The U.S. Department of Labor is granting up to $12.4 million to three organizations involved in fighting child and forced labor and supporting migrant workers in Mexico, including the International Labour Organization.
The department said Tuesday that the United Nations agency will draw $3 million to promote migrants’ labor rights in tandem with civil society efforts. Activities funded by the award will buttress civil society’s wherewithal to protect migrant workers, in particular Mexican nationals involved in U.S. temporary foreign worker programs, by backing fair recruitment initiatives and improving the workers’ awareness of their rights.
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The Massachusetts-based nonprofit monitoring group Verité will pocket $4.4 million to increase locally led actions addressing child and forced labor in the municipalities of Chiapas and San Luis Potosí. Verité’s project, the department noted, seeks to increase “capacity and collaboration” among stakeholders, including municipal government, the private sector, workers and civil society, to combat these issues in concert.
Receiving $5 million will be the Pan American Development Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-headquartered NGO that will use the largesse to tackle child labor, forced labor and other labor violations involving domestic workers in Mexico City and Querétaro. Its scheme will provide a raft of services advancing the workplace rights of domestic workers, including leadership development, skills training and legal and social services for children and adults.
The new funding, the department noted, aligns with the United States’ obligations in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, which supplanted the North America Free Trade Agreement in 2020, along with the goals of Mexico’s 2019 labor reform.
It was under the USMCA’s Rapid Response Labor Mechanism (RRM) that saw the filing—and ultimate resolution—of a complaint that the overseers of a denim factory in the state of Aguascalientes were interfering in internal union activities and using coercion to force them into accepting its proposed terms for collective bargaining.
In December, the Department of Labor and the U.S. Trade Representative revealed that the dispute between Industrias del Interior (INISA), part of a wholly owned family business based in Hopkinsville, Ky., and Indicato de Industrias del Interior, the union representing its workers, had been settled following actions by the Mexican government.
“This matter marked the first time the United States invoked the RRM outside of the autos sector, exemplifying the Biden-Harris Administration’s continued commitment to ensuring our trade tools serve to defend workers’ rights across a wide range of industries,” Ambassador Katherine Tai said at the time. “We commend the government of Mexico and INISA for their efforts to encourage positive outcomes for workers at this facility.”
