Harper went on to assure Canadians that a free trade agreement with Colombia would actually help improve worker rights in a country that annually leads the world in murders of trade union leaders. According to Harper, a labour side agreement commits Colombia to respect and enforce core international labour rights on child labour, forced labour, discrimination and freedom of association.  

With all this anxious talk about election promises, trade agreements and workers’ rights, it’s worth reviewing the actual record of the original labour side agreement that was tacked on to NAFTA shortly after president Clinton replaced George Bush senior as the new resident in the White House.

Five years ago, our organization, the Maquila Solidarity Network filed a complaint under the NAFTA labour side agreement. Together with the Worker Assistance Centre in Puebla, Mexico and United Students Against Sweatshops in the US, we provided compelling evidence and worker testimonies demonstrating that the Mexican government was consistently failing to protect workers’ legal rights in garment factories in the State of Puebla producing blue jeans for major US brands for sale in the US and Canadian markets.  

Workers and local Mexican labour rights organizations that testified at the NAFTA side agreement hearings described how government-controlled “official unions” negotiated collective agreements with employers without the workers’ knowledge or consent, how worker requests for copies of these “protection contracts” were refused, how labour tribunals impeded their efforts to be represented by independent unions and how supporters of independent unions were fired en masse without labour board intervention..

These charges were not new. The failure of the Mexican government to protect workers’ legal right to freely associate and bargain collectively has been the subject of practically every compliant under the NAFTA labour side agreement since the day it was negotiated.

On Tuesday, December 2, five years after we filed the Puebla complaint, the three NAFTA governments held “ministerial consultations” in the City of Puebla. The following day there was a “stakeholder meeting” that was not open to the public or to the media. Neither our organization nor the other two complainants attended the meeting because of its closed nature and the deliberate exclusion, at the insistence of the Mexican government, of most independent Mexican trade unions, NGOs and labour rights experts.

However, the fundamental problem with the NAFTA labour side agreement is not about how ministerial consultations or stakeholder meetings are organized. In fact the Canadian National Administrative Office responsible for implementation of the agreement tried hard to negotiate a more open and participatory process and has invited the complainants to meet to discuss possible ways to address the issues. The real problem is that the labour side agreement complaint process lacks teeth and usually ends at the ministerial consultation stage with no binding or enforceable commitments to change offending government policies or practices.

This is in stark contrast to NAFTA’s Chapter 11 which gives foreign investors the right to sue elected governments if they feel their investments have been interfered with. American waste management firm Metalclad, for instance, was awarded US$16 million by a Chapter 11 tribunal after it sued Mexico when local authorities prevented it from operating a hazardous waste facility by the declaring the area a protected natural habitat for a rare cactus.

Needless to say, the message was sent that investors, unlike workers, are not to be toyed with.

Hopefully, the Obama presidency will be a moment to reopen NAFTA, and the free trade debate itself, in order to introduce enforceable provisions on labour rights and environmental standards and to review provisions that give undue power to corporations over elected governments. .

Maybe that’s wishful thinking on our part, but the US election was about hope, wasn’t it?

Lynda Yanz is a founder and the Coordinator of the Toronto-based Maquila Solidarity Network (MSN).