Reject­ing both eco­nom­ic nation­al­ism and free-mar­ket fun­da­men­tal­ism, work­ers across North Amer­i­ca are build­ing transna­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty and demand­ing labor rights for all.

Last week, near­ly 60 rep­re­sen­ta­tives of unions and civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions from Mex­i­co, Cana­da and the Unit­ed States gath­ered in Chica­go for a two-day meet­ing to dis­cuss strate­gies for col­lab­o­ra­tion as their gov­ern­ments rene­go­ti­ate the 23-year-old North Amer­i­can Free Trade Agree­ment (NAF­TA).

The meet­ing was coor­di­nat­ed by the Unit­ed Elec­tri­cal Work­ers (UE), UCLA Labor Cen­ter and Rosa Lux­em­burg Stiftung, an inter­na­tion­al civic edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tion affil­i­at­ed with Germany’s Left Par­ty. While many Mex­i­can unions are dom­i­nat­ed by the gov­ern­ment, only the country’s more inde­pen­dent and demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly run labor orga­ni­za­tions attended.

“We’re dis­cussing what kinds of rela­tion­ships can be built, either bi-nation­al­ly or tri-nation­al­ly,” Bene­dic­to Martínez, a nation­al co-coor­di­na­tor of Mexico’s Frente Autén­ti­co del Tra­ba­jo, or Authen­tic Labor Front (FAT), told In These Times. ​“At the fore­front of our vision would be the rights of peo­ple, includ­ing bet­ter wages, bet­ter edu­ca­tion, bet­ter health­care and immi­gra­tion rights.”

Crit­ics argue that NAF­TA has accel­er­at­ed the glob­al ​“race to the bot­tom,” where gov­ern­ments dis­man­tle work­place and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tions in order to attract cap­i­tal investment.

“NAF­TA has had many neg­a­tive impacts. Big com­pa­nies come to Mex­i­co accom­mo­dat­ed by the gov­ern­ment as work­ers’ rights are con­stant­ly vio­lat­ed,” Julia Quiñones, coor­di­na­tor of the Comité Fron­ter­i­zo de Obrer@s, or Bor­der Work­ers’ Com­mit­tee (CFO), told In These Times.

CFO orga­nizes maquilado­ra work­ers in the north­ern Mex­i­can states of Tamauli­pas, Coahuila and Chi­huahua. The for­eign-owned maquilado­ras along the U.S.-Mexico bor­der, which pro­duce goods for export, embody the most per­ni­cious aspects of ​“free trade”: exploit­ing low-paid, major­i­ty-women work­ers and pol­lut­ing their surroundings.

Quiñones explained that maquila work­ers often face sex­u­al vio­lence from their man­agers, are exposed to dan­ger­ous chem­i­cals, work 12- to 14-hour days and are fre­quent­ly fired or black­list­ed for try­ing to organize.

“Nobody ben­e­fits from these trade deals oth­er than cor­po­ra­tions,” said Kari Thomp­son, UE’s direc­tor of inter­na­tion­al strate­gies, in an inter­view with In These Times. ​“Not work­ing peo­ple, not the envi­ron­ment, not women, not peo­ple of col­or, not farmers.”

The tri-nation­al par­tic­i­pants in last week’s Chica­go gath­er­ing protest­ed out­side the Mex­i­can Con­sulate Fri­day after­noon, call­ing on the gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Enrique Peña Nieto to lis­ten to the demands of Mexico’s work­ers in the NAF­TA rene­go­ti­a­tions. Adher­ing to neolib­er­al ortho­doxy, Peña Nieto’s nego­tia­tors say that more trade, not more labor pro­tec­tions, will ben­e­fit workers.

“We’re denounc­ing the fact that inde­pen­dent, demo­c­ra­t­ic unions like the ones we rep­re­sent are not being heard,” Víc­tor Enrique Fabela Rocha of the Sindi­ca­to de Tele­fon­istas (Tele­phone Oper­a­tors Union) told In These Times. ​“We want a strong labor com­po­nent in NAF­TA. We want decent work as expressed by the Inter­na­tion­al Labor Organization.”

In par­tic­u­lar, the con­sulate pro­test­ers demand­ed Mex­i­co raise its min­i­mum wage. They argue that the increase would not only ben­e­fit Mex­i­can work­ers, but also work­ers in the Unit­ed States and Cana­da, by mak­ing it less prof­itable for com­pa­nies to move pro­duc­tion to Mex­i­co. The cur­rent min­i­mum wage in Mex­i­co is rough­ly $4 per day.

Abra­ham Gar­cila­zo Espinosa, a minework­er from Mex­i­co City and rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Sindi­ca­to Minero (the Nation­al Union of Min­ers and Met­al­work­ers), told In These Times that the wage dis­par­i­ty in the min­ing indus­try is espe­cial­ly glaring.

