AFL-CIO President Says Labor Movement Will Fight NAFTA 2.0 Unless Treaty Reopened
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said that unless Mexico, the U.S. and Canada go back to the bargaining table to change enforcement provisions, labor unions will oppose passage in Congress for the NAFTA rewrite. Labor unions are seeking the ability to self-initiate complaints under the labor chapter, and they want binding state-to-state disputes restored. Currently, any country can block a panel in that system.
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"This deal right now is incomplete, and a vote would be premature," Trumka told reporters on an April 1 conference call . "And any effort to force it through as is will be met with a nationwide opposition from the labor movement."
Republicans have been talking about getting the deal to a vote before Congress goes home in August (see 1903270020). Trumka all but ruled that timeline out. He noted that Mexico has not yet passed the labor reform that's under consideration in the Senate. And even after that law is passed, U.S. unions will be looking for evidence that Mexico will fund a system to uphold the law, similar to the National Labor Relations Board in the U.S. That board investigates U.S. labor law violations, such as firing workers who are seeking to organize a union or bad faith bargaining.
He referred to protection unions -- unions that are company-controlled -- and said they are part of a corporate strategy to exploit Mexican workers. "Mexico has long adhered to a low-wage strategy to suck jobs from the United States," he said. He said Mexico should hire people to catalog and rescind protection union contracts. "They’re going to have to dedicate people to doing that and nothing else. Currently they don’t have that," Trumka said, and it's unlikely that such a system could be set up in four or five months.
When one reporter asked how long labor leaders would need to watch implementation to be satisfied, Trumka was evasive. He did not agree it would need to be at least a year after passage to see how it's going. But, he said, "There’s still time to fix this deal. The administration can win our support, but it’s going to take a lot of work. And it’s going to take some time. It can’t be rushed to fit any kind of schedule, whether it’s a campaign schedule or any other reason."