Members of an independent labor union in Baja California celebrated victory on Tuesday in their years-long battle to represent Mexican long-haul truckers whose drivers carry Hyundai auto parts across the border into the interior of the United States.
The independent Mexican union, SITRABICS (Supply Chain Transporters Union), and the Tijuana-based company, Transportista Kamu, reached a remediation plan under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, through the trilateral trade treaty’s Rapid Response Mechanism. Under the mechanism, Mexican workers can file a complaint with the United States government if their company has denied them their rights to collective bargaining and freedom of association.
“Justice was achieved, and not just individually but collectively,” said Jesus Iturbero, secretary-general of SITRABICS. “We’ve set up a base for many workers who want support. This union can become a tool so that they too can find justice.”
The plan is the first of its kind involving cross-border truckers, and the first involving a company in Baja California, where independent unions have long struggled to gain a foothold. The plan requires the Mexican government to monitor remediation measures, and ensure that “all workers understand their right to freedom of association and collective bargaining and how to exercise it.”
Itubero had worked for years as a cross-border trucker transporting Hyundai auto parts from its facility in Rosarito Beach to an auto plant in Montgomery, Alabama. He was fired from his job in 2021 after he began organizing a union and demanding better pay and working conditions for himself and fellow Mexican drivers, Voice of San Diego reported last year. The company, at the time called Liber Gennesys, but now operating as Kamu, is a contractor for Hyundai, the Korean auto manufacturer.
SITRABICS eventually found support from the research and advocacy nonprofit Rethink Trade at the American Economic Liberties Project, based in Washington, D.C. They worked together to file a labor complaint through the Rapid Response Mechanism in June.
The resolution between the union and the company was reached last November, but only publicly announced on Tuesday.
Iturbero said in a brief interview on Tuesday the union and the company were preparing a joint statement about the agreement, and that further details would be offered during a news conference on Feb. 9.
Under the agreement, Kamu has agreed to reinstate two of the workers fired for their union activities, with full back pay and benefits, and pay full severance to Itubero, who has chosen not to return, instead devoting himself full time to union activities. Kamu agrees to “rescind any company rules or human resources instructions that discourage workers from communicating with reinstated workers or SITRABICS affiliates”, according to a press release posted on the website of the Office of the United States Trade Representative.
The plan also stipulates that Kamu will grant SITRABICS union organizers access to its facilities through a “facility access protocol.”
Daniel Rangel, research director of Rethink Trade, said “the access protocol is a great victory for the union. This is a way in which the mechanism is actually allowing unions to have access to facilities, to be able to represent workers and to be able to keep organizing.”
To date, there have been some 40 complaints submitted through the USMCA’s Rapid Response Mechanism, and most have involved the automotive industry in Mexico, said Cirila Quintero, a researcher at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, a Mexican government think tank. One of the mechanism’s weaknesses is that many workers are unaware that it exists.
Lance Compa, an emeritus professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and now based in San Diego, praised the remediation plan as “far-reaching and comprehensive” and said “the reinstatements are especially important.”
But, he added, “the test will be whether the independent union can win collective bargaining rights in a future election against the management-favored union. In some other cases, even after a robust training program, residual fear among workers has left the company union in place.”