“In Cana­da and the U.S., min­ers are doing the same thing we do in Mex­i­co, often for the same com­pa­nies, but Mex­i­can min­ers are mak­ing a lot less mon­ey,” he said. ​“The work requires the same lev­el of spe­cial­iza­tion, train­ing and risk in all three coun­tries, but with very dif­fer­ent wages.” While the medi­an month­ly income of minework­ers in the Unit­ed States and Cana­da is about $2600, in Mex­i­co it’s about $600.

Prompt­ed by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, the NAF­TA rene­go­ti­a­tions began in August and are expect­ed to con­tin­ue into 2018. As part of his ​“Amer­i­ca First” vision, which has been wide­ly crit­i­cized for racist and xeno­pho­bic over­tones, Trump wants to reverse the U.S. trade deficit with Cana­da and Mexico.

“We think NAF­TA is a bad deal, absolute­ly,” Thomp­son says. ​“But just because Trump wants to rene­go­ti­ate this deal doesn’t mean he actu­al­ly has the inter­ests of work­ing peo­ple in mind.”

Two key demands of the orga­niz­ers who gath­ered in Chica­go — end­ing cor­po­rate pro­tec­tions like the unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic Investor-State Dis­pute Set­tle­ment (ISDS) and mak­ing it eas­i­er for work­ers in all three coun­tries to form unions — are not on the Trump administration’s agenda.

Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau has com­plained that the hos­tile legal envi­ron­ment for unions in the Unit­ed States com­pared to Cana­da cre­ates unfair labor mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion between the two coun­tries. In response, Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren intro­duced a bill last month that would pro­hib­it states from pass­ing anti-union ​“right-to-work” laws.

Although Cana­da has few­er legal obsta­cles to form­ing unions, activists there say guest work­ers from Mex­i­co and oth­er coun­tries are rou­tine­ly exploited.

“Cana­da bills [its guest work­er pro­gram] as a best-prac­tice mod­el of labor mobil­i­ty, but the work­ers have no mobil­i­ty. They get fired if they speak up and have no recourse,” said Eve­lyn Encal­a­da, a found­ing mem­ber of the Cana­di­an non­prof­it Jus­tice for Migrant Work­ers who par­tic­i­pat­ed in last week’s meet­ing. ​“We want all work­ers in North Amer­i­ca to have mobil­i­ty, labor rights and the right to have rights,” Encal­a­da told In These Times.

The transna­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty on dis­play last week is based on rela­tion­ships that have devel­oped over sev­er­al years. The FAT and UE have been in a strate­gic alliance—con­sist­ing of work­er-to-work­er exchanges and cross-bor­der orga­niz­ing — since NAFTA’s orig­i­nal nego­ti­a­tions began in 1992. This August, the UE also entered into a new coop­er­a­tion agree­ment with the pro­gres­sive Cana­di­an union Uni­for.

The Mex­i­can union­ists who vis­it­ed Chica­go hope to draw inter­na­tion­al sup­port for activists with Sitra­jor, the inde­pen­dent union of employ­ees at the left-lean­ing Mex­i­co City news­pa­per La Jor­na­da. After Sitra­jor staged a five-day strike to defend wages and ben­e­fits this sum­mer, the com­pa­ny that owns the paper fired two of the union’s lead­ers. Activists say the dis­missals were retal­ia­to­ry and are call­ing for the fired work­ers to be reinstated.

“Inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty has been fun­da­men­tal for the sur­vival of our union in recent years,” explained Gar­cila­zo Espinosa of the Sindi­ca­to Minero. His union’s leader, Napoleón Gómez Urru­tia, was forced to flee to Cana­da in 2006 after the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment — which he open­ly crit­i­cized — accused him of cor­rup­tion and issued an arrest war­rant. An appeals court over­turned the war­rant in 2014 for lack of evidence.

Gar­cila­zo Espinosa told In These Times the Sindi­ca­to Minero has with­stood repres­sion with the help of labor orga­ni­za­tions around the world, includ­ing the Unit­ed Steel­work­ers and the glob­al union fed­er­a­tion Indus­tri­ALL.

The orga­niz­ers at last week’s gath­er­ing agree that transna­tion­al labor sol­i­dar­i­ty is bet­ter for work­ers than Trump’s brand of nation­al­ism. ​“I don’t know who invent­ed those lines called bor­ders, but every­thing Trump is say­ing about putting up a wall — we’re com­plete­ly against all of that,” said Martínez.

“If we just try to fight against these trade deals with­in the silos of our own indi­vid­ual orga­ni­za­tions,” Thomp­son warned, ​“then the cor­po­ra­tions will win.”