Ahead of the upcoming USMCA review, Donald Trump’s government seeks to strengthen and expand enforcement of Labor’s rapid response mechanism to report possible violations by Mexican exporters on environmental issues. Sources close to the binational meetings reported to EL PAÍS that this is still an idea that emerged in the negotiating meetings and that it aims to increase the guarantees that Mexican companies must provide on environmental matters. The creation of this instrument would imply, among other commitments, greater oversight by the three signatory countries, the United States, Mexico and Canada, on waste management, the reduction of polluting emissions and the control of the use of chemical products.
While the US approach is still in its infancy, it represents a turning point for a mechanism that will form a central part of the next review of the North American trade agreement next year. In 2020, when NAFTA transitioned to USMCA, a chapter on labor under strong pressure from the United States was included for the first time. The American government at the time stated that the goal was to level the playing field between working conditions at factories in the United States and Mexico.
In this way, the labor mechanism allows the United States to file charges directly in cases where it is suspected of denying labor rights at a Mexican company. For Mexican unions, this procedure represents a new way to report abuses, demand fair wages and promote union democracy within their companies. However, both the government and the business community have stated that to preserve it as a legitimate instrument it must be applied sensibly, balancedly and in accordance with the USMCA.
Five years after the procedure went into effect, the United States filed 41 labor complaints against Mexican exporting firms, invoking the mechanism. The complaints allege violations of workers’ freedom of association and collective bargaining in these workplaces, and five of these cases were referred to a committee, under the protection of the USMCA. Companies that violate workers’ rights risk sanctions including a ban on the US market.
The most recent case was filed this week against Grupo Yazaki, based in León, Guanajuato, for alleged violations of the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining. In August 2023, a dissident union filed a complaint alleging denial of freedom of association rights at the plant. However, the Mexican government then considered that there was no evidence to support the accusation and rejected the complaint. In this new case against the same company, the Independent Automotive Workers Union claims that the collective bargaining union violated workers’ rights by interfering with employees’ union activity and retaliating against them for their attempts to organize an independent union at the plant.
In addition to Grupo Yazaki, companies such as Volkswagen, Atento Servicios, Aerotransportes Mas de Carga, Grupo México or Goodyear have faced an investigation process and, in some cases, the implementation of sanctions to compensate for alleged labor violations. All things considered, most of the complaints concern auto parts companies, the flagship of the export sector in Mexico.
This is why it is no coincidence that the president of the Mexican Automobile Industry Association (AMIA), Rogelio Garza, raised his voice a few weeks ago in Washington to ask for the procedure to be trilateral and balanced. “It is essential that the mechanism be used strictly for legitimate business purposes and as a measure of last resort, avoiding its misuse as a tool to impose trade barriers or coercive actions that could undermine the spirit of collaboration and integration that defines North American trade relations,” he concluded in a letter late last October. The United States, however, is aiming in another direction: not only to tighten the mechanism, but also to extend it to other areas such as the environment.
