Canadian negotiators are pushing the US to do away with anti-labor policies like “right to work.”
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has, to a significant extent, defined the relationship between the three North American nations over the last fifteen years. NAFTA was sold on the promise that it would bring more and better jobs and faster growth to the region and reduce emigration from Mexico to the United States and Canada. While trade and investment flows did increase, NAFTA did not create more net trade-related jobs and those that it did were very often less stable, with lower wages and fewer benefits. Instead, increased trade largely benefited the corporate elite in all three countries. Income inequality has also grown in the region. We believe that the trade liberalization and investors' rights provisions contained in NAFTA were important contributors to these results, -- NACLA.
And, Donald Trump has made NAFTA central to his debate over free trade. He has stated his intent to "renegotiate" NAFTA, calling it the “worst trade deal in the history of the country.”
According to The Nation, “US labor has long criticized NAFTA as an enemy of unions, corroding domestic labor standards while spurring offshoring of blue-collar jobs to “low-road” Global South nations. But, up north, Canada’s unions fear exactly the same from the United States—that Washington’s relatively lax regulatory regime is dragging down standards and sucking away jobs. So, Canada wants to fix its southern neighbor’s labor laws.”
So, “the Trudeau administration has reportedly challenged Washington to raise labor standards as part of any revamped NAFTA deal. It has demanded protections for unionization and collective-bargaining rights, and called directly for a ban on “right to work” laws, which many states have used to dilute union power and sink wages, with spillover effects for the workforces of US trade partners. Pressured by unions, Canadian ministers seem to be leveraging labor standards to pressure Trump to make NAFTA, in theory, more beneficial for Canada’s labor force by countering the “race to the bottom.”
Canada is intent on fixing what it considers a major unfair trade practice in the United States – American laws that keep down wages by making it harder for American workers to unionize than for Canadian workers to unionize. Canada is demanding stronger protections for American workers who want to unionize, and also a ban on “right to work” laws that states use to dilute union power and reduce wages. Canada says these unfairly reduce American wages and thereby hurt Canada’s competitiveness.
Canada is absolutely right. If the United States wants to renegotiate NAFTA to prevent Mexico from offering unfairly low-wage work, Canada should use the opportunity to prevent the United States from offering unfairly low-wage work, too.
By Michelle Chen
