IAM Union International Affairs Director Peter Greenberg testified before the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), calling for the implementation of urgent and enforceable labor standards in the upcoming review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
The IAM Union warned that current shortcomings in the agreement continue to fuel outsourcing, weaken labor protections, and undermine the economic security of working people across North America.
Greenberg outlined the union’s longstanding concerns with USMCA’s failure to meaningfully improve labor conditions in Mexico or face the loss of good-paying U.S. and Canadian manufacturing and aerospace jobs.
“Unfortunately, our concerns about USMCA have proven to have been accurate: Mexican industrial wages remain lower than those in China, and offshoring of well-paid U.S. jobs continues, including many in the aerospace sector,” said Greenberg. “Since USMCA was enacted, we have seen further erosion of good, middle-class, union jobs in the United States. In order to prevent this from continuing, we need to take vigorous action during the upcoming review.”
The IAM Union emphasized the crucial importance of strengthening rules of origin, expanding Labor Value Content, and ensuring that goods moving duty-free under the USMCA are genuinely produced in North America. IAM Union members build and maintain some of the most advanced aircraft and engines in the world, supporting both commercial aviation and U.S. national defense.
Weak USMCA provisions have allowed products with significant non-North American content – particularly from China – to enter the U.S. duty-free, undermining domestic aerospace manufacturing and the integrated U.S.-Canada supply chain.
Greenberg also pointed to the findings of the Independent Mexico Labor Expert Board (IMLEB), which documented ongoing failures by the Mexican government to enforce core labor rights and penalize employers who violate them. Without more vigorous enforcement, increased funding for labor rights monitoring through the U.S. Department of Labor, and meaningful penalties for violators, Mexican workers will continue to be denied the rights necessary to build an independent and democratic labor system.
“The IAM Union message is simple: If we strengthen labor standards, they must be enforced. And if we enforce them, companies must not be allowed to undermine them by seeking cheaper labor elsewhere,” said IAM International President Brian Bryant. “Working families deserve a trade agreement that works for them and not against them.”
As part of the USTR’s USMCA hearings series, the IAM’s Maine Lobstering Union also delivered testimony, urging the USTR to confront long-standing inequities in the Agreement that place Maine’s lobstermen at a competitive disadvantage. These imbalances – ranging from unequal conservation requirements to inconsistent enforcement across borders – continue to threaten the livelihoods of working families and the stability of coastal communities that rely on a fair and sustainable fishing industry.
The IAM Union submitted formal comments to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) on the upcoming joint review of the USMCA. In its submission, the IAM Union urged the administration to strengthen labor enforcement, raise wage standards, and close the loopholes that continue to fuel the offshoring of aerospace, manufacturing, and other critical jobs across North America.
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