In this first annual report issued by the Commission for Labor Cooperation (the Commission), we take particular pleasure in announcing the fulfillment in 1995 of the measures needed to make a working reality of the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC). As one of the supplementary accords to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the NAALC was signed on September 14, 1993, by the Presidents of Mexico and the United States, and the Prime Minister of Canada, and entered into force on January 1, 1994.

In 1994, the first year of labor cooperation under the NAALC, the emphasis of the three countries was on setting up and making operational two NAALC institutions. These were the NAALC implementing office each government created within its labor ministry, known as a National Administrative Office (NAO), and the ministerial-level Council of this trinational Commission. The Council is the Commission's policy-setting and decision-making body, and consists of the three labor ministers or their representatives (who are referred to in the NAALC as the "designees" of the Council).

In 1995, the process of establishing NAALC institutions was concluded when, in September, the trinational Labor Secretariat was formally inaugurated in Dallas, Texas, U.S.A. The Secretariat provides staff support to the Council in carrying out Council decisions, and to special independent Evaluation Committees of Experts and Arbitral Panels the Council may establish under the provisions of the Agreement. It also has an important public information and research role and assists the member countries with their cooperative activities in labor matters.

During 1995, all these NAALC institutions, the Council and Secretariat, and the three NAOs, were able to function as an interconnected network of consultation and cooperation in the furtherance of the NAALC objectives.

The NAALC is a novel and unique international agreement, and the Commission is the only international body since the founding of the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 1919, to be devoted exclusively to labor rights and labor related matters. It is the first and only international agreement on labor to be linked to an international trade agreement. It provides a mechanism for member countries to ensure the effective enforcement of existing and future domestic labor standards and laws without interfering in the sovereign functioning of the different national labor systems.

Its own institutions are both international (the Council and Secretariat), and domestic (NAOs) in scope, and, by intent, all of them are small in size. Together, they provide an inter-governmental framework for the interaction of the full range of organizations and individuals involved in labor matters in the NAFTA countries: policy makers, administrators, employers, labor organizations, researchers and academics, legal practitioners, worker rights groups, and individuals.

The Commission for Labor Cooperation is now able to provide the organizational basis for a long term collaboration among member countries for the betterment of conditions for working people. It is the working men and women of North America who are the vital element in assuring the success of the NAFTA economic partnership. It is therefore, in this awareness, that the Commission for Labor Cooperation publishes this first report on its activities in 1995.