quality:corruption
Labor

Proponents of NAFTA in the United States emphasized that the pact was a free-trade, not an economic-community, agreement. The freedom of movement it establishes for goods, services and capital did not extend to labor. In proposing what no other comparable agreement had attempted—to open industrialized countries to "a major Third World country" —NAFTA eschewed the creation of common social and employment policies. The regulation of the labor market and or the workplace remained the exclusive preserve of the national governments.

A "side agreement" on enforcement of existing domestic labor law, concluded in August 1993, the North American Agreement on Labour Cooperation (NAALC), was highly circumscribed. Focused on health and safety standards and on child labor law, it excluded issues of collective bargaining, and its "so-called teeth" were accessible only at the end of "a long and tortuous" disputes process". Commitments to enforce existing labor law also raised issues of democratic practice. The Canadian anti-NAFTA coalition, Pro-Canada Network, suggested that guarantees of minimum standards would be "meaningless" without "broad democratic reforms in the courts, the unions, and the government". Later assessment, however, did suggest that NAALC's principles and complaint mechanisms did "create new space for advocates to build coalitions and take concrete action to articulate challenges to the status quo and advance workers’ interests".