The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement is, seemingly, inches away from securing the changes everyone has been waiting on in order to put this new legislation into action. What’s the last little hold up? Labor Unions. Before Pelosi will announce a deal, she wants confirmation that the AFL-CIO won’t oppose it. In Canada, the Food and Commercial Workers union is focused on a constitutional challenge that would allow the unionization of workers in the cannabis industry. In 2016, the Ontario Labour Relations Board ruled that the cannabis industry was agricultural and thus covered by the Agricultural Employees Protection Act as opposed to the country’s Labour Relations Act. Volkswagen’s plan to build a billion dollar factory in Turkey is on hold pending labor’s approval. The labor unions say that they will continue to withhold approval as long as violence continues within the region. Meanwhile, they are also blocking economic expansion. Protests and discontent are widespread across many Latin American countries. From Columbia to Chili, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Dominica, the defining theme is an uneasiness with the governing party. In Mexico, longtime Railway Workers’ union boss, Victor Flores Morales, stands accused of embezzling 1.5 billion pesos. Other charges include fraud, illicit enrichment, extortion, and involvement with organized crime. Dutch trade unions are seeing their lowest membership numbers since 1988. Unions lost over 100,000 members in just the last two years.
