Lance Com­pa, an inter­na­tion­al labor law expert at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty’s School of Indus­tri­al and Labor Rela­tions told In These Times via email, ​“The simul­ta­ne­ous NAF­TA and OECD com­plaints reflect an inno­v­a­tive union strat­e­gy for putting local and nation­al labor dis­putes under an inter­na­tion­al spot­light. No one has ever tried this before. Unions have filed com­plaints under the NAF­TA labor agree­ment, and under the OECD guide­lines, but in unre­lat­ed cases.”

A transna­tion­al coali­tion of labor unions and com­mu­ni­ty groups in the Unit­ed States and Mex­i­co charged multi­na­tion­al retail cor­po­ra­tion Chedraui Com­mer­cial Group with vio­la­tions of munic­i­pal, fed­er­al, and inter­na­tion­al labor law on Novem­ber 12, fil­ing unprece­dent­ed dual claims under com­pli­ant mech­a­nisms embed­ded with­in the North Amer­i­can Free-Trade Agree­ment (NAF­TA) and Orga­ni­za­tion for Eco­nom­ic Coop­er­a­tion and Devel­op­ment (OECD).

Com­pa explains that the com­plaints, car­ried out by South­ern California’s Unit­ed Food and Com­mer­cial Work­ers at Local 770 and the Frente Autén­ti­co del Tra­ba­jo (FAT) labor fed­er­a­tion in Mex­i­co, is impor­tant as it brings unprece­dent­ed transna­tion­al pub­lic and fed­er­al pres­sure to Chedraui’s retail oper­a­tions across both countries.

“The U.S. labor depart­ment will con­sult with the labor depart­ment of Mex­i­co on the NAF­TA com­plaint, and the U.S. state depart­ment will con­sult with the for­eign affairs depart­ment of Mex­i­co in the OECD com­plaint. Now Chedraui man­age­ment in Mex­i­co and El Super man­age­ment in the Unit­ed States have both gov­ern­ments look­ing at the company’s prac­tices and try­ing to forge a solu­tion,” he explains.

Chedraui is Mexico’s third biggest retail­er, with a retail foot­print of 35,000 employ­ees across 200 stores. Forbes reports that the per­son­al wealth of Chedraui’s Chair­man of the Board, Alfre­do Chedraui Obe­so, stands at $1 bil­lion, not­ing as well that Chedraui Obe­so is one of five yacht own­ers in Mex­i­co (get­ting his at an esti­mat­ed $50 million).

FAT alleges through the NAF­TA por­tion of the dual com­pli­ant that Chedraui has boost­ed dozens of ​“sham” unions through­out the coun­try to ensure that man­age­ment is in con­trol, pre­vent­ing any effec­tive check by inde­pen­dent unions actu­al­ly backed by work­ers. FAT has also called for inves­ti­ga­tions over sev­er­al vio­la­tions of NAFTA’s labor guide­lines, includ­ing alleged under­age labor, wage theft and health and safe­ty haz­ards. The com­pli­ant gives the Depart­ment of Labor six­ty days to decide whether it will inves­ti­gate and report on Chedraui’s Mex­i­can retail operations.

Chedraui has also been con­duct­ing busi­ness on Amer­i­can soil since 1997, when it took a con­trol­ling inter­est in the Cal­i­for­nia-based Bode­ga Lati­na Cor­po­ra­tion and its El Super chain. Today, Chedraui pos­sess a for­mi­da­ble share of the South­west­ern Amer­i­can mar­ket with 49 El Super store­fronts across Cal­i­for­nia, Ari­zona and Ari­zona, employ­ing a low-wage work­force large­ly of Mex­i­can descent, 5,000 in all.

While all El Super mar­kets in the South­west are non-union, it acquired sev­en union­ized stores in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia from from the now-defunct Mex­i­can chain Gigante in 2008. The rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the approx­i­mate­ly 600 work­ers at these 7 stores, the Unit­ed Food and Com­mer­cial Work­ers at Locals 770, 324, 1428 and 1167, attempt­ed to rene­go­ti­ate the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments that Chedraui inher­it­ed when these con­tracts expired in 2013. The union instead says it found that the multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion was not ready to bar­gain in good faith when it came to the work­ers’ cen­tral con­cerns, espe­cial­ly a guar­an­tee of 40 hours per week for full-time work­ers that are cur­rent­ly only offered 32.

“We went through the nego­ti­a­tion process for a good amount of time before they gave us a last and final offer which did not bring the work­ers up to par­i­ty, or even to a place where they could lead dig­ni­fied lives in a city expen­sive as Los Ange­les is to live in,” Rigob­er­to Valdez, Orga­niz­ing Direc­tor of UFCW Local 770, tells In These Times.

After the company’s last and final offer came in April 2014, Chedraui left the bar­gain­ing table, and work­ers at the sev­en union­ized El Super stores say that they faced intense union-bust­ing, man­age­ment-led attempts at union decer­ti­fi­ca­tion, and alleged cap­tive audi­ence store meet­ings with El Super CEO Car­los A. Smith that demo­nized the union process. El Super employ­ees respond­ed by vot­ing over­whelm­ing­ly to reject the company’s last con­tract offer, also autho­riz­ing union exec­u­tives to call a strike if they deemed it necessary.

