Factors Influencing How Health and Safety Professionals View Their Roles and Responsibilities Under NAFTA and the USMCA

Beginning in 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement was the first trade deal to include labor provisions intended to protect workers. In 2020, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) went into effect and included enhanced health and safety provisions in its labor chapter. However, there is limited information on how the professionals responsible for managing workplace health and safety view their roles and responsibilities under these free trade agreements. In order to elicit this information, a 47-question online survey modified from the International Labour Organization (ILO) was administered to 347 self-identified American health and safety professionals (stakeholders). Contingency table analyses were used to explore relationships between stakeholder demographics and variables pertaining to the roles and responsibilities of health and safety professionals. Four factors were found to influence how stakeholders view their responsibilities under North American free trade agreements. These factors included: job title, years of experience, years with employer, and type of site. Our results suggest that different outreach and messaging strategies should be employed by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative during the dissemination of free trade agreements to ensure all stakeholders are equally aware and understand these important changes to the field.

KEY WORDS: workplace safety, free trade agreements, professional perspectives, global public health

As globalization and the interconnection of nations continues through free trade, differences in worker health, safety regulations, labor standards, and enforcement among nations has become a crucial issue. Year after year, companies are under pressure to produce high, short-term financial gains, which often leads them to minimize expenditures directed toward the health and safety of their workers (Brown, 2005a). As a result, industrial firms often relocate their operations from developed nations to developing nations where occupational health and safety standards are lax and, therefore, compliance is less expensive (Tiemin, 2001). As health and safety professionals are charged with the day-to-day management and execution of programs to support the safety of workers, this study aims to explore what factors influence how these stakeholders view their roles and responsibilities under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Historically, regulations protecting occupational and environmental health have often been omitted from international trade treaties and the global marketplace. In fact, over the years, American labor advocates have expressed concerns regarding the United States’ entry into free trade agreements (FTA) with developing countries because of those countries’ comparatively lower wages and labor standards (Villarreal and Cimino-Issacs, 2023). Specific to North America, it has been shown that disparities in worker protection exist among the U.S., Canada, and Mexico due to separate and unequal health and safety standards among the three countries (Brown, 2005a). However, starting on January 1, 1994, NAFTA, with its labor side agreement, became known as the first recognized attempt at protecting workers as part of an international trade treaty (Brown, 2005a; Brown, 2005b).

Negotiated under the Clinton administration, NAFTA was intended as a means to reduce barriers to trade and investment between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada (Nevaer, 2004). In response to the U.S. public’s concern regarding the impact of trade liberalization on labor rights and environmental standards, two side agreements to NAFTA were signed to create an environmental protection commission and a labor commission (Martin, 1993). The labor side agreement, known as the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), was intended to improve the health and safety of workers within the trade region (Brown, 2005a; Brown, 2005b). For this reason, NAFTA and its side agreements were expected to set a precedent for reducing economic and public health inequalities between developed and developing nations in future trade and investment treaties (Brown, 2005a).

Shortly after his election in 2016, President Donald Trump called for the renegotiation of NAFTA (Trump and Clinton, 2016). Beginning in May 2017, the Trump administration initiated the process of renegotiating NAFTA with its neighbors to the north and south (Villarreal, 2023). After more than a year of talks and a round of revisions, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) was ratified on November 30, 2018, and went into effect on July 1, 2020 (Villarreal, 2023). In comparison to NAFTA, the USMCA directly includes enforceable labor standards in its labor chapter (Torrico et al., 2021). This chapter adopted the 1998 (and amended in 2022) ILO’s ”Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work,” which affirms a commitment to acceptable conditions of work with respect to occupational safety and health (U.S. Trade Representative, n.d.). Under the USMCA, the International Labor Affairs Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor works with the U.S. trade representative to review complaints under the USMCA’s Labor Chapter and Rapid Response Labor Mechanism (RRLM) (Sarukhan et al., 2023).

