U.S. unions urge Mexico to defend workers’ rights after labor advocate’s arrest

 Pressure is growing for Mexican authorities to release prominent labor lawyer Susana Prieto, arrested a week ago at a protest, with two U.S. unions concerned about a rights clampdown ahead of a new regional trade deal.

Prieto, who last year helped organize unprecedented strikes at several dozen manufacturing plants in the northern border city of Matamoros, was charged with threats, inciting a riot, coercion and crimes against public servants. She has denied the charges.

With the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) set to go into effect on July 1, U.S. unions are concerned the detention undermines Mexico’s pledge to protect workers’ rights, a central aim of the trade pact.

Prieto could remain in jail until late July as investigators probe the case, the Tamaulipas state attorney general’s office said following her June 8 arrest in Matamoros. A state judge rejected Prieto’s requests to be released while the case is pending.

“This clearly is intended to and will undoubtedly have a chilling effect on workers who are forced to make a life and death decision every day before they go to work under dangerous working conditions,” United Auto Workers union spokesman Brian Rothenberg said in a statement on Tuesday.

“It signals a very real challenge for the Mexican government to implement the reforms agreed upon by the U.S. and Mexico under USMCA.”

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. coalition of labor unions, called the charges “trumped up.”

“As we approach entry into enforcement of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, Mexico must live up to its commitments to respect fundamental workers’ rights,” Trumka said in a recent statement.

In his regular news conference last Friday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he was tracking the matter, but that only state officials could handle the case. He warned against fabricated charges or “retaliation,” without providing further detail.

Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios Mojica said the charges stemmed from a complaint from a labor board in Matamoros about a protest by about 400 workers outside its doors last March. The group was accused of being violent and threatening government workers.

When asked for comment, Mexico’s labor ministry told Reuters the case involved criminal charges, not a labor dispute.

Prieto’s daughter Maria Fernanda Peña said in an interview with Reuters on Monday that the group had been calm and had waited hours to request a change of union representation.

“She is a political prisoner. These crimes are not real,” said Peña, 23.

Two videos from that day posted by a local news site showed at least several dozen people clustered peacefully at the labor board’s front door.

Prieto does not appear in the videos and Peña said she was not there the full day because she was sick. The attorney general’s office insisted that Prieto, who last year founded an independent union, a relative rarity in Mexico made possible by a new law, was present.

In a handwritten letter posted by her daughter on social media, Prieto urged her “beloved workers” – who have turned out in the dozens in recent days to protest her arrest – to maintain their advocacy.

“They want me to plead guilty of crimes I did not commit, but dignity, honor, integrity and pride cannot be bought,” she said.

Taken From: https://ca.reuters.com

Trump Moves to Strip Hong Kong of Special U.S. Relationship

The president, angered by China’s security crackdown in Hong Kong and its handling of the coronavirus, said he would also terminate the United States’ relationship with the World Health Organization

WASHINGTON — President Trump announced Friday that his administration would end almost all aspects of the American government’s special relationship with Hong Kong, including on trade and law enforcement, and that it was withdrawing from the World Health Organization, where the United States has been by far the largest funder.
Speaking at a news conference in the White House Rose Garden, Mr. Trump voiced a range of grievances against China, angrily denouncing the country’s trade and security practices and its handling of the initial coronavirus outbreak.
As punishment, Mr. Trump said he would strip away Hong Kong’s privileges with the United States, ranging from an extradition treaty to commercial relations, with few exceptions.
“My announcement today will affect the full range of agreements we have with Hong Kong,” he said, including “action to revoke Hong Kong’s preferential treatment as a separate customs and travel territory from the rest of China.”
Mr. Trump’s announcement came largely in response to Beijing’s move this week to put in place broad new national security powersover Hong Kong. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that he was reporting to Congress a determination that Hong Kong no longer had significant autonomy under Chinese rule. Mr. Pompeo had earlier called the new Chinese law a “death knell” for the territory, a global financial and commercial hub with special status under American law because, in theory, it has semiautonomy until 2047 under an international treaty that Britain and China signed.
Mr. Pompeo’s finding amounted to a recommendation that the United States should reconsider its special relationship with Hong Kong. A 1992 law says the United States should continue to treat the Beijing-ruled territory under the same conditions it did when it was a British colony.
Mr. Trump made clear on Friday that he no longer considered Hong Kong to be separate from China.

“China claims it is protecting national security. But the truth is that Hong Kong was secure and prosperous as a free society. Beijing’s decision reverses all of that. It extends the reach of China’s invasive state security apparatus into what was formally a bastion of liberty,” Mr. Trump said.

