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My most recent commentary in the International Labor Rights Case Law Journal centers around the agreement between the U.S. and Mexican governments to settle the VW Mexico complaint filed under the USMCA Labor Rapid Response Mechanism. You can read the commentary here What Happened to el sindicato de los Vochitos? Mexico and the United States Settle Freedom of Association Complaint.
Here is the link to the agreement between the two governments establishing a course of remediation.
Although I wrote about the NAFTA labor side agreement for many years, this is the first time I have ever written about the USMCA Rapid Response Mechanism. Part of the reason is that in the intervening years between entry into force of NAFTA / NAALC and USMCA (and after) there have been so many fascinating developments in the law and policy surrounding the nexus between globalization, labor, and women's rights. Did an arbitral panel really find serious labor violations in Guatemala but no violation of the CAFTA-DR? Yes. Did the World Bank establish policies and institutions to effectively address the impact of a development policy (creation of a dam) and the access to jobs of women in the informal center? Yes, that seems to be the case. Did the German National Contact Point really issue a report finding that union busting by a subsidiary of a supplier in the supply chain of a German company was out of scope of the OECD Guidelines because it was a second tier manufacturer - even though it the companies shared owners? Yes, sadly.
And of course, the biggest topic of all - is there really an agreement between European Union nations and and former European colonies that has been in existence in some permutation since the 1960s? Yes, astonishingly. Yes.
Another reason for not writing about the USMCA Labor Rapid Response Mechanism has been that everyone in the field has been writing about it. It is the new policy bauble, the new shiny object that everyone wants to extol and emulate. Why chime in when there are so many other developments and innovations to examine and consider and criticize?
And finally, the USMCA Rapid Response Mechanism has been working. My point of view is that it has been working due to a rare historical alignment between the U.S. and Mexican governments during the Biden administration - but it still, it was working. Why write about something that works? What's the fun in that? Quite a lot, it seems.
The VW Mexico RRM case is like dim sum - an entire meal in one tiny package. If you could roll up 70 years of labor history into one case, this may have been it. It's not just that workers filed a RRM complaint against their employer - they filed the complaint against the union too. And the Independent VW union isn't just any union. It isn't an undemocratic charro union. Not only is the union famous for its independence and militancy, but it remains vibrant. Seven slates of candidates ran for union officer positions in 2023. There was just one tiny thing - an unwritten rule that the outgoing union leadership would be fired if it lost - a violation of Mexican labor law both before and after the 2019 labor law reform. And who represented the men who lost their jobs when they lost the election to keep their union leadership positions? The Network of Women Trade Unionists (Red de Mujeres Sindicalistas de Mexico). They've opened an advocacy office to file significant complaints under the USMCA. Wow. All those decades of filing ill-fated petitions about women workers (and men, too) in factories at the border and the virtual border in Mexico ... for that experience to be applied more generally is amazing.
And now - in the midst of multiple trade wars started by my own country these last couple of months, it is hard to imagine that kind of alignment on labor issues between the U.S. and Mexican governments - but stranger things have happened. As labor culture in Mexico has its "moment" with the development of innovative and better functioning institutions, the U.S. is in a completely different kind of moment, with the executive branch working to devour and destroy labor institutions like the National Labor Relations Board and the Federal Labor Relations Authority. Maybe we, too, could use the advocacy skills of our friends at RMS.
