[CTC] Trumka: AFL-CIO to file NAFTA labor challenge against Mexico this month

[Arthur Stamoulis]

Trumka: AFL-CIO to file USMCA labor challenge against Mexico this month
By Maria Curi and Isabelle Icso, Inside US Trade 
09/03/2020
The AFL-CIO this month will file a labor complaint against Mexico under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the union federation’s president, Richard Trumka, said on Thursday.
The complaint will be filed using USMCA’s facility-specific rapid-response mechanism, likely marking the first time the novel tool will be put into play since the agreement entered into force on July 1, a senior AFL-CIO staffer told Inside U.S. Trade. A second way to file a labor complaint via USMCA is through the deal’s labor chapter; only one petition has been filed to date that way, a Labor Department spokesperson told Inside U.S. Trade on Monday.
“We have tremendous concerns with Mexico’s ability to enforce their own laws,” Trumka said during a webinar hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “We will file a case within the next 30 days.”
USMCA’s rapid-response mechanism, outlined in an annex to the deal’s labor chapter, allows the U.S. to request an expedited review -- by an independent panel -- of specific factories in which workers are allegedly being denied freedom of association and collective bargaining. A group of congressional Democrats, backed by labor groups, last year pushed for stronger enforcement mechanisms during the final stages of USMCA negotiations with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The rapid-response mechanism -- which is also available for Mexico to use against the U.S. -- was a result of those negotiations, and was a key reason many Democrats and labor groups like the AFL-CIO backed the revised deal.
The rapid-response tool offers several remedies if an independent panel determines workers’ rights have been violated, including a suspension of duty-free treatment for goods produced at the facility found to be in violation. The U.S. could also deny the entry of such goods entirely if the facility has been found to be in violation at least twice before.
“We think that when we do the rapid-response, and if we’re able to block products from coming in, it will get their attention real fast and they will understand that they will have to change and comply with the law or their products won’t get to come into the country like they did before,” Trumka said. “That would be a positive thing for us.”
Trumka also raised the case of Susana Prieto Terrazas, a prominent Mexican lawyer and labor rights activist who was arrested in June on charges of inciting violence during protests for safer working conditions amid the pandemic. She was released the day USMCA entered into force.
“They arrested her and threw her in jail for no reason and then they said ‘We’ll let you out of jail if you promise you won’t organize for three or four years.’ That’s a clear violation of the agreement, so we’re garnering the facts on that,” Trumka said.
Prieto’s case has garnered the attention <https://insidetrade.com/node/169441> of Democratic lawmakers, who in a letter to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador last month said “If state governments in Mexico are able to willfully violate basic labor rights, we will urge USTR to swiftly and forcefully utilize the rapid response system in order to ensure Mexican compliance with the agreement.”
Trumka also took issue with the Labor Department’s pace of spending on USMCA implementation. The USMCA implementing legislation allocated $180 million over four years to the Bureau of International Labor Affairs for technical-assistance projects, he noted. The implementing legislation also set aside $30 million over eight years for ILAB to monitor USMCA compliance, including through labor attachés on the ground in Mexico. The USMCA labor chapter designates the department as the point of contact for addressing the deal’s monitoring and enforcement matters.
“The money has been parceled out very, very slowly,” Trumka said. “I don’t know that any has been given out so far. So we’ve been pushing the ILAB to try to get that money out and to do the capacity building that’s necessary in Mexico so they can monitor and enforce the trade laws in Mexico.”
House Ways & Means Democrats, in a July 23 letter <https://insidetrade.com/node/169287> to USTR Robert Lighthizer and Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, said they had significant concerns that the money allocated to ILAB via the USMCA implementing bill was “not being used as intended” to support “desperately needed worker-focused capacity building activities in Mexico.” In responses to questions for the record following a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the administration’s 2020 trade agenda in June, Lighthizer said <https://insidetrade.com/node/169355> the coronavirus pandemic had slowed spending for USMCA implementation. 
Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826




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