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The National Administrative Office (NAO) will consider a submission
about the trade union rights of Mexican federal workers.
The NAO, based in the U.S. Labor Department and created as part of
NAFTA, will study a submission filed June 13 by three human rights groups. The
groups allege that freedom of association rights were violated when the union
representing employees of the Mexican fishing ministry was deregistered
following the ministry's consolidation with the Ministry of the Environment,
Natural Resources and Fishing. The NAO will also look at claims that the
Mexican labor board was not impartial in its review of this case.
The 2,300 workers were members of the Single Trade Union of Workers of
the Fishing Ministry. When the consolidation took place, their union was
deregistered by the Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Tribunal, the labor
board with jurisdiction over federal employee labor matters.
The submission alleges a conflict of interest because the composition
of the board includes a representative of the replacement union.
The request for review also alleges that a restriction of
only one union in each state agency limits freedom of association by federal
workers. There is no such restriction on unions of employees working for
private companies.
The submission was filed by Human Rights Watch/America, the
International Labor Rights Fund and the National Association of Democratic
Lawyers.
Under the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), each
NAFTA signatory set up its own National Administrative Office. Among the
responsibilities of the NAOs is the review of labor law matters in the other
signatory countries.
The NAO has 120 days to review the submission and to issue a report of
findings.
To date, this is the fifth submission the U.S. NAO has accepted for
review. The Mexican NAO has reviewed one submission against the U.S.
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