Despite these apparent successes, critics of the USMCA indicate that it falls short in several key areas, as it is largely a continuation of NAFTA with very few improvements (Labonté et al., 2019; Labonté et al., 2020; Santos, 2019; Whiting and Beaumont-Smith, 2019). Specific to occupational health, the USMCA comes with a significant administrative compliance burden that risks wrapping new health, safety, or environmental protective measures in extensive red tape (Labonté et al., 2019). In fact, Labonté et al. (2019) argue that the USMCA appears to set trade above, if not in direct competition with, health and safety regulations. This is because not only does the USMCA indicate that new international standards should not create unnecessary barriers to trade, but it only requires the three signatory countries to simply consider all possible international standards in the creation of their own (Labonté et al., 2019). In theory, this could allow a country to accept an international standard with a lower threshold of safety in lieu of their own more protective standard, as long as they provide a reason for doing so and do not specifically gain a trade or investment advantage as a result (Labonté et al., 2019).

For health and safety professionals, globalization, FTAs, and other policy initiatives, this has the potential to impact their profession, work environments, safety practices, and the people they work to protect. In fact, the task of protecting the workforce (albeit in domestic or international work environments) requires an understanding of the changing dynamics of the global playing field. Therefore, it is increasingly important that health and safety professionals be aware of any changes to the field as a result of FTAs. By evaluating how these stakeholders view their roles and responsibilities under NAFTA and the USMCA, future FTAs can be developed in such a way that they are vehicles for the strategic diffusion of harmonized workplace health and safety policies. This study seeks to identify factors that influence how health and safety professionals view their roles and responsibilities under FTAs.

We administered a cross-sectional survey instrument to American health and safety professionals practicing in the North American free trade area. This survey instrument was modified from the 2017 ILO questionnaire called “Survey on How Occupational Experts Carry Out Their Roles and Responsibilities.” This ILO survey was used in Turkey following the reform of their national occupational health and safety legislation, where several changes were introduced, including the requirement that enterprises employ occupational safety experts who are trained through a certificate program and maintain professional independence in the execution of their duties (ILO, 2017). ILO first carried out a pilot study to develop the survey questions and to verify appropriate content validity, level of difficulty, question types, sequence of questions, and length of survey (ILO, 2017). Additionally, the internal consistency between different questions was measured, including the application of a Cronbach’s alpha test (0.89) to obtain statistical results across all questions. Our research study’s survey instrument was comprised of 47 questions, which included questions from the ILO survey, as well as questions developed as a result of the principal investigator’s experience as a health and safety professional in the field. The survey instrument was written in English and implemented in Qualtrics.

Recruitment methods were primarily conducted through the memberships of several professional health and safety organizations, including the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA), American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP), Blacks in Safety Excellence, and Women in Safety and Health. The electronic link to the Qualtrics survey was also posted and shared on various health and safety discussion boards and social media platforms in order to solicit responses from health and safety professionals who may not be members of a professional organization due to cost or other factors. All respondents who self-identified as being U.S. citizens and were currently working as a health and safety professional in at least one or more North American countries (Canada, U.S., or Mexico) were eligible for inclusion in the study.

Our 47-question survey instrument was comprised of close-ended questions, including demographic questions, multiple choice questions, Likert-scale questions, and questions that allowed respondents to select all that apply. Demographic information included job level, years of experience, education level, professional certification, type of industry, gender, race, ethnicity, and age. Non-demographic questions were used to assess how stakeholders view their roles and responsibilities under FTAs. These questions were used to help define the factors that influence stakeholders’ views of global health and safety policies, global health and safety training and certification, and their practices.

The survey was voluntary in nature, and respondents remained anonymous. After receiving approval from the University of Iowa’s Institutional Review Board, the survey was made available to study participants from January 18, 2022, to March 4, 2022. After closing the survey, cross-tabulation analysis and modeling were utilized to evaluate the data. Cross-tabulations, which elucidate if a non-chance relationship exists between two variables (Huck, 2004), were run between demographic questions and questions pertaining to the roles and responsibilities of health and safety professionals. The chi-square test was used to explore the relationship between the two categorical variables in a cross-tabulation (Pallant, 2016). If the chi-square value is significant, it can be concluded that the data supports evidence of an independent relationship between the variables. All cross-tabulations were carried out in SPSS (IBM SPSS v29), and the number (frequency) of respondents who had the specific characteristics described by the cells in the table was recorded. A total of 532 cross-tabulations were performed. Additionally, expected frequencies were considered for our cross-tabulations. Expected counts are the number of cases one would expect to see in that category (cell) given the distribution of the data (Huck, 2004). A guideline suggested by Cochran (1954) indicates that cross-tabulations should have no more than 20% of cells with expected counts below five (5). Therefore, these statistical considerations were taken into account during the analysis of our results.

