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As Stephen Harper joins Barack Obama and Felipe Calderon at their annual meeting, CLC president Ken Georgetti was having another kind of meeting with his union counterparts in the US and Mexico.

The three national labour federation leaders called on the NAFTA governments to fix the problems with the treaty that reduce wages and living standards in a written declaration.

The declaration calls for changes to the NAFTA sidebar agreement on labour standards, the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation, namely:

  • Each NAFTA country must adopt and enforce domestic laws and regulations that are in total compliance with the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) core labor rights;
  • overhaul the dispute resolution procedure so that violations of any of the agreement’s labor obligations are resolved fully, fairly and expeditiously;
  • Failure to act on dispute resolution recommendations under the labour agreement must result in serious fines or sanctions.