NAFTA and NAALC

Book excerpt: The 25th anniversary edition of the NAFTA and NAALC monograph in the International Encyclopaedia of Laws, Labour Law and Industrial Relations is a comprehensive and up-to-date 270-page resource that contains essential background on the structure and operation of labour provisions in North American free trade agreements, including NAFTA, USMCA, CAFTA-DR, TPP, CPTPP, TTIP, CETA, EU-Mexico, and Canadian and US bilateral free trade agreements with partners in Latin America and around the world. It also contains a complete digest of all of the citizen petitions filed under the NAFTA labour side agreement since 1994. The monograph includes early petitions filed about trade union rights at the Honeywell and Echlin plants in Mexico, the McDonald's case in Canada, and the Washington Apple and DeCoster Egg cases in the United States – not to mention recent petitions filed about migrant worker rights under the H-2A and H-2B visa programs in the US. In addition to being the most complete compilation of NAALC cases in existence today, NAFTA and the NAALC Twenty-Five Years of North American Trade-Labour Linkage outlines the internal mechanics leading to the filing of a 2000 NAALC petition with the Government of Mexico about unequal treatment of migrant workers in the US, and describes changes in the treatment of petitions by US, Mexican and Canadian authorities over the last 25 years. It also contains a chapter that compares the NAALC to the OECD Guidelines for Multi-National Enterprises and highlights recent North American cases filed under the OECD Guidelines including the relatively lesser known 2004 Yucatan Markey Tex-Coco Tex petition, which was dual filed under both mechanisms, and dual petitions filed under NAALC and the OECD Guidelines about working conditions at Chedraui grocery stores in Southern California and Northern Mexico. Highlights in 25th anniversary edition include: the first reports issued under labour provisions of Canadian and US FTAs with Colombia; the latest developments in pending cases filed under CAFTA-DR and the US-Peru FTA, including the 2017 decision by the first ever Arbitral Panel established under the labour provision of CAFTA-DR in the Guatemala labour case; addition of the 2006 labour petition filed under the US-Jordan FTA; new sections comparing labour provisions in multi-lateral FTAs such as TPP, CPTPP, CETA, and the proposed TTIP; NAALC petitions filed with the Government of Mexico about sexism in recruitment for temporary agricultural labour programs in Canada and the United States; and a new chapter comparing the NAALC to labour provisions in the signed, but not-yet-ratified USMCA.