The Trump administration is taking a victory lap after a labor watchdog panel sided with the U.S. and found workers at a gold and zinc mine in Mexico were stripped of their union rights through threats and violence.
The so-called Rapid Response Labor Mechanism, created under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, found that workers at the Camino Rojo mine in Zacatecas, Mexico, were denied labor rights. The panel investigates complaints regarding labor rights violations, allowing the U.S. and Canada to quickly investigate and penalize labor rights violations at specific facilities in Mexico without launching a full trade dispute.
The panel found in a Feb. 13 report made public last week that Camino Rojo interfered in union activities by intervening and pushing its preferred union — the Minas Union — over the then-incumbent Los Mineros union.
The operator of the mine, owned by Canada-based Orla Mining, also contracted a known narcotrafficker to interrupt union meetings with armed persons to make death threats and force workers to accept the company’s preferred union, according to the Department of Labor. Armed people also visited workers’ homes, the agency said.
