Compliance in Auto Parts through Labor Law Enforcement (CALLE)

Effective labor law enforcement is a priority for Mexico’s Secretary of Labor and Social Welfare (STPS) and a key labor obligation under the United States-Mexico-Canada-Agreement (USMCA). Additionally, the USMCA places a particular focus on workers’ rights in the automotive supply chain, establishing sector-specific labor requirements for products to qualify for USMCA tariff benefits. To achieve this goal and fulfill these trade-related obligations and requirements in a resource-constrained environment, improving the capacity of Mexico’s federal labor inspectorate to expeditiously identify and ensure remediation of labor law violations, especially in the auto parts sector, is critical.

Under the ILAB-funded CALLE project, AIR is working to address challenges in Mexico’s federal labor inspection administration process, in particular in the auto parts sector, including gaps in training, protocols and tools, and access to and use of data for strategic labor inspection planning and tracking. The CALLE project is helping to strengthen Mexican government protection of workers’ rights in the auto parts sectors in the states of Estado de México, Puebla, and San Luis Potosí, and on long-standing concerns of unlawful subcontracting, anti-union intimidation and retaliation, and gender discrimination.
 

Project Highlights

Since the CALLE project inception in 2020, AIR has coordinated closely with the STPS labor inspectorate to accomplish the following:

• Enhance the federal labor inspectorate’s 10-year-old electronic case management system (ECMS);
• Develop and upgrade new labor inspection tools, including checklists, templates, protocols, manuals, and guides;
• Incorporate data analytics and metrics dashboards into the ECMS to promote transparency, the identification of labor inspection irregularities, and accountability;
• Create an innovative data intelligence system that uses predictive analytics to identify priority employers at high risk for labor law violations and facilitate a data-driven, targeted inspection strategy;
• Develop and provide practical training for all project-developed substantive and technology tools; and
• Develop and deliver a rigorous, 120-hour professional training certificate program (diplomado) for federal inspectors, in coordination with the Facultad Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales en México (FLACSO).