Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) sent a letter to President Biden yesterday urging him to fulfill a campaign promise and bar firms that violate federal labor law from receiving any of the hundreds of billions of dollars flowing from federal contracts. The letter highlights that in recent years Amazon, specifically, has secured thousands of federal contracts, which have funneled billions of dollars to the company. And it has done so while aggressively deploying unlawful unionbusting tactics and spending millions on antiunion consultants. Sanders, chair of the Senate’s powerful budget committee, has scheduled a hearing for next week, which aims shed light on the scale of federal contracts being awarded to unionbusting companies.

Reuters reports that the newly-established independent union representing thousands of workers at a sprawling GM facility in Guanajuato, Mexico has demanded a nearly 20 percent wage increase in first contract negotiations. The development could be significant, as it may shed light on the durability of the drive to uproot Mexico’s deeply entrenched network of corrupt unions and meaningfully democratize its labor movement.

For context, the United States, Canada, and Mexico entered into a trilateral trade compact in 2020, the USCMA, which superseded the destructive NAFTA. The new agreement includes provisions requiring that Mexico — where as many as 85 percent of labor agreements are fraudulent “protection contracts” — reform its law so as to provide basic labor protections. The country complied in January 2019, overhauling its labor law regime and guaranteeing working people the right to freely organize, vote to unionize by secret ballot, and elect union officers; establishing independent institutions to administer union elections and adjudicate labor disputes; and requiring member ratification of all existing collective bargaining agreements. Invoking these protections, the unit at the GM plant dramatically expelled its company-dominated union last year and installed a newly-formed independent one, a milestone applauded by U.S. labor leaders.