Join the Dec. 10 International Human Rights Day mobilization

Workers’ rights to form a union in the United States are severely limited by a weak laws, feeble enforcement and an anti-labor mindset emanating from the White House on down through employers’ offices and boardrooms. In the United States each year, 23,000 people are fired or illegally discriminated against for trying to organize a union or bargain a contract, according to American Rights at Work chair David Bonier.

Dec. 10 is International Human Rights Day, a day that marks the United Nations ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Along with human, civil and women’s rights, a major point of that declaration is the right of workers to form unions—a right under grave threat in the United States today.

During the week of Dec. 5-10, at rallies, town hall meetings, candlelight vigils and teach-ins, union members and their allies will highlight the obstacles workers face when seeking to join a union and showcase strategies for overcoming those obstacles. On Dec. 8 in Washington, D.C., a broad-based coalition will hold a rally near the White House to protest the Bush administration’s plan to take away bargaining rights from federal workers in the Defense and Homeland Security departments.

One action every union member can take is to call his or her congressional representatives and urge them to support the Employee Free Choice Act, which was introduced in both the House and Senate by a bipartisan coalition. This bill would require employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers sign cards authorizing union representation.

The price for higher education
Higher education employees have suffered in the anti-worker climate. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that faculty at Yeshiva University were managers and therefore not entitled to bargain collectively, it closed the door on faculty organizing at private colleges and universities.

More recently, the National Labor Relations Board threw freezing water on graduate employee organizing when last year it overturned its own prior ruling recognizing graduate students as workers with the right to bargain. This fall,  New York University withdrew its recognition of Local 2110, a United Auto Workers affiliate on the verge of bargaining its second contract. Local 2110 held a massive protest in September (at which AFT leaders were arrested) and a strike in November. Despite the ruling, AFT affiliate Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania is continuing its five-year fight for recognition and is using its voice to stand up for other workers on campus.

The United States represses workers
U.S. employers intimidate and dismiss workers to keep them from exercising their constitutional right to form a union, according to a global survey by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). This worldwide union network is based in Brussels, Belgium, with more than 230 affiliated unions in 152 countries representing 150 million workers. Its annual survey looks at employer violations of workers’ rights worldwide.

According to the survey, 92 percent of employers force employees who want to form a union to attend closed-door sessions, known as captive audience meetings, against the union. Under U.S. law, it is legal for employers to discipline or even fire workers who choose not to attend, and employers may use captive audience sessions to suggest that the company’s operations will shut down if workers choose to organize.

The survey also points out that 75 percent of employers hire anti-worker firms to help them subdue workers and fight organizing campaigns.

In addition, legal penalties for employer intimidation and coercion—such as the illegal firing of workers who try to form unions—are limited and ineffective deterrents. It takes an average of 557 days for the National Labor Relations Board to resolve a case, notes the survey, and when it does, remedies are weak.

The ICFTU report corroborates a study released earlier this year by American Rights at Work. Called “Free and Fair? How Labor Law Fails U.S. Democratic Election Standards,” the analysis by University of Oregon professor Gordon Lafer compares NLRB procedures governing collective bargaining elections with standards applied in foreign countries (see Campus Clips, October 2005).

Find the ICFTU’s report can be  at www.icftu.org, and “Free and Fair” can be downloaded at www.americanrightsatwork.org/resources/studies.cfm.