UFCW inves­ti­ga­tions into man­age­r­i­al prac­tices at El Super result­ed in the Cal­i­for­nia Labor Com­mis­sion­er fin­ing the com­pa­ny $180,668 in penal­ties for wage theft vio­la­tions and order­ing the com­pa­ny to reim­burse work­ers a col­lec­tive $100,000 for vio­lat­ing state law by forc­ing them to buy their own uni­forms. UFCW lat­er beat decer­ti­fi­ca­tion attempts by a 3‑to‑1 mar­gin in an elec­tion held Decem­ber 2014, union staff say, reaf­firm­ing El Super work­ers’ desire for their union. That same month, the union and the rank and file start­ed a boy­cott of El Super stores that staffers say is hav­ing a clear effect — where­as sales were grow­ing in pre­vi­ous quar­ters, com­pa­ny finan­cial records reflect that sales fell as soon as the boy­cott started.

Before its effects were felt, how­ev­er, El Super fired rank-and-file leader Fer­min Rodriguez, an employ­ee of six years, due to his alleged pub­lic pres­ence in pro­mot­ing the boy­cott. Fur­ther cause for dis­con­tent came when El Super made short-notice changes to its employ­ee vaca­tion time poli­cies, result­ing in the sud­den loss of sub­stan­tial paid time-off for a num­ber of employ­ees. A rare court injunc­tion , brought forth by the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board, even­tu­al­ly got Rodriguez rein­stat­ed at a South­ern Los Ange­les El Super in July. The fed­er­al rul­ing also restored vaca­tion time that was pre­vi­ous­ly lost.

“I am back at El Super now because my union, [UFCW] Local 770, fought for me so that I could regain my employ­ment. The Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment was on my side and oblig­at­ed El Super to rein­state me imme­di­ate­ly,” Rodriguez tells In These Times in Span­ish, alleg­ing that El Super has act­ed in abu­sive and unjust manner.

Now, El Super man­age­ment is back at the bar­gain­ing table under fed­er­al medi­a­tion. The work­ers at the sev­en union­ized El Super stores have been able to stave off the company’s alleged­ly anti-work­er poli­cies through UFCW legal deter­mi­na­tion in state and fed­er­al and its ral­ly­ing on the ground with a com­mu­ni­ty sup­port­ed boy­cott and civ­il dis­obe­di­ence that has shut down inter­sec­tions . Its boy­cott led UFCW to inves­ti­gate the multinational’s prac­tices in Mex­i­co, find­ing rea­son and inspi­ra­tion to col­lab­o­rate with its Mex­i­can peer, FAT.

By tak­ing the unprece­dent­ed steps of fil­ing a joint claim with FAT (uti­liz­ing com­pli­ance mech­a­nisms typ­i­cal­ly used by labor in man­u­fac­tur­ing and agri­cul­ture, not retail), UFCW orga­niz­ers like Rigob­er­to Valdez say they are hope­ful that the extra scruti­ny placed on Chedraui and its El Super stores will result in a mean­ing­ful vic­to­ry that can be built upon by retail work­ers at multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies everywhere.

“As we head into a new transna­tion­al free trade agree­ment, it’s impor­tant that our com­mu­ni­ties are pro­tect­ed and the rea­son these process­es are includ­ed is to do that. I’m not sure that they’ve been prop­er­ly uti­lized in the past so we hope that the [Oba­ma] Admin­is­tra­tion takes this com­plaint seri­ous­ly and inves­ti­gates in order to make cer­tain that the fur­ther dete­ri­o­ra­tion of stan­dards doesn’t con­tin­ue to hap­pen,” Valdez says.

All three Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates have pub­licly denounced the Trans Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship trade agree­ment strong­ly pro­mot­ed by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma. Favor­able rul­ings for work­ers rep­re­sent­ed by UFCW and FAT unions through NAF­TA and OECD could be used by the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion to mag­ni­fy the fact that trade agree­ments do include space for some sort of labor recourse. Already, though, the UFCW has set up a mod­el for transna­tion­al labor sol­i­dar­i­ty by defend­ing the rights of work­ers at Chedraui prop­er­ties in Mex­i­co and the Unit­ed States.

El Super work­ers at the sev­en union­ized stores went on a one-day strike the day before Thanks­giv­ing . As Fer­min Rodriguez explains, he and his co-work­ers are ready to do their part on the ground. ​“Right now, the work­ers are unit­ed and we’re strong enough for what­ev­er is nec­es­sary. We’re used to doing what we have to in order to make it, and if that includes strik­ing, then we will strike. We’re going to keep fight­ing and we’re not going to give up until we’ve won.”

Valdez, who describes Chedraui’s treat­ment of Mex­i­can work­ers abroad as ​“dis­gust­ing”, says that they will not wait for a NAF­TA and OECD deci­sion in its fight against Chedraui Com­mer­cial Group. ​“We are going to con­tin­ue to esca­late our actions in Mex­i­co as well as in the Unit­ed States to make sure that this com­pa­ny abides by all laws — munic­i­pal, fed­er­al, and inter­na­tion­al law.”