USMCA Approaching Review: Workers’ Rights need to be strengthened
Published on February 23, 2026;
The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) will end in 2036 unless all three countries confirm that they wish to continue the agreement in a joint review process set for July 1, 2026.
The USMCA is a trilateral free trade agreement (FTA) enacted on July 1, 2020, that replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in regulating tariffs as well as agreements regarding investment and labor between the three countries.
The USMCA introduced a chapter on labor rights, including a Rapid Response Mechanism in the body of the agreement, in response to protests of NAFTA’s race to the bottom for workers’ wages in all three countries.
The Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM) allows workers in Mexico at factories that export to the United States or Canada to report violations of their workplace rights, especially in organizing a union or collective bargaining. These rights have been undermined by “protection contracts” from phony unions that prioritize the employing companies’ interests over the rights of workers and reinforce negative narratives against unions.
Genuine unions have used the RRM to facilitate organizing “independent unions” and winning union contracts with real worker protections at factories of transnational corporations such as General Motors, Panasonic, 3M and Goodyear Tire, and at plants that supply major garment brands. Calls for the expansion of RRM have come from Mexican, Canadian, and U.S. labor activists to include more workers such as agricultural workers in Mexico and workers in the United States and Canada who have their right to organize violated.
The USMCA has enabled corporations to take advantage of low wages across the border in Mexico to reap enormous profits. This is prominently seen in Ciudad Juarez, on the US-Mexico border across from El Paso, Texas, where around 330 maquiladoras, assembly factories owned by transnational corporations primarily for export to the United States, employ around 300,000 people.
A case that illustrates the lack of bargaining power that comes with not having a trade union occurred in April, 2020, when more than 100 workers at the Electrolux factory in Ciudad Juarez held a spontaneous protest in reaction to the lack of protective measures against Covid that had started to spread among workers and had caused at least one death. The response by management was to call in the 100 workers to tell them that they had to sign a “voluntary resignation” letter and receive a small compensation, or be dismissed without any compensation. Women laborers were disproportionately affected by the pandemic in terms of job security.
According to Edme Dominguez, an associate professor in Peace and Development Studies in Sweden writing for the Global Labour Column, women fired by Electrolux, in personal accounts of working conditions at the company, described age discrimination, sex discrimination against mothers, sexual harassment, as well as unsafe working conditions and company negligence. Despite Electrolux having signed a global framework agreement on a code of conduct to respect workers rights, employees expressed that they considered trade unions and labor organizing to be not permitted by the company. Transnational industries benefit from both the “protection contracts” of corrupt unions and the cynicism that they foster among workers, in discouraging their employees from participating in union organizing and making them more vulnerable to exploitation.
The Joint Review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement provides an opportunity and necessity for the consideration of the impacts of this agreement on labor and human rights. Acknowledging the relationship between FTAs and economic inequality, Congress must prioritize the protection of unions and workers rights in their policy recommendations within the review.
This is the first time that there has been a review and term extension provision included in any U.S. FTA. There is no precedent for how the U.S. Congress, or other governments, would conduct the process of review. If all three countries agree to a term extension, the USMCA would be extended for another 16 years and the next review would be in six years.
The USMCA Implementation Act requires the President to consult with congressional committees such as the House Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committee. The U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer gave reports to these two committees and asserted that the closed-door briefings fulfilled the requirement for consultation.
Greer said some of the bilateral and trilateral issues to resolve include dairy, digital services, and provincial bans on the distribution of U.S. alcohol in Canada; and agriculture, labor and energy in Mexico; rules for duty-free trade such as rules of origin; and various issues about tariffs.
In an interview with The New York Times in January, Greer said that the priorities for the administration were to bring manufacturing jobs to the U.S., to encourage wage growth, and to shrink the U.S. trade deficit.
He also stated to members of Congress about the USMCA that “the shortcomings are such that a rubber stamp of the Agreement is not in the national interest.”
The San Francisco Living Wage Coalition is working with the Trade Justice Education Fund, the California Trade Justice Coalition, and the People’s Movement for Peace and Justice on a campaign to strengthen worker protections in the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement. The Living Wage Coalition is planning events on March 21, May 5, a Fair Trade 5K in May and a regional conference in June. The People’s Movement for Peace and Justice is convening an international gathering in El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, from September 18 to 20 as a tribunal on human rights issues, including on economic justice.
by Annika Lenk
Action Steps
1. Sign this petition demanding stronger protections for worker’s rights in the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement.
2. Support our ongoing campaign to strengthen worker protections and demand fair trade not free trade by donating here.
