Labour issues may hand Democrats key to fighting USMCA
Nancy Pelosi looks poised to be re-elected Speaker of the House of Representatives.
In conversation at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School last month, Nancy Pelosi laid out her priorities should the Democrats regain con- trol of the House of Representatives and should Pelosi reclaim the top job as Speaker.
HR1, she said, meaning House Resolution Number 1, would be campaign finance reform, followed by lowering the cost of health care, “building the infrastructure of America” (mass transit, schools, housing), protecting the Dreamers and passing the Equality Act amendment to the Civil Rights Act, thereby enshrining protections for the LGBTQ community.
The agenda, she acknowledged, is ambitious. And clearly, she relishes the power that comes along with the job. “It’s an interesting dynamic when you have the gavel,” she said. “It just makes all the difference in the world.”
Now that Democrats are back in control of the House, it isn’t certain, but it is a reasonable bet, that Pelosi will re-emerge as Speaker. When she last took up that gavel in January of 2007 she delivered, within 100 days, on her
promised legislative agenda, which included rescinding billions of dollars of tax breaks to oil and gas companies and raising the federal minimum wage, which the Democrats will fight for again, she vows.
What Pelosi has not put on her Top 10 list is passage of the United-States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
This shouldn’t come as a post-election surprise.
Those who lived through the first NAFTA recall the free trade expansion negotiated by the Republicans under George H. W. Bush in 1992, the opposition from the Democrats, and the 11th-hour conversion of Bill Clinton, who, as president, signed the trade deal into law late in 1993, but not before the ignored issues of the environment and labour were addressed.
By “addressed” I do not mean to suggest they were addressed effectively. Kept out of the main text, environment and labour were written in as side agreement addenda. The language was woefully lax. On labour, as I have written before, the signatories to the deal said they were “committed to promote” a few “guiding princi- ples” governing “broad areas of concern.” The word flaccid does not do the deal justice.
The warnings raised by Democratic opponents were realized.
The labour rights of the Mexican worker would be ignored. There would be no enforcement of the right to collective bargaining. The suppression of wages for Mexican workers would see American jobs flood south of the border, as North American business exploited cheap labour.
The NAFTA accord marks its quarter century this January.
And where are we? In the new USMCA there is a direct labour chapter, with an annex specifically addressing worker representation in collective bargaining in Mexico.
Again, 25 years have passed and here we are. An excerpt: Mexico is to “provide in its labor laws the right of workers to engage in concerted activities for collective bargaining or protection and to organize, form, and join the union of their choice.” Employer “domination or interference in union activities” is to be prohibited. Discrimination against workers for union activity is to be banned.
There’s a seven-point direc- tive as to what the new legislation is to cover.
We must wonder: How is it this was not enshrined decades ago? “It is the expectation of the Parties,” the annex concludes, “that Mexico shall adopt legislation described above before January, 2019. It is further understood that entry into force of the agreement may be delayed until such legislation becomes effective.” (Those italics are mine.)
On this issue of enforcement, we find such mewling language as “encouraging the establishment of worker-management committees” and “providing or encouraging mediation” and implementing undefined sanctions.
Little wonder there’s a growing expectation that the Democrats could seize the moment to call for changes to the labour chapter and, while they’re at it, push for new environmental standards, a back-to-the-future discussion, if you will.
None of this interferes with the timeline Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, outgoing Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and U.S. President Donald Trump continue to follow, that is, the formal signing of USMCA by month’s end. But that formality is just setting the stage for the tumult ahead.
Perhaps, as some have suggested, Trump will threaten to pull out of NAFTA altogether if the deal doesn’t advance through Congress after it convenes in January.
There will be the inevitable complaints about political opportunism on the part of the Democrats should they hold firm. This ignores the failure of NAFTA in its first round: that it failed to enshrine labour rights as it advanced “freer, fairer” markets. The new deal promises the “protection and enforcement of labour rights, the improvement of working conditions, the strengthening of co-operation and the Parties’ capacity on labor issues.”
That isn’t much of a promise at all. And Nancy Pelosi knows it.