USMCA Labor Technical Assistance Evaluation

Workers were grinding steel inside the workshop until it sparked.

Problem

ILAB wanted to assess the outcomes of its technical assistance efforts in support of United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) labor priorities.

The Bureau of International Labor Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor (ILAB) funded technical assistance in Mexico to support labor reform and the labor priorities of the USMCA out of a $180-million implementation legislation. ILAB needed to document any intended and emergent collective outcomes in key domains of change from its projects involving stakeholders from government, private sector, labor, media, civil society, and academia across multiple states that aimed to promote compliance with the UMSCA. The initiatives focused on enhancing Mexico’s ability to enforce labor rights, implement labor reforms, eliminate child and forced labor, and boost women’s economic empowerment.

Solution

NORC used a complexity-aware approach to evaluate collective outcomes and actor contributions.

NORC framed its response to ILAB’s questions primarily using Most Significant Change, a complexity-aware evaluation method to identify collective outcomes and contributions from 19 ILAB-funded projects in five domains of change:

Worker advocacy of labor rights
Private sector labor policies
Strengthening and professionalizing labor justice and conciliation systems
Workplace equality between female and male workers
Labor rights enforcement and inspections of labor standard

We documented 21 significant changes detailing observable outcomes in behavior, relationships, activities, policies, or practices of individuals, groups, communities, institutions, or organizations. NORC administered 192 interviews and engaged with 68 respondents in focus groups in 19 states, triangulating all qualitative information with extensive quantitative sources. We validated the results with ILAB, its implementing partners, and a subsample of 91 respondents, including independent unions, unaffiliated workers, agricultural producers, labor authorities, judiciary and conciliation centers staff, private companies, academia, and civil society.

Result

NORC’s evaluation documented best practices for effective labor rights interventions.

NORC’s evaluation provides a thorough assessment of outcomes and ILAB’s contributions, including the complex aspects of change and the actors’ valuing of results. The evaluation team calibrated lessons and recommendations through this lens to increase funders’ ability to use them to inform any future interventions and international labor negotiations.

We documented ILAB-funded contributions to 21 concrete outcomes across five change areas. These outcomes promoted most of the USMCA’s Labor Chapter 23 in Mexico priorities, particularly:

Supporting workers’ exercise of their right to freedom of association and collective bargaining, reducing, and abolishing child labor
Promoting acceptable occupational conditions
Preventing workplace discrimination, violence, and harassment on the basis of sex
Promoting public awareness of labor law
Supporting enforcement teams to monitor labor law compliance
Building capacity for record keeping, labor conciliation, and arbitration services
Improving access to labor court systems

We found that tailored, hands-on approaches sustained the capacity-building goals of technical assistance to government agencies, the private sector, and workers.

Our results will inform efforts to leverage local partnerships, scale up effective actions, learn from past experience, and promote outcome sustainability.