Across the country, labor and its allies turn out in force to commemorate International Human Rights Day and to voice support for the right to organize free from harassment and intimidation.

The right to form a union and bargain collectively can no longer be taken for granted. Across the country and in various job sectors, employers routinely use loopholes in labor law to harass, intimidate—and even fire—workers trying to organize a union.

“Unions are the key to this nation’s middle class, yet the right to come together in a union is a fundamental freedom that has been eroded beyond recognition,” AFL-CIO president John Sweeney says. “Companies game the system. They’ll do anything to prevent workers from organizing—without a penalty.”

In early December, AFT members and leaders, along with thousands of trade unionists, civil rights and religious leaders, elected officials and others in cities across the country, mobilized to commemorate the Dec. 10 anniversary of the United Nations’ 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognized the right to join a union and bargain as a basic human right.

Throughout the busy week of rallies, marches, town hall meetings and other activities, an overriding message was delivered to Congress: Pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which would ensure that a majority of employees in a workplace could form a union without facing crippling anti-union tactics.

America’s ‘number one union buster’
From Sacramento, Calif., to Boston, International Human Rights Day events highlighted the increasing assaults on worker rights by corporations and anti-union politicians, aided and abetted by the White House. Protesters took particular aim at Bush administration policies, including its attack on employee overtime rights and its
opposition to labor law reform that would crack down on employer intimidation and harassment of workers trying to organize.

Among the most compelling speakers during the rally at AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., was Keith Hill, president of an American Federation of Government Employees local at Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania. “One of our most fundamental freedoms is under attack, not in some foreign country, but right here in the United States,” Hill said, referring to proposed personnel policies that would gut bargaining rights and eliminate basic civil service protections for 650,000 civilian employees at the Department of Defense.

Patterned after the rules the Bush administration unilaterally imposed on 160,000 Department of Homeland Security employees, the proposed DOD rules would replace decades of civil service pay grades and promotion rules with so-called performance-based job evaluations. The change would leave pay increases and promotions to supervisors and open the door to favoritism and political pressure on employees.

Hill, who has provided on-the-ground support for U.S. troops in Afghanistan and whose brother and son are in or en route to Iraq, said, “This attack [on our labor rights] is unwarranted, outrageous and an insult to the people who fight daily for this country.”

In Boston, AFT president Edward J. McElroy spoke at the Workers’ Freedom Trail Rally and March, one of the largest events of the week. Even though the right to organize is not a radical one and has been a “settled matter for generations,” McElroy told the crowd, “most Americans would be shocked to find out what nonunion workers go through trying to organize and that union workers often can’t get a contract.”

On Dec. 10, McElroy  traveled to Jackson, Miss., where he addressed a town hall meeting and rally commemorating International Human Rights Day.

At the Washington, D.C., rally, AFT executive vice president Antonia Cortese said the anti-worker tone set by the Bush administration emboldened the governors of Indiana and Missouri to strip bargaining rights of public employees in those states. Cortese also condemned efforts to take union representation rights from thousands of federal employees and “silence the voice of federal employees under the guise of national security,” including that of overseas educators represented by the AFT. “Teachers are apparently a security risk,” she half-joked.

Where you used to be able to count on government to protect the rights of workers, the Bush administration and its allies have “turned government into America’s number one union buster,” AFL-CIO executive vice president Linda Chavez-Thompson said.

Other speakers at the Washington rally included NEA president Reg Weaver and Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). “It is a shame and a downright embarrassment that the U.S. has been singled out by Human Rights Watch because we don’t respect a worker’s right to form a union,” McEntee said. “Our message is loud and clear: The right to organize is a human right, a civil right and an American right.”

As workers marched in a massive picket line in front of the White House following the rally at AFL-CIO headquarters, a delegation of union leaders delivered to the White House gates the petition signed by 100,000 workers calling on the president to honor federal workers’ freedom to form a union.

Solidarity from coast-to-coast
In New York City, a crowd of 300 labor supporters braved subfreezing temperatures Dec. 7 to show support for striking New York University graduate assistants, as well as hotel workers, home child care providers and others trying to unionize. Speaker after speaker pledged solidarity, including New York State United Teachers president and AFT vice president Richard Iannuzzi, who introduced child care worker Lourdes Lebron as “an everyday hero who allows working people to work.”

Michael Mulgrew, a United Federation of Teachers vice president, applauded the work of the UFT and NYSUT in getting 6,000 home child care workers to sign union cards, and demanded the state pass legislation allowing the union to represent all of the state’s 52,000 providers.

The crowd roared when New York University history graduate assistant Sarah Cornell recounted what conditions were like before her organization—the Graduate Student Organizing Committee, a United Auto Workers affiliate—was formed.

“Don’t tell me I don’t need a union,” she said, turning to face the towering Bobst Library that houses the NYU administration, “because I was there and I’m not going back. I cannot live without my salary but I won’t work without the security of a contract.”

In Philadelphia, the commemoration of International Human Rights Day included a rally in support of Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania (GET-UP), which has been working with the AFT to secure the university’s recognition of the group’s right to bargain.

Also in Philadelphia, Republican Reps. Mike Fitzpatrick and Curt Weldon met with union members and their allies and signed on as co-sponsors of the Employee Free Choice Act.

Despite up to 10 inches of snow, more than 200 Chicago-area union members and supporters gathered on Dec. 8 for a rally at the historic Haymarket Memorial. The rally highlighted efforts by employees to form unions with AFSCME in the Resurrection Health Care hospital system and with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers at Comcast Corp.

In Milwaukee, hundreds of union activists gathered for a town hall meeting to hear workers testify about efforts to unionize their workplaces. AFT Healthcare member and physical therapist Jaci Ranft told the audience about the anti-union campaign waged at St. Francis Hospital in Milwaukee when the workers decided to organize with the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals. “The hospital hired Management Science Associates to create a chilling atmosphere filled with fear and tension,” said Ranft. “The consultants trained managers to harass  and intimidate us, to bully us out of standing up for safe patient care and good working conditions.”

Despite the hospital’s efforts to turn the workers away from the WFNHP, “we stuck together, we survived the bullying and we won,” said Ranft.

A crowd of more than 2,500 turned out in Portland, Ore., on Dec. 10 to support the rights of workers to organize and to oppose the World Trade Organization. Members of AFT-Oregon and the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals joined the rally’s sponsor, Jobs With Justice.

In the week leading up to International Human Rights Day, 11 recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, including former President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and former president of Poland Lech Walesa, released a statement calling on the nations of the world to abide by the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights and to fully recognize and defend workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain collectively.