“By rejecting the collective bargaining agreement, workers at the Goodyear rubber tire plant in San Luis Potosí have expressed their will. We now hope Goodyear treats its workers fairly and enforces the industry agreement,” wrote Thea Lee, Assistant Assistant Secretary for International Affairs at the US Department of Labor, in the statement.
The United States also announced that it will suspend the liquidation of all the unliquidated assets of the Goodyear SLP facilities, whose headquarters are in the state of Ohio.
Last April, the Mexican labor authorities annulled the legitimization process of Goodyear’s collective agreement due to possible fraud by the union.
In turn, the Liga Sindical Obrera asked the Inter-Institutional Labor Committee for Monitoring and Control (CIT, in English), which is in charge of enforcing the requirements of the USMCA trade agreement, to inquire about the situation at the Goodyear plant.
The agency found that there is “sufficient evidence of the denial of (labor) rights” at the Goodyear plant, the statement explained. As of now, Mexico has 55 days to complete an investigation, if it decides to do so.
This is the eighth time that the US invokes the rapid response mechanism of the T-MEC, a procedure for resolving irregularities or non-compliance with the labor commitments acquired with the treaty.
With information from Reuters and EFE
