International trade agreements have often been criticized for limited attention to the rights of workers. The North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), a side agreement to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), stands out for linking labor rights provisions to a U.S. trade agreement. Kevin J. Middlebrook provides a comprehensive and systematic examination of the NAALC, assessing its efficacy in protecting workers’ rights over the entire period it was in effect and demonstrating its broader significance for the role of trade and labor standards in U.S. foreign policy.
Placing the NAALC in comparative context, Middlebrook considers various ways of promoting workers’ rights and how other U.S. international trade agreements have influenced labor rights abroad. He investigates the origins of the agreement; the political controversies among Canada, Mexico, and the United States over its scope; how the agreement operated in practice; and its longer-term policy legacies. Middlebrook emphasizes the tension between state sovereignty and the international promotion of labor rights in the negotiation and implementation of trade agreements, as well as how labor movements in one partner country can galvanize action in others.
Drawing on interviews with high-level officials involved in the trade negotiations and previously unexamined primary sources, The International Defense of Workers is a groundbreaking analysis of the effects of U.S. trade agreements on labor rights.
Table of Content
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
1. The International Defense of Labor Rights: Concepts, Policy Arenas, and the Challenge of State Sovereignty
2. Pathways to the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation: From Multilateral Proposals to Unilateral Actions Linking Labor Rights and Trade Agreements
3. Context and Constraints: The Origin and Negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement’s Labor Rights Provisions
4. The North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation in Principle and in Practice, 1994–2020
5. Legacies of the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation: Labor Rights, U.S. Free-Trade Agreements, and U.S.-Mexican Negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, 2001–2017
6. Renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement: Labor Rights and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, 2017–2019
7. Labor Rights, Trade Agreements, State Sovereignty: Past Record and Future Prospects
Acknowledgments
Appendix A: Statistical Analysis of U.S. Generalized System of Preferences Cases, 1985–1995
Appendix B: Annotated List of NAALC Public Communications Submitted to the Canadian, Mexican, and U.S. National Administrative Offices (NAOs), 1994–2020
Appendix C: Annotated List of Public Submissions to the U.S. Office of Trade and Labor Affairs (OTLA), 2008–2016
Appendix D: Annotated List of Rapid Response Mechanism Petitions Concerning Mexico Submitted to the U.S. Interagency Labor Committee for Monitoring and Enforcement, 2021–2022
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Kevin J. Middlebrook (1950–2022) was professor of Latin American politics at the Institute of the Americas, University College London. His books includeThe Paradox of Revolution: Labor, the State, and Authoritarianism in Mexico (1995) and
Organized Labour and Politics in Mexico: Changes, Continuities, and Contradictions (2012).
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