Foreign assistance provided by the United States government will be paused for 90 days, this as part of the executive orders signed by President Donald Trump from his first day in office, including labor matters, to which more than 200 million dollars have been allocated for Mexico to comply with the commitments of union freedom and authentic collective bargaining.
According to information from the US government’s Department of Labor, the United States Congress granted 180 million dollars for financing technical assistance activities for compliance with the conditions of the USMCA, plus 20 million that have been in application since 2016.
Since then, and to date, the US government has 208 million dollars in operation in our country both for workers’ unions and for the technological development of the new labor model.
The resources, they have reported, are for the existence of democratic unions, as this leads to the final objective, which is the negotiation of better collective bargaining agreements, contracts with better salaries, protections of workers’ rights.
In this regard, Pablo Franco, representative of ILAW Network, said that it is “a temporary suspension for reviewing the effects on the North American economy; it is important to note that, to date, collaboration (between Mexico and the United States) has served well in labor matters, deriving from the trade agreement seeking to improve our infrastructure in the justice systems and promoting labor rights.”
Franco added that “the fact that the exercise of labor human rights, particularly union freedom, and authentic collective bargaining are guaranteed in our country, constitutes an element that helps disincentivize illegal migration for economic reasons; therefore, it is in the best interest of the United States government to continue promoting the objectives of Annex 23 A of the USMCA, so we hope that collaboration in these matters will continue.”
Meanwhile, Claudio Martínez Rojas of D&M Abogados pointed out that the USMCA is a treaty that included very strict provisions in key areas, such as in the area of labor and, given that these are topics that have been promoted since Trump’s first term, what we can expect is that he will “put special emphasis on compliance with the regulations deriving from the USMCA.”
It is worth noting that a relevant project promoted by the United States government has been in relation to inspections and compliance in order to prohibit imports made with forced labor. To this end, it developed a new national training program for labor inspectors, in addition to the improved electronic management of labor inspection cases, and the administrative sanctions system was updated to improve the quality, coverage and transparency of fine collection.
Additionally, he promoted the “Towards Effective Courts and Coordinated Labor Justice” (TECLAB) project to support independent state courts created by the labor reform of 2019, “in order to dispense labor justice in an effective and efficient manner”. In this case the duration of the project is from January 2023 to July 2027.
