Mexican Union Has Complaint Against North Carolina
    By Kathleen Miller
    The Associated Press

    Wednesday 18 October 2006

Mexican union to file NAFTA labor complaint against North Carolina.

    Mexico City - A Mexican union federation said Tuesday it will file a complaint under the North American Free Trade Agreement against the state of North Carolina's ban on collective bargaining for public employees.

    The union group, the Authentic Labor Front, said Wednesday's filing will be the first time it has logged an official complaint against a US state, though it has used the NAFTA labor provisions in the past to target alleged violations by private US companies.

    The United Electrical Workers, or UE, a union that has roughly 3,000 members in North Carolina, asked the Mexican labor leaders to assist them in their efforts to repeal a state law prohibiting state and local governments from entering into collective bargaining deals with their employees.

    "We didn't come here to make a case against Mexican employers," Arturo Alcalde, the Mexican labor group's legal director, told a news conference. "Rather, we came in solidarity with the public sector workers of North Carolina, who are dealing with ... a state law that violates fundamental rights, international agreements, basic principles of coexistence and the foundation of an agreement that was created to improve labor relations."

    UE Director of Organization Robert Kingsley told the news conference the UE reached out to a Mexican labor organization because North Carolina has a $6 billion trading relationship with Mexico and he believes unions' best chance to negotiate with global corporations is to work across borders.

    UE has had a strategic alliance with the Authentic Labor Front since 1992, when both groups worked together to oppose NAFTA. In 1994, United Electrical Workers aided the Mexican labor group by filing a joint complaint about the anti-union practices of General Electric at one of its factory in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.