The Strengthening Civil Society to Protect and Advocate for Migrant Workers project will provide civil society with the tools and training to protect migrant workers, particularly Mexican nationals participating in U.S. Temporary Foreign Worker programs, by supporting fair recruitment initiatives, building awareness of labor rights, and increasing the use of formal mechanisms for workers to exercise those rights.

The project will build capacity among municipal stakeholders, such as government officials, workers, worker organizations, labor unions, civil society organizations, community groups, and private-sector stakeholders, to work together to design and implement locally led actions to address child and forced labor in targeted municipalities in Chiapas and San Luis Potosi, Mexico.

The OBSERVAR project will support workplace democratic processes in Mexico through the impartial observation of workplace votes and the capacity building of key stakeholders on the issues of freedom of association and collective bargaining.

The Towards Effective Courts and Coordinated Labor Justice (TECLAB) project aims to support independent state labor courts created by Mexico’s 2019 Labor Law Reform to administer labor justice in an effective, efficient, and consistent manner.

The strengthening Mexican inspectorate for labor enforcement (CAMINOS) project aims to improve government systems for labor law enforcement through improved enforcement of labor laws by federal and state labor inspectorate, better administration of inspections, and enhanced engagement with supply chain actors in targeted USMCA sectors.

The Una Cosecha Justa project aims to increase protections for workers and reduce the risk of child labor, forced labor, and other labor rights violations among indigenous and migrant workers in the chile pepper and tomato sectors. The project will mobilize government officials, employers, workers, workers’ organizations, agricultural outreach workers, community leaders, and civil society organizations to address labor violations and increase worker engagement in advocating for their labor rights. 

To achieve this, the project will work with labor stakeholders at the state and federal levels in communities that both send and receive migrant workers to develop strategies to empower workers and link them to social protection systems. In addition, the project will raise workers’ awareness of their labor rights and how to report violations.  The project will focus on the states of Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Guerrero, and Oaxaca.

This project will strengthen the capacity of unions to organize by legitimizing collective bargaining agreements, supporting internal leadership elections, building partnerships, and providing independent unions with legal support and training for lawyers. The project will operate in the Mexican states of Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi, Queretaro, Estado de Mexico and Mexico City, as well as Mexico’s northern states by promoting authentic collective bargaining in the automotive, auto parts, aerospace, call centers, electronics, garment, industrial bakeries, logistics and mining sectors.

This project will enhance the effectiveness of the Government of Mexico to combat child labor,  forced labor, and human trafficking at the federal level, as well as in the southern states of Chiapas, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo.

The Sustentar project aims to increase private sector stakeholders’ accountability to uphold core labor standards consistent with Mexican labor laws and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement’s (USMCA) Labor Chapter, with a specific focus on addressing child labor, forced labor, and acceptable conditions of work.  The project will include a focus on states that produce chile peppers and tomatoes, including Baja California, Baja California Sur, and Chihuahua.

The Gender Equity in the Mexican Workplace project works to empower women to gain representation in union leadership in order to strengthen protections, address discrimination and harassment at work, and augment wages.

The Enhancing Labor Conciliation in Mexico project aims to support the state-level conciliation institutions established by the 2019 Mexican Labor Law Reform to help workers, unions, and employers prevent and resolve labor disputes in a transparent and efficient manner.

Part of the broader Vision Zero Fund - which aims to promote worker safety and health in global supply chains – this project aims to improve the occupational safety and health of workers in selected supply chains with a focus on COVID-19, female workers, and workers in vulnerable conditions. This project also helps Mexico meet its labor obligations under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

The Mexico Awareness Raising project aims to support the government of Mexico, including the federal and state-level Secretariat of Labor and Social Welfare, to design, execute, and sustain effective communication strategies that inform workers, unions, and employers of the legal ramifications of the country’s labor law reforms.

