics in building an enabling environment for workers’ activism and pro-poor experiments.