Labor attachés who will work at the United States Embassy will have no ‘super powers’ and their main responsibility will be that of receiving information and monitoring labor issues in Mexico, pointed out John L. Sander, partner at the American Law Firm Jackson Lewis.
“The United States does not intend to invade Mexico with an army of labor attachés, I simply cannot visualize a group of government agents with dark glasses inspecting Mexican labor plants,” said the specialist during the event ‘One Year after the Labor Reform’, organized by D&M Abogados.
The figure of labor attachés was born from a concern of Democrat groups and union leaders in regard to the Mexican labor system, “even though Mexico has good intentions and carried out a Labor Reform, there are people in the United States that are not sure if it will work; they are specifically concerned about the salary levels of Mexican workers”, he added.
The United States can be kept up to date on the labor situation in Mexico, through the figure of the labor attaché, although there will also be a ‘hot line’ in place.
“No legislation would be complete without a ‘hot line’, because we love ‘hot lines’; through them we can receive confidential and dynamic information, by means of which various labor anomalies can be denounced,” said the partner of the US Firm.
The specialist added that the highlight of the Treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada (USMCA) is that there are now mechanisms in place that the US had never had in any other trade agreement.
“We will now have to see how fast the response process of dispute resolution mechanisms will be when the USMCA enters into force,” Sanders stated.
Note published in El Financiero in the Economía [Economy] section by Héctor Usla.