To build the capacity of workers, support worker engagement and organizing, and strengthen democratic worker organizations in the aerospace, mining, and call center industries, such that they become protagonists in fulfilling the potential of Mexico’s historic labor reform. The project will offer workers and their organizations expert technical assistance, ongoing skills development, and pro bono advisory and legal services. Additionally, the project will create spaces for analysis, exchange, reflection, and the development of recommendations to improve labor law reform implementation.

The Mexico Auto Employers project aims to bring automotive sector employers into compliance with the country’s labor law reforms while improving working conditions in the automotive supply sector. The project strives to reach this goal by raising awareness of the labor reforms, supporting employers to implement relevant provisions and proactively adopt policies for compliance, and strengthening industrial relations between employers and workers.

The Improving Working Conditions in the Mexican Automotive Supply Chain project is working to improve the quality of inspections and inspection follow-ups conducted by labor inspectors; strengthen government administration and coordination of the labor inspectorate and other institutions involved in labor law enforcement; and  strengthen the ability of labor courts and other institutions to effectively conciliate and adjudicate labor cases, including administration and coordination of union representation challenges.

EQUAL seeks to increase job quality and safety, create opportunities for economic participation, and address gaps in social programs to reach remote and impoverished families in Mexico.

Senderos — works with government, the private sector, and civil society to improve adherence to international standards on child labor, forced labor, occupational safety and health, and other acceptable conditions of work in the agriculture sectors in Jalisco and Nayarit. The project is building government capacity to enforce labor laws in agricultural supply chains, improving private sector awareness and compliance with labor laws, and increasing farmworkers’ knowledge of labor rights and grievances mechanisms.

This project enhances governments’ capacity to create, implement, and monitor the application of labor laws by working with ministries of labor, labor judges, and other judicial labor authorities. It seeks to use data collected from labor inspections to identify gaps that facilitate violations and to support legal reforms to address them. The project also uses data analytics to identify and combat labor inspection corruption, waste and inefficiency, and identifies regional inspection units in need of training and capacity building.

Workers and civil society organizations help to supplement and support government labor law enforcement efforts by proactively identifying potential labor violations and filing justiciable complaints with the appropriate authorities.  This project works in U.S. trade partner countries to improve labor law enforcement, as well as compliance with labor-related U.S. trade provisions, by improving the involvement of workers and civil society organizations in this process.

The United States is the leading importer of coffee, with Brazil and Colombia as the top suppliers. But before that coffee reaches our cups, tens of millions of workers globally select, pick, and process the beans. Many of those workers are children – toiling in the fields rather than learning in school. To address this, the COFFEE project is supporting coffee workers and communities, bringing their voice, concerns, and solutions to the table. The project is helping businesses to establish systems to prevent, detect, and eliminate child labor, forced labor, and other forms of labor exploitation from their supply chains. COFFEE is also working with an international coalition of coffee buyers to collectively incentivize suppliers into compliance.

The United States supports the goal of bringing meaningful change to the lives of the 152 million child laborers and the 25 million adults and children in forced labor around the world by eradicating child labor, forced labor and human trafficking. USDOL’s MAP 16 project supports this goal through efforts to (1) improve the knowledge base on child labor, forced labor and human trafficking; (2) improve awareness of these issues through the use of data-driven techniques; (3) strengthen policies and improve the capacity of governments and other stakeholders to combat child labor, forced labor, and human trafficking through national, regional, and global initiatives; and (4) strengthen partnerships to accelerate progress in combatting child labor, forced labor, and human trafficking.

Campos de Esperanza (Fields of Hope) engages the government, the private sector, and civil society to reduce child labor in migrant agricultural communities, particularly in the coffee and sugarcane sectors in Veracruz and Oaxaca. The project links children and youth to existing educational programs and refers vulnerable households to existing government programs to improve income and reduce the need for child labor. Campos de Esperanza also works to strengthen the Mexican government’s capacity to prevent and manage Chronic Kidney Disease of unknown causes and improve working conditions based on regional and international best practices in partnership with the private sector and community-based groups.