Part Two: Obligations
Article 2: Levels of Protection
Affirming full respect for each Party's constitution, and recognizing the right of each Party to establish its own domestic labor standards, and to adopt or modify accordingly its labor laws and regulations, each Party shall ensure that its labor laws and regulations provide for high labor standards, consistent with high quality and productivity workplaces, and shall continue to strive to improve those standards in that light.
Article 3: Government Enforcement Action
1. Each Party shall promote compliance with and effectively enforce its labor law through appropriate government action, subject to Article 42, such as:
- appointing and training inspectors;
- monitoring compliance and investigating suspected violations, including through on-site inspections;
- seeking assurances of voluntary compliance;
- requiring record keeping and reporting;
- encouraging the establishment of worker-management committees to address labor regulation of the workplace;
- providing or encouraging mediation, conciliation and arbitration services; or
- initiating, in a timely manner, proceedings to seek appropriate sanctions or remedies for violations of its labor law.
2. Each Party shall ensure that its competent authorities give due consideration in accordance with its law to any request by an employer, employee or their representatives, or other interested person, for an investigation of an alleged violation of the Party's labor law.
Article 4: Private Action
1. Each Party shall ensure that persons with a legally recognized interest under its law in a particular matter have appropriate access to administrative, quasi-judicial, judicial or labor tribunals for the enforcement of the Party's labor law.
2. Each Party's law shall ensure that such persons may have recourse to, as appropriate, procedures by which rights arising under:
- its labor law, including in respect of occupational safety and health, employment standards, industrial relations and migrant workers, and
- collective agreements,
can be enforced.
Article 5: Procedural Guarantees
1. Each Party shall ensure that its administrative, quasi-judicial, judicial and labor tribunal proceedings for the enforcement of its labor law are fair, equitable and transparent and, to this end, each Party shall provide that:
- such proceedings comply with due process of law;
- any hearings in such proceedings are open to the public, except where the administration of justice otherwise requires;
- the parties to such proceedings are entitled to support or defend their respective positions and to present information or evidence; and
- such proceedings are not unneccessarily complicated and do not entail unreasonable charges or time limits or unwarranted delays.
2. Each Party shall provide that final decisions on the merits of the case in such proceedings are:
- in writing and preferably state the reasons on which the decisions are based;
- made available without undue delay to the parties to the proceedings and, consistent with its law, to the public; and
- based on information or evidence in respect of which the parties were offered the opportunity to be heard.
3. Each Party shall provide, as appropriate, that parties to such proceedings have the right, in accordance with its law, to seek review and, where warranted, correction of final decisions issued in such proceedings.
4. Each Party shall ensure that tribunals that conduct or review such proceedings are impartial and independent and do not have any substantial interest in the outcome of the matter.
5. Each Party shall provide that the parties to administrative, quasi-judicial, judicial or labor tribunal proceedings may seek remedies to ensure the enforcement of their labor rights. Such remedies may include, as appropriate, orders, compliance agreements, fines, penalties, imprisonment, injunctions or emergency workplace closures.
6. Each Party may, as appropriate, adopt or maintain labor defense offices to represent or advise workers or their organizations.
7. Nothing in this Article shall be construed to require a Party to establish, or to prevent a Party from establishing, a judicial system for the enforcement of its labor law distinct from its system for the enforcement of laws in general.
8. 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.
Article 6: Publication
1. Each Party shall ensure that its laws, regulations, procedures and administrative rulings of general application respecting any matter covered by this Agreement are promptly published or otherwise made available in such a manner as to enable interested persons and Parties to become acquainted with them.
2. When so established by its law, each Party shall:
- publish in advance any such measure that it proposes to adopt; and
- provide interested persons a reasonable opportunity to comment on such proposed measures.
Article 7: Public Information and Awareness
Each Party shall promote public awareness of its labor law, including by:
- ensuring that public information is available related to its labor law and enforcement and compliance procedures; and
- promoting public education regarding its labor law.