3.1 Demographic Data

The Qualtrics survey received 407 responses. After removing redundant IP addresses and incomplete survey responses, the remaining sample size was 347. As shown in Fig. 1, the gender composition of those who responded to the survey was 33.7% female (n = 117) and 64.8% male (n = 225). Respondents were primarily not of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin (92.2%, n = 320), and 83.6% (n = 290) identified as White. Most survey respondents were 45 years of age or older: 45-54 (27.1%, n = 94), 55-64 (29.7%, n = 103), and 65-74 (10.7%, n = 37). Survey participants also had many years of experience working in health and safety. Approximately 60% of respondents (n = 205) had at least 16 years of health and safety experience, while 14.7% (n = 51) had 11 to 15 years of health and safety experience. Roughly 15% of respondents (n = 53) had 6 to 10 years of health and safety experience, leaving about 10% with less than 5 years of experience.

Figure 1. Age, years of experience, ethnicity, race, and gender of quiestionnaire respondents. 

The vast majority of respondents had obtained a graduate degree (51.0%, n = 177) or a bachelor’s degree (43.8%, n = 152) as their highest level of education (Fig. 2). Additionally, they reported that the education and training they initially received to be a health and safety professional consisted of the following: four-year college/university (31.4%, n = 109), on-the-job training (26.1%, n = 91), training courses/workshops (19.3%, n = 67), or certificate programs (9.3%, n = 32). Furthermore, respondents indicated that they updated their health and safety knowledge through professional organizations/networks (26.0%, n = 90), continuing education (meetings, symposia, conferences) (25.0%, n = 87), and/or by individual research (18.4%, n = 64). The Certified Safety Professional (CSP) certification was held by 31.5% of respondents (n = 109). Another 19.8% of respondents (n = 69) had other certifications not listed in the survey, while 12.2% (n = 42) had a Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH) certification, 9.0% (n = 31) had an Associate Safety Professional (ASP) certification, and 4.0% (n = 14) had a Graduate Safety Practitioner (GSP) designation. Only 10.5% (n = 36) had no certifications.

Figure 2. Professional certifications, ongoing training, initial training, and education level of questionnaire respondents.

Most respondents (91.9%, n = 319) reported having a U.S.-based employer (Fig. 3). The majority of survey participants responded that their employer maintained operations/facilities in the U.S. (99.1%, n = 344). Furthermore, 29.1% (n = 101) reported that their employer maintained facilities/operations in Canada, (25.4%, n = 88) in Mexico, and (38.3%, n = 133) in other countries. The top five industry sectors that employed survey respondents were: manufacturing (37.2%, n = 129); services (21.9%, n = 76); finance, insurance, and real estate (9.8%, n = 34); construction (8.9%, n = 31); and public administration (7.5%, n = 26). Additionally, most respondents were health and safety professionals for multiple (regional) sites (59.1%, n = 205), while 30.5% (n = 106) reported responsibility for a single site. The majority of respondents were reported to have been employed by their current employer for 1 to 5 years (37.5%, n = 130), 6 to 10 years (20.5%, n = 71), or 16 or more years (20.2%, n = 70). The most commonly reported job title among respondents was ”Manager” (33.7%, n = 117), followed by ”Specialist” (17.6%, n = 61), ”Director” (16.1%, n = 56), and ”Other” (16.1%, n = 56). Most respondents had achieved a job level of ”Mid-Senior” (54.2%, n = 188). Nearly all respondents were employed full-time (98.0%, n = 340), and their job status was permanent (96.0%, n = 333).

Figure 3. Type of site, location of employer operations, industry sector, location of employer base of questionnaire respondents, years with employer, job title, job level, type of employment, and employment status of questionnaire respondents. 

3.2 Cross-Tabulations

Cross-tabulations were performed to understand what factors influence stakeholders’ views of their roles and responsibilities under FTAs. Four cross-tabulations were found to be statistically significant, contained ≤ 20% of cells with expected counts less than five, and demonstrated meaningful relationships relevant to our study. The first of these involved a question that asked respondents if they perceived that further health and safety provisions are needed as part of FTAs. This question was cross-tabulated with job titles to explore the relationship between the job titles of stakeholders and their perspectives regarding if further health and safety provisions are needed as part of FTAs. Results of this cross-tabulation are found in Table 1.

