Source: Carnegie
For Immediate Release: July 22, 2002
Contact: Scott Nathanson, 202-939-2211, snathanson@ceip.org
Senior State Department Labor Affairs Official to Lead Endowment's Trade and Labor Work
Sandra Polaski, former special representative for international labor affairs for the U.S. State Department, has joined the Carnegie Endowment as a senior associate, announced Carnegie president Jessica T. Mathews. As the senior State Department official on labor affairs, she led negotiations on the labor provisions of several pathbreaking trade agreements. Polaski also developed programs such as the "Partnerships to Eliminate Sweatshops" that through public-private partnerships brought the U.S. government into a leading role in promoting corporate social responsibility with respect to global workers' rights.
Polaski joins John Audley, senior associate focusing on trade, development and the environment, to expand the Endowment's work on global trade issues. "Sandra Polaski's central role in the creation and negotiation of trade and labor provisions in bellwether initiatives such as the U.S.-Jordan trade agreement make her the ideal person to expand our trade policy work and to move the debate forward in the labor arena," said Mathews.
Polaski will seek to challenge conventional wisdom by demonstrating that pro-trade and pro-worker policies can be mutually supportive. Successes such as the U.S.-Jordan and U.S.-Cambodia trade agreements show the potential for new thinking on the roles of the public and private sectors to create "win-win" outcomes for trade, labor and development. She plans an agenda of analytical writing, speaking and dialogues with key policy actors throughout the developed and developing worlds to investigate and experiment with new approaches to break down the old barriers and biases on this vital, yet volatile issue.
Before serving in the State Department, Ms. Polaski was the director of economic and labor law research for the Secretariat of the North American Commission for Labor Cooperation, created under the NAFTA labor side agreement. She also served as a leader and chief negotiator in several manufacturing and service sector unions in the United States. Polaski holds a master's degree in international relations and economics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
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