Employment Recovery Strategy and Plan for the Promotion of Green Jobs and Enterprises
A tripartite-built, ILO-supported strategy combining post-COVID employment recovery with a just transition to green jobs, the first of its kind at subnational level in Mexico.
The document is the first subnational just transition policy package developed through tripartite social dialogue in Mexico. It was produced in Coahuila de Zaragoza by the Tripartite Labour Relations Council (CTRL-C) alongside the ILO, combining two instruments: an Employment Recovery Strategy (ERdE) and a Green Jobs Plan (PIE), into a single, coherent policy framework. This framework has the ambition of treating employment recovery and environmental transition not as separate agendas but as integrated instruments.
ERdE focuses mainly on skills training, labour intermediation, formalization, care economy, and gender inclusion. PIE, looks at the state sustainability targets, green financing, carbon market development, eco-technology adoption, and anticipatory training for EV transition. The startegy prioritizes two sectors: manufacturing of transport equipment, and retail trade of groceries, food, beverages, ice and tobacco. All actions are explicitly designed to scale to other sectors and states. The two priority subsectors, one large and formal, one small and informal, were chosen because their contrasting profiles cover most of the economy's spectrum.
The document is grounded in the Pacto Coahuila agreements of 2022 and 2023, formal social agreements that explicitly commit all signatories to a just and inclusive transition as part of economic reactivation, lending the strategy stronger institutional legitimacy.
The CTRL-C is responsible for convening the working groups that execute it, monitoring indicator progress against INEGI and IMSS baseline data, and formally adopting any changes through its bimestral plenary sessions. SETRA (the state Labour Secretariat) carries the largest share of lead responsibility across the ERdE, while the Secretaría de Medio Ambiente leads the PIE actions for manufacturing. The Secretaría de Economía leads formalization and green financing measures in retail.
The strategy works primarily through mesas de trabajo tripartitas, structured working tables that convene the relevant lead entity with employers, workers, academic institutions, and any other actor that holds influence over the issue.
On timeframes, the strategy is front-loaded by design. The short term carries roughly two thirds of all actions. This is intentional; the document wants to generate visible momentum quickly within the CTRL-C's existing governance cycle, without waiting for new legislations, budgets, or external funding. The medium-term actions are sequenced to build on what the short-term working tables produce. In the short term, the tripartite table is convened to agree on the dual education model; in the medium term, the programme is implemented.
On financial sustainability, the strategy makes a deliberate and explicit choice: nothing in the core implementation chain depends on external funding. Every action is anchored to the existing institutional mandates of the Pacto Coahuila signatories, SETRA, the Secretaría de Medio Ambiente, the Secretaría de Economía, the SNE, CANACO, employers' and workers' organisations.