Table 1. Perception of further need for health and safety provisions in FTAs by job title: Pearson’s X² = 17.4, df = 9, p < 0.05.

It was found that 21.0% of respondents (n = 73) worked in entry-level roles, 43.5% (n = 151) worked in manager-level roles, 19.3% (n = 67) worked in executive-level roles, and 16.1% (n = 56) worked in ”other” roles. Importantly, half of all respondents across all job titles (50.4%, n = 175) selected ”I don’t know” if further health and safety provisions are needed as part of FTAs. This was the most selected answer for all job titles except for the executive group. The executive group equally selected ”agree” (37.3%, n = 25) and ”I don’t know” (37.3%, n = 25). It was striking that there was limited knowledge of the details of FTAs and their health and safety provisions among stakeholders of all job titles. However, these results also suggest that there is a relationship between job title and perceptions that further health and safety provisions are needed as part of FTAs. Perceptions of health and safety professionals in executive level positions differed from those in manager level and below positions as executives appear more aware of NAFTA and the USMCA given the high-level scope of their roles.

Our second cross-tabulation (Table 2) interrogated the relationship between health and safety professionals’ years of experience and their perceptions regarding the usefulness of an international certificate program as part of FTAs.

Table 2. Perception of usefulness of international certification program by years of experience: Pearson’s X² = 10.9, df = 4, p < 0.05.

Over 40% of respondents across all years of experience (n = 147) responded ”no,” indicating that they did not perceive an international training certificate program as part of FTAs to be useful to them in their role. However, the majority of health and safety professionals who had 5 or fewer years of experience (50.0%, n = 19) or who had 6 to 15 years of experience (46.2%, n = 48) responded ”yes” that they did perceive an international training certificate program to be useful in their role. This difference in perceptions among health and safety professionals may be because health and safety professionals with low to moderate years of experience (≤15 years) are still learning their roles and responsibilities and may not be aware of the knowledge required, while more tenured health and safety professionals (16+ years) have not found a need for an international certificate during their career.

The third cross-tabulation (Table 3) explored the relationship between stakeholders’ tenure with their employer and their perceptions regarding the usefulness of an international certificate program as part of FTAs.

Table 3. Perception of usefulness of international certification program by years with employer: Pearson’s X² = 15.3, df = 4, p < 0.05.

Over 40% of respondents across all years with their employer (n = 147) responded ”no,” indicating that they did not perceive an international training certificate program as part of FTAs to be useful to them in their role. Not surprisingly, 46.7% of health and safety professionals who had ≤ 5 years with their employer (n = 85) responded ”yes” that they did perceive an international training certificate program as part of FTAs would be useful to them in their role. This was expected given that years of experience were moderately correlated with years with employer (r = 0.4, p < 0.001).

Our fourth cross-tabulation (Table 4) evaluated if the type of location health and safety professionals were responsible for was a factor in how they perceived the sufficiency of governmental audits/monitoring during the implementation of health and safety legislation.

Table 4. Perception of sufficient monitoring of health and safety legislation by type of site: Pearson’s X² = 18.5, df = 10, and p < 0.05.

More than two-fifths of health and safety professionals (n = 148) ”somewhat disagreed” or ”strongly disagreed” that there is sufficient monitoring of the implementation of health and safety legislation through governmental audits/monitoring. This included respondents in single sites (39.7%, n = 42) and those working in multiple/regional sites (40.5%, n = 83). However, 63.9% of respondents working in ”other” types of arrangements (n = 23) indicated that they ”somewhat disagreed” or ”strongly disagreed” that there is sufficient monitoring of the implementation of health and safety legislation through governmental audits/monitoring. This suggests that there is a relationship between the type of site health and safety professionals are responsible for and their perception regarding the sufficient monitoring of the implementation of health and safety legislation through governmental audits/monitoring. These perceptions may differ across worksites as their practices could be different given the scope of their roles. While the ”other” category for the type of site could represent a variety of different things, it is possible that these health and safety professionals are consultants or contractors who are exposed to unique working environments.

