Public-Consular Diplomacy that works: Mexico´s Labor Rights Week in the United States.

 
A couple of weeks ago, Mexico´s consular network in the United States, together with federal and state labor authorities, unions, community associations, and seven other consulates, successfully organized the 13th edition of the Labor Rights Week (LRW).
 
The LRW “is a joint initiative between the governments of the US and Mexico that seeks to increase awareness in Mexican and Latino communities about the rights of workers and the resources available to them.”[1] As the reader will learn, it started in 2009.
 
In 2021, the 50 Mexican consulates and 560 partners held 680 events with 520,000 persons and collaborated with the consulates of Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Peru.[2]
 
Besides, the Embassy of Mexico in Washington renewed national cooperation agreements with the Wage and Hour Division (WHS), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The Mexican consulates also updated 58 local collaboration agreements.[3]
 
The significant results of the LRW amid the Covid-19 pandemic confirm that it is an example of an accomplished public-consular diplomacy initiative executed by Mexico and its network of allies in the United States. This effort adds to the successful public-consular diplomatic effort by Mexico is its Consular ID card program.
 
However, the consular protection of Mexican workers in the United States has been a priority of the consular network since the 19th century.[4] In the third decade of the 21st century, it continues to be the focus of Mexico´s public-consular diplomacy.
 
In the case of consular assistance in incidents of labor rights violation, Mexico developed the LRW, a successful model of collaboration where the host country authorities cooperate with the consular network to promote the rights available to all workers regardless of their immigration status.
 
How this initiative started?
 
The origins of Labor Rights Week
 
After the failure to reach an immigration agreement between Mexico and the U.S., also known as “the whole enchilada”, partly due to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, both governments searched for opportunities for greater collaboration in new areas. One such field was labor rights.
 
An alternative reason for the greater attention to labor issues by the government of Mexico is proposed by Xóchitl Bada and Shannon Gleeson. They state that it was the pressure from Mexican community groups to have a proactive role in labor rights cases that resulted in greater collaboration with U.S. authorities.[5]
 
As a result, in 2004, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico (SRE) and the Secretary of Labor issued a joint declaration followed by signing letters of intent with WHS and OSHA. The statement was renewed in 2010 and 2014.[6]
 
After a few years of collaborating, in 2009, the SRE launched the first LRW, using the Binational Health Week as inspiration. In its first edition, fifteen consulates and 255 allies organized 199 events, with 18,788 persons. In total, 829 consular labor cases were registered.[7]
 
Since then, Mexico´s consulates across the U.S. have entered into more than 400 agreements with regional offices of labor agencies, including OSHA, WHD, EEOC, and others (see table 1).
 
The evolution of the LRW
 
As with other consular assistance programs, after the successful first experience, all Mexican consulates were involved in organizing events around the LWR.
 
During the week around Labor Day in the U.S., which is celebrated on the first Monday of September, Consulates and allies organize a wide variety of activities, from training at the consulate offices and workplaces such as canning factories and vegetable fields to individual consultations with labor lawyers, labor rights organizations, and unions.
 
As the collaboration expanded, the Embassy of Mexico in Washington signed agreements with the NLRB in 2013, the EEOC in 2014, and the Justice Department's Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices (OSC) in 2016. In many instances, the consular network replicated these deals with the agencies' regional offices, especially with the EEOC.
 
As part of this initiative, the SRE signed an agreement with the United Farm Workers in November 2019, the first of its type with a labor organization in the United States.
 
The Results of the LRW
 
Organizing a week of events focusing on labor rights has been very successful. More than 1.7 million persons have attended an event since 2009, including half a million this year alone, as the reader can see in table 1, at the bottom of the post.
 
Regardless of the political discourse, continuity of the effort has been crucial, creating trust among the consulates and labor authorities with workers, unions, and labor rights organizations.
 
Besides, an additional advantage is that new activities are proposed by consulates and partners every year, expanding and deepening the cooperation. For example, after a few years of the LRW, some consulates, with the help of their allies, offered workshops at different workplaces, including factories, restaurants, construction sites, and agricultural fields. They found out, though practice, that it was a lot easier to reach out to workers at their locations rather than asking them to go to a consulate or a church.
 
