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Workers' Rights Inseparable From Basic Human Rights |
Current rating: 0 |
by John Sweeney
(No verified email address) |
10 Dec 2003
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A promising start to the restoration of America's workers' freedom to form a union is the Employee Free Choice Act, co-sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Representatives George Miller (D-Calif.) and Peter King (R-N.Y.), and recently introduced into Congress. The treatment of workers is a civil issue requiring political solutions. |
Nora Castrejon, at age 44, is a production worker at the Cintas plant in Schaumburg. A conscientious and punctual employee, she is struggling to make ends meet even after 15 years of work. Like more than 40 million of America's workers, Nora and her fellow workers in Schaumburg want a union. They want safe working conditions, respect, and a decent wage. With $2.69 billion in sales, Cintas is the largest uniform rental provider and industrial launderer in the United States, and is vigorously resisting the desires of its employees to form unions.
Many Cintas workers fall below the federal poverty line, and Cintas has been cited many times by Occupational Safety and Health Administration for violating federal health and safety laws. Early in 2003, the Schaumburg workers, together with employees at other Cintas facilities across the country, began a campaign to join the union UNITE! and the Teamsters union. The company's response has been typical: They strongly resisted the will of their employees, using legal and illegal means to prevent the workers from coming together in a union. Now the federal government has issued complaints against Cintas for violating workers' rights.
Employer tactics range from using surveillance to identify pro-union employees, to forcing employees to attend closed, mandatory anti-worker meetings. Employers often threaten to close or relocate plants, and intimidate or actually fire employees actively working to form a union. Such violations of employees' rights are so common that Human Rights Watch, an organization that monitors abuses of human rights around the world, has declared the United States to be in violation of fundamental human rights.
''These abuses we found constitute a huge obstacle to workers' choices to try to form a labor union. There is an urgent need for Congress to take action to restore fairness in our labor relations and to improve respect for this basic right of our nation's workers,'' said executive director Ken Roth.
When employers deny workers their freedom to collective bargaining in a union, it dramatically impacts workers, their families, and their communities. Across the board, workers in a union earn 26 percent higher wages, 55 percent greater pension benefits, and 26 percent better health benefits. The discrepancies are especially large for women, people of color and immigrant workers. Strong unions mean good jobs, which in turn helps the local economy and creates a deeper tax base.
A promising start to the restoration of America's workers' freedom to form a union is the Employee Free Choice Act, co-sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Representatives George Miller (D-Calif.) and Peter King (R-N.Y.), and recently introduced into Congress. The treatment of workers is a civil issue requiring political solutions. The new bill is an example of the kind of legislation we need to ensure that Nora Castejon receives fair treatment from Cintas, and that employees across the United States feel free to act on their desires to improve their working conditions and gain a say in their workplace by forming a union.
Today, tens of thousands of workers across the country will commemorate International Human Rights Day by proclaiming that ''Workers' Rights Are Human Rights.'' It has been 55 years since Eleanor Roosevelt joined representatives from most U.N. countries in signing the International Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees our most cherished rights, including the freedoms of speech, religion and association, and unequivocally states that every person has the right to form a union for the protection of their interests.
In 21st century America, we cannot tolerate workers being lied to, harassed, spied on and fired for trying to form a union. Nora Castejon deserves a living wage. She deserves the right to a voice in her workplace. She deserves the right to negotiate wages, conditions and benefits. In theory, she has those rights. In practice, she doesn't.
John Sweeney is president of the AFL-CIO.
Copyright © The Sun-Times Company |
See also:
http://www.aflcio.org/
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US Workers Deserve Choice On Union Issues |
by Pat Youngblood and Robert Jensen
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
10 Dec 2003
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Fifty-five years ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights set forth basic standards for what many hoped would be a new world emerging from the devastation of World War II and the horrors of colonialism. Among the rights articulated in that document is, "to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests."
This was in line with U.S. law; the 1935 National Labor Relations Act declared it the nation's policy to encourage "the practice and procedure of collective bargaining" and protect "the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection."
Unfortunately, the principle on the books is not the typical workplace reality in the United States today. Existing laws are inadequate, and employers routinely violate even those.
As the world today observes Human Rights Day, Americans should heed the conclusion of a Human Rights Watch report in 2000: "(W)orkers' freedom of association is under sustained attack in the United States, and the government is often failing its responsibility under international human rights standards to deter such attacks and protect workers' rights."
A study by a leading labor researcher, Cornell University professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, found that when faced with employees who want to join a union, 92 percent of private employers force workers to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda; 80 percent require supervisors to attend training sessions on attacking unions; 78 percent require that supervisors deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee; and 75 percent hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns. Her study, commissioned by the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission, also found that half of employers threaten to shut down if employees unionize and that in a quarter of organizing campaigns, employers illegally fire workers because they want to form a union.
Bronfenbrenner also discovered why these tactics are so common — they are effective, increasing employee insecurity and applying downward pressure on real wages and benefits. The negative effect on communities is widely felt; a 2000 study by the Economic Policy Institute found that American families, on average, work 247 more hours per year than they did in 1989.
Workers whose rights have been violated can try to use the law to fight back, but these days that's a thin reed on which to lean. Business owners know that the federal government long ago abandoned serious enforcement, and cases brought before the National Labor Relations Board can drag on for years before workers get justice.
One simple way to give workers more meaningful organizing rights would be to establish the right of workers to start a union through the "card check" process. If a majority of workers sign a form authorizing union representation, the company would have to recognize the union. Under current law, companies can ignore the workers' wishes and demand an NLRB election, which gives managers the opportunity to engage in these coercive anti-union activities and create an atmosphere of fear.
Legislation introduced in Congress last month, called the "Employee Free Choice Act," would give workers the right to unionize through card check, as well as provide mediation and arbitration for first contract disputes, and establish stronger penalties for violation of employee rights during organizing drives and first contract negotiations.
Such a law is hardly radical; it's a small step toward reversing the assault on workers' rights in this country and bringing the United States closer to basic international norms. In addition to the Universal Declaration, such norms are also articulated in the "Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work" of the International Labor Organization, an independent U.N. agency of which the United States is a member. That document states that member nations have an obligation "to respect, to promote and to realize, in good faith" four key principles, the first of which is "freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining."
The key term is "effective" — rights in the abstract mean little to workers who are coerced into abandoning a union campaign or fired for organizing activities. It's time for the United States to make those rights real for all workers.
Pat Youngblood is coordinator and Robert Jensen is on the board of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin, Texas, http://thirdcoastactivist.org/. They can be reached at pat (at) thirdcoastactivist.org and rjensen (at) uts.cc.utexas.edu.
Copyright 2001-2003 Cox Texas Newspapers, L.P. |
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