Updated USMCA Gives Unions New Advantages in Corporate Disputes

Unions and other groups will have an easier time challenging corporations over alleged labor and environmental abuses under updates to the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement Dec. 11.

The changes include two significant alterations to the existing North American Free Trade Agreement that will lower the barrier for a country to bring a traditional dispute under the trilateral trade agreement and will also establish a new labor-specific enforcement mechanism that is meant to provide a faster facility-based response to allegations of labor abuse.

Allegations of labor and environmental wrongdoing have traditionally been hard to enforce under NAFTA and other trade agreements ...