The LRW has been identified as an example of “practical joint initiatives” to protect the labor rights of low-skilled immigrant workers.[8] Mexico promoted the LRW in the 2nd Global Consular Forum meeting held in Mexico in 2015, and some scholars have noted the success and some of its deficiencies.[9]
 
It is well known that current public diplomacy strategies search to establish a long-term partnership between the receiving and the sending state. Therefore, the institutionalization of relationships with partners, through signing collaboration agreements and other forms, has demonstrated its usefulness in weathering changes of leaders and priorities of the different governments. It also has facilitated the continuity of the LRW, which has been vital to building lasting and successful relationships with allies and the workers themselves.
 
Nina Græger y Halvard Leira state that “the degree of [consular] care provided for citizens abroad is thus tied not only to political system, but also to the state capacity, the perceived necessity for domestic legitimacy and responsiveness of foreign host governments.”[10] In the case of the LRW, the interest of the Department of Labor and other authorities in promoting labor rights in the immigrant community, through collaboration with the Mexican consular network, has been essential in its success.  One of the most important results is turning the consulate into a trusted ally of local organizations and bridging them and the federal and state agencies.[11]
 
In a country such as the US that offers fewer protections for workers and has multiple labor regulations and authorities, the LRW is an excellent public-consular diplomacy effort with a focus on some of the most vulnerable workers. It is also a perfect example of the collaboration of the governments of the sending and receiving states with civil society organizations.


[1] Okano-Heijmans, Maaike and Price, Caspar, “Providing consular services to low-skilled migrant workers: partnerships that care”, Global Affairs, Vol. 5 No. 4-5, 2019, p. 436.
[2] Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, “13th labor rights week comes to a close in Mexico´s US consulates”, Press Bulletin, September 6, 2021
[3] Ibid.
[4] Gómez Arnau, Remedios, México y la protección de sus nacionales en Estados Unidos, Centro de Investigaciones sobre Estados Unidos de América, 1990, p. 127.
[5] Bada, Xóchitl, and Gleeson, Shannon. “A New Approach to Migrant Labor Rights Enforcement”, Labor Studies Journal Vol. 40 No. 1, 2015, pp. 42-44.
[6] Bureau of International Labor Affairs, Joint Ministerial Declaration on Migrant Workers Signed by US Secretary of Labor, Mexican Secretary of Labor and Social Welfare, April 3, 2014.
[7] SRE, Derechos Laborales de Personas Mexicanas en el Extranjero: Semana de Derechos Laborales en Estados Unidos, Datos Abiertos.
[8] Okano-Heijmans, Maaike and Price, Caspar, “Providing consular services to low-skilled migrant workers: partnerships that care”, Global Affairs, Vol. 5 No. 4-5, 2019, p. 436.
[9] See, for example Bada, Xóchitl, and Gleeson, Shannon. “A New Approach to Migrant Labor Rights Enforcement”, Labor Studies Journal, Vol. 40 No. 1, 2015, 32-53
[10] Græger, Nina, and Leira, Halvard, “Introduction: The Duty of Care in International Relations” in The Duty of Care in International Relations: Protecting citizens beyond the border, eds. Nina Græger, and Halvard Leira, 2019, p. 3.
[11] Bada, Xóchitl, and Gleeson, Shannon, 2015, p. 45.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed on this blog are that of the author and do not represent the opinions of any other authority, agency, organization, employer, or company.

Table 1. Summary of results of the Labor Rights Week 2009-2021

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Activity	Signed deals	Events	Attendees	Consular cases	Agencies	Other consulates
LRW 2009-2020	361	8,581	1,236,010	10,314	6,963	128
LRW 2021	58	680	520,000	320	560	7
Total	419	9,261	1,756,010	10,634	7,523	135

Note: Participant agencies and other consulates totals could participate in different editions but are counted separately. Sources: 2009-2020 SRE, Derechos Laborales de Personas Mexicanas en el Extranjero: Semana de Derechos Laborales en Estados Unidos, Datos Abiertos, and 2021 SRE, “13th labor rights week comes to a close in Mexico´s US consulates”, Press Bulletin, September 6, 2021.