Footnotes
1 Contentious matters include the lack of compliance with the occupational safety and health standards in force in each country, child labor and minimum wages.
Annex 3: Footnotes
1 NAALC, Art. 51. The Agreement, however, was only partially applicable to Canada as of that date, because of the Canadian requirement of provincial ratification. See NAALC Annex 46. As of March 27, 1998, the Provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Quebec had signed the accord. Office of the Minister of Labour, Canada, Backgrounder, attached to News Release: National Advisory Committee appointed under Canadian Intergovernmental Agreement regarding the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC)(No. 98-27)(March 27, 1998).
2 See Sections 101(a), 101(b)(2) of the North American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 19 U.S.C 3311(a), 3311(b)(2) (1998).
3 NAALC, Art. 8.
4 The NAALC refers throughout to the three signatory member states as "the Parties." This report will follow that usage.
5 NAALC, Art. 9.
6 Id., Art. 10(1)(a).
7 NAALC Review Process, ¶ 2 (document on file with U.S. NAO)
8 NAALC, Preamble.
9 See id., Preamble.
10 Id., Art. 1.
11 Id., Annex 1.
12 Compare id., Art. 49 (defining "labor law") with Annex 1 (identifying labor principles).
13 Id., Art. 2.
14 Id., Art. 3.
15 Id., Art. 4.
16 Id., Art. 5.
17 Id., Art. 6.
18 Id., Art. 7.
19 See id., Annex 1("The following [eleven principles] are guiding principles that the Parties are committed to promote subject to each Party's domestic law, but do not establish common minimum standards for their domestic law").
20 Id., Art. 2.
21 Id., Art. 3.
22 Id., Art. 4(1).
23 Id., Art. 4(2).
24 Id., Art. 5.
25 Id., Art. 6.
26 Id., Art. 7.
27 Art. 5(8) states: "For greater certainty, decisions by each Party's administrative, quasi-judicial, judicial or labor tribunals, or pending decisions, as well as related proceedings shall not be subject to revision or reopened under the provisions of this Agreement."
28 Id., Art. 8(1).
29 Id., Art. 8(2).
30 Id., Art. 9.
31 Id., Art. 12(5).
32 Id., Art. 10(1)(b), 12(7).
33 Id., Art. 15.
34 Id., Art. 16.
35 Id., Art. 16(3)(emphasis added).
36 Id.
37 See id., Art. 11.
38 Id., Art. 11(1)(5).
39 Id., Art. 11(2)(a).
40 Id., Art. 11(2)(b)-(d).
41 This portion of the report is based on documentation supplied to the U.S. National Advisory Committee by the U.S. NAO, whose assistance the Committee gratefully acknowledges.
42 The Canadian NAO had likewise conducted such programs with Canadian universities, but the U.S. National Advisory Committee's limited information on the extent of theses activities and the Committee's dearth of information regarding any parallel activities conducted by the Mexican NAO preclude cross-national analysis of these domestically conducted public education efforts in this report.
43 NAALC, Art. 14.
44 For further details regarding other public submission proceedings, attached hereto as Appendix B is a document produced by the U.S. NAO summarizing submissions processed through December 1997.
45 NAALC, Art. 11.
46 Id., Art. 13(1).
47 Id., Art. 11(1).
48 Id., Arts. 16(3), 20-41; id., Annexes 41A, 41B.
49 Id., Art. 21.
50 Id., Art. 22. The text is ambiguous as the whether NAO-to-NAO consultaions are a required precursor to ministerial level consultations; in practice, thus far, Ministerial Consultations have been held only after NAO level Consultations failed to settle the matter.
51 This provision states: "Each NAO shall provide for the submission and receipt ...of public communications on labor law matters arising in the territory of another Party. Each NAO shall review such matters, as appropriate, in accordance with domestic procedures.
52 Id., Art. 21. The NAO may request consultations with another NAO regarding the other Party's labor law, the administration thereof, or its labor market conditions; no precondition, as to a public submission or otherwise, is specified.
53 Article 20, in the nature of a preamble to Part IV of the NAALC governing "Cooperative Consultations and Evaluations," makes this explicit: The Parties are to "endeavor to agree on interpretation and application of the Agreement;" and to "attempt through cooperation and consultations to resolve any matter that might affect its operation." Id., Art. 20.
54 Id., Art. 23.
55 Id., Art. 27.
56 Id., Art. 28.
57 Id., Arts. 29-38.
58 Id., Arts. 39-41; Annexes 41A, 41B.
59 Id., Art. 23(2).
60 Id., Art. 49(1).
61 The placement of this exclusionary language in the Article 49 definition of "technical labor standards" would suggest the exclusion of standard-setting only from ECE fact-finding, but the broad wording might be read to support its exclusion from all NAALC obligations.
62 NAALC, Art. 23(3); Annex 23.
63 Id., Art. 49.
64 Id., Art. 49.
65 Id., Art. 3.
66 Id., Art. 4.
67 Id., Art. 29(1).
68 Id.
69 For the U.S. Procedural Guidelines governing processing of public submissions, see 59 Fed. Reg. 16,660, 16,661-62 (April 7, 1994). The Guidelines state, "In general, the Secretary shall accept a submission for review if it raises issues relevant to labor law matters in the territory of another Party and if a review would further the objectives of the Agreement."
70 U.S. NAO Submission No. 9601.
71 NAALC, Art. 5(1).
72 Id., Art. 5(1)(a).
73 Id., Art. 5(4).
74 Some NAC members, however, believe that inadequacies in existing national laws of the Parties, and/or their enforcement, render the success of this strategy of reliance on domestic standards questionable.
75 NAALC, Art. 17.
76 The U.S. NAC was established on December 7, 1994, see 59 Fed. Reg. 64,713 (December 15, 1994), and its initial members were appointed on August 4, 1995. See 60 Fed. Reg. 41,118 (August 11, 1995).