Our results suggest that ”job title” is a factor that influences how stakeholders view the need for further health and safety provisions as part of FTAs. The majority of respondents across all job titles responded that they ”did not know” if further health and safety provisions are needed as part of FTAs. This was the most selected answer for all job titles except the executive group. While this indicates a general lack of knowledge of NAFTA and the USMCA, these results suggest that those in executive roles are more aware of a need for further health and safety provisions in FTAs as compared to those working in manager level and below positions. This may be due to an increased exposure to health and safety policies across different industries, countries, and potentially different contexts due to the high level of their position.

The outcomes of our second and third cross-tabulations indicate that ”years of experience” and ”years with employer” are additional factors that influence stakeholders’ views of their global health and safety training and certification under FTAs. Stakeholders who are less to moderately tenured in their careers (≤15 years) may perceive that an international certificate program would be useful to them in their role as they are early in their careers, eager to gain a variety of potentially relevant knowledge, and still in the process of understanding their roles and responsibilities. On the other hand, very experienced health professionals (16+ years) may feel that in their years of experience, they have not needed such a certificate program to perform their roles and responsibilities.

The results of our fourth cross-tabulation suggest that stakeholders working in different types of sites view their global health and safety practices differently under FTAs. Practices of health and safety professionals working in single sites and multiple sites may be different from those working in ”other” sites. Stakeholders who more strongly disagree that there is sufficient monitoring of health and safety legislation may be less likely to implement certain programs if they believe that they will not be enforced. This is relevant to the understanding of how stakeholders view their roles and responsibilities under FTAs, as the sufficiency/insufficiency of governmental audits/monitoring affects how health and safety policies are operationalized and made compulsory within their site(s).

While the conclusions of our cross-tabulations suggest that a non-chance relationship exists between the variables, it is important to note that cross-tabulations were run between multiple demographic questions and questions pertaining to stakeholders’ views of their roles and responsibilities under NAFTA and the USMCA. Thus, significant findings could be the result of chance alone. Additionally, it is important to note that our sample population represents a specific subset of stakeholders practicing in the North American free trade area. Health and safety professionals from Canada and Mexico were not recruited to participate in the study, and recruitment methods focused mainly on health and safety professionals who were part of professional organizations. Furthermore, as the professional certification of health and safety professionals is a self-regulated industry, it is likely that our sample population consists of individuals who are motivated to gain knowledge with regard to global health and safety as compared to the holistic population of health and safety professionals. Given the age and education level of most respondents, our sample population may be more experienced in health and safety than what is truly representative of the landscape of health and safety professionals currently practicing in the NAFTA area. Given this potential bias, it is particularly striking that there was little understanding of the health and safety provisions of FTAs.

Our study found that ”job title,” ”years of experience,” ”years at employer,” and ”type of site” are factors that influence how stakeholders view their roles and responsibilities under FTAs. Therefore, these factors should be taken into consideration by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative during the diffusion of future FTAs to the field through governmental agencies, non-governmental agencies, and interactions with professional organizations for health and safety professionals. Special attention should be directed towards single-site health and safety professionals and those who are early in their careers to ensure this audience is reached and that they are aware of their roles and responsibilities under FTAs. Additionally, the inclusion of training as part of FTAs would allow for all stakeholders in the NAFTA area to have a consistent, standardized baseline knowledge of health and safety regardless of other factors. This could reduce the training inequality that currently exists among health and safety professionals by requiring them to complete a prescribed amount of training in order to be qualified to carry out their roles and responsibilities. Further research in this area could investigate the extent to which data can identify a need for standardized health and safety knowledge across stakeholders. Additionally, opportunities can be explored for American health and safety professionals to network with Canadian and Mexican counterparts for knowledge exchange.

As American corporations continue to venture further and further into the international marketplace, this result has far-reaching implications for the health and safety of global workers. For health and safety professionals, the task of protecting the workforce (albeit in domestic or international work environments), is a challenge as it requires an understanding of the changing dynamics of the global playing field. This study is the first to evaluate factors that influence how American health and safety professionals perceive their roles and responsibilities under FTAs. The results of this work attempt to fill a knowledge gap in the field and provide best practices for the dissemination and internalization of future FTAs among stakeholders.

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