The United States on Tuesday unveiled draft text on labor standards during the negotiations on modernizing the North American Free Trade Agreement as top officials from Canada, the United States and Mexico joined talks in Ottawa.
“The U.S. proposal makes no sense to me,” Jerry Dias, president of Canada’s UNIFOR labor union, told reporters. “The American proposal is the TPP proposal with a bit of a twist, which isn’t going to resolve the issues” of better working conditions.
U.S. Congressman Sandy Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, who was in Ottawa at the weekend, cautioned on Monday that the Democratic party would not support a revised NAFTA agreement without “dramatic change” in Mexico’s labor standards.
