Avoid energy panel, very different from labor agreements: Ildefonso Guajardo

The labor agreements between Mexico and the United States within the framework of the T-MEC that Alejandro Encinas Nájera managed as an official of the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare (STPS), are of a very different nature from those that he must now look for in his character of Undersecretary of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Economy to avoid an arbitration panel for complaints against Mexico’s energy policy, said Ildefonso Guajardo, federal deputy for the PRI.

Encinas Nájera assumed his new position last Friday, after serving as head of the Labor Policy and Institutional Relations Unit of the STPS, where he served as a liaison to resolve five complaints filed by the US government for alleged violations of union democracy in some manufacturing plants in Mexico.

“It is very different when the United States points out that a collective agreement was not voted for by the workers or there is no union democracy, because the Mexican government quickly makes the decision to make the correction and adjust to what the Americans are pointing out,” he said. Guajardo in an interview, on Radiofórmula.

The deputy, who when he was head of Economy led the negotiation of the T-MEC by the Mexican government, said that the case of consultations with the United States to avoid a panel on energy matters is different because in this case the position of the Mexican government it is divergent, since it denies that its energy policy violates the T-MEC.

“It is very different, because there is a conflicting vision (of Mexico and the United States) of what the commitments were in terms of energy,” he commented.