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Based on field research carried out in 1990-1991 in urban areas, with particular reference to maquiladoras enterprises along the US- Mexican border. Comprises an introduction by former US Secretary of Labour Ray Marshall advocating trade-linked labour standards.

Public Report of Review

United States. Bureau of International Labor Affairs. National Administrative Office, North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 64


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International trade agreements have often been criticized for limited attention to the rights of workers. The North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), a side agreement to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), stands out for linking labor rights provisions to a U.S. trade agreement. Kevin J. Middlebrook provides a comprehensive and systematic examination of the NAALC, assessing its efficacy in protecting workers’ rights over the entire period it was in effect and demonstrating its broader significance for the role of trade and labor standards in U.S. foreign policy. Placing the NAALC in comparative context, Middlebrook considers various ways of promoting workers’ rights and how other U.S. international trade agreements have influenced labor rights abroad. He investigates the origins of the agreement; the political controversies among Canada, Mexico, and the United States over its scope; how the agreement operated in practice; and its longer-term policy legacies. Middlebrook emphasizes the tension between state sovereignty and the international promotion of labor rights in the negotiation and implementation of trade agreements, as well as how labor movements in one partner country can galvanize action in others. Drawing on interviews with high-level officials involved in the trade negotiations and previously unexamined primary sources, The International Defense of Workers is a groundbreaking analysis of the effects of U.S. trade agreements on labor rights.
The authors analyze lawsuits involving publicly-appointed lawyers in a labor court in Mexico to study how a rigid law is enforced. They show that, even after a judge has awarded something to a worker alleging unjust dismissal, the award goes uncollected 56 percent of the time. Workers who are dismissed after working more than seven years, however, do not leave these awards uncollected because their legally-mandated severance payments are larger. A simple theoretical model is used to generate predictions on how lawsuit outcomes should depend on the information available to the worker and on the worker's cost of collecting an award after trial, both of which are determined in part by the worker's lawyer. Differences in outcomes across lawyers are consistent with the hypothesis that firms take advantage both of workers who are poorly informed and of workers who find it more costly to collect an award after winning at trial.