He said the United States would suspend the entry of some Chinese citizens who have been identified as “potential security risks.” He did not give details, but appeared to be referring to a move to cancel the visas of graduate students and researchers who attended Chinese universities with ties to the military.
The New York Times reported this week that American officials had decided to go ahead with the action, which would affect thousands of Chinese students, a tiny percentage of the total number from China studying in the country.
Mr. Trump also repeated past charges that China had mishandled the coronavirus outbreak and suggested that Chinese officials had knowingly allowed travelers to fly from Wuhan to other countries, including the United States, while limiting access from Wuhan to other cities within China.
It was unclear from Mr. Trump’s announcement whether he was issuing a formal executive order to end the special relationship with Hong Kong entirely. The administration can take piecemeal actions — for example, imposing the same tariffs on goods from Hong Kong that the United States does on products from mainland China — before taking that final, drastic step.

Taken From:  https://www.nytimes.com/

Mexican Supreme Court to consider challenges of new labor law

Mexico’s Supreme Court is set to consider challenges to the constitutionality of 2019 labor legislation required by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which will enter into force next week.

Over the past year, Mexican labor unions — most of them employer-dominated — have filed more than 100 challenges in district courts. The cases, all based on similar complaints about the labor law’s requirements, were recently consolidated and sent to the Supreme Court.

The labor law — passed last year — includes provisions designed to eradicate protection contracts, which are signed between companies and company-dominated unions without workers’ consent, and requiring the exercise of free, personal and secret votes by workers. It also required the establishment of independent labor courts to rule on disputes, among other actions. It was considered crucial by many U.S. Democratic lawmakers and labor advocates in weighing whether to support USMCA.

Several of the filings are attributed to “CTM” unions, referring to a confederation of unions considered employer-dominated. CTM-sponsored unions have been flagged by some Democrats as anti-democratic.

A U.S. union representative with knowledge of Mexican labor issues called the Supreme Court activity “timely.”

“It’s certainly timely at this point with USMCA going into effect next week to remember that the issues with Mexico’s labor law reform, which everyone assumes is what will be in force, is still subject to significant challenges,” the source said.

The employer-dominated unions, the source continued, “are not being too shy about wanting to keep the old system in place where the accountability of the unions was to the employer not to their members.”

“Let’s remember nothing has actually changed on the ground in Mexico,” the source said, adding that while a year has passed since the labor reform legislation was approved, the country is only “just beginning” to take steps to uphold its USMCA commitments. Mexico last June outlined a roadmap showing how it planned to implement its labor law reforms through 2023.

The constitutional challenges brought by the Mexican unions have been flagged by labor experts and some Democratic lawmakers as priorities for the U.S. to focus on to ensure the reforms are sufficiently implemented.

The International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW) Network this week filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, contending the petitioners’ claims were aimed at delaying the implementation of the labor reform efforts. ILAW, which includes over 400 members from more than 50 countries, calls itself a global network of “legal practitioners and academics and who represent workers and their representative organizations, including trade unions.”

“We argue that the reforms enacted by the government of Mexico (GOM) on May 2, 2019, are generally consistent with [International Labor Organization] conventions and therefore any and all amparos filed against these reforms on the basis of their alleged non-conformity with international law should be denied,” the brief states.

“The arguments put forward by these petitioners lack legal merit and appear instead aimed at delaying theimplementation of the reforms for as long as possible to allow the unions benefitting from protection contracts to consolidate and extend their control,” the brief continues. “There can be little doubt that the amendments adopted by the Government of Mexico, individually and as a whole, are consistent with international labor and human rights law, and are well-crafted for the specific purpose of ending the protection contract system — which has frustrated the exercise of freedom of association and collective bargaining in Mexico for a century.”

The group calls the protection contract system a “central problem” of Mexico’s labor practices that has prevented workers from exercising their right to freedom of association and to bargain collectively for decades. Several House Ways & Means Committee Democrats, including trade subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), have pledged to make sure Mexico fully eradicates existing documents and ensure new ones are not signed.

“We therefore urge the Supreme Court of the Nation to reject the amparos, which reflect the last, desperate attempt of the beneficiaries of the old order to hang on to their ill-gotten gains,” ILAW asserts.

Jeffrey Vogt, Chair of the ILAW Network and Rule of Law Director with the Solidarity Center, said he hopes the June 23 brief “helps to inform the deliberation of the Supreme Court justices as they decide the merits of the lawsuits filed by those seeking to maintain a corrupt system that only served to undermine the rights and interests of Mexican workers.”

“As a result of recent reforms, Mexican workers now have a greater ability to exercise their fundamental labor rights — including the right to freedom of association and to bargain collectively — as required by international law,” he said in a June 24 press release.

Taken From: https://insidetrade.com