Jared Laureles
La Jornada newspaper
Monday, September 8, 2025, p. 17
The labor provisions established in the Treaty with the United States and Canada (T-MEC) have favored the transition of a “dominated regime” by protection unions to a democratic system in labor relations in the country, says Gustavo Vega, general secretary of El College of Mexico (Colmex).
The researcher talks in an interview to make a reflection on the recent book The International Defense of Workers’ Rights: Labor Law, United States Commercial Treaties and State Sovereigntywritten by Professor Kevin J. Middlebrook, who died in 2022.
In the book, he explains, the author addresses the four main international political strategies that have been used to promote, define and protect labor rights, including collective solidarity actions “cross -border” between unions and the International Labor Organization as an entity responsible for promoting the ratification of rights in the field.
Also, he indicates, analyzes the commercial agreements that the US government has negotiated since the 80s, and through which the defense of labor rights in the region is promoted. This purpose reaches its splendor in the clauses established in the T-MEC, which entered into force in July 2020 and is close to review.
“It is a very ambitious book that tries to understand what are the advances, achievements and limitations that have had different formulas or strategies,” says Vega.
Middlebrook, who was a professor of Latin American politics at the Institute of Americas, says in his book that the work chapter of the T-MEC is “the most ambitious” of all preferential agreements negotiated globally and have allowed workers to form their unions freely and negotiate with entrepreneurs.
Vega, who is a specialist in Economic Policy of the COLMEX, mentions that the book, divided into seven chapters, reviews at least seven cases that were activated under the labor chapter of the T-MEC, which evidenced the formation of “an alliance between transnational groups to carry out labor reforms in Mexico.”
Vega warns that in the future renegotiation of the T-MEC it is essential that sufficient resources be guaranteed in order to have an agile mechanism for Mexican workers who work on the other side of the border, which they may resort when US patterns breach their obligations. “The challenge is that it is more symmetrical,” he emphasizes.
