Labor turns out in force to support International Human Rights Day

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 collectively as a basic human right. An overriding message was to urge Congress to 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.

Are Educators a security risk?
From Sacramento to Boston, rallies, town hall meetings and other events highlighted the increasing assaults on worker rights by corporations and anti-union politicians, aided and abetted by the White House. The protesters took particular aim at the policies of the Bush administration, 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.

At the AFL-CIO, Department of Defense employee Keith Hill, who is president of an American Federation of Government Employees local at Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania, described proposed rules that would gut bargaining rights and eliminate basic civil service protections for 650,000 DOD civilian employees.

Patterned after the rules the Bush administration unilaterally imposed on 160,000 Homeland Security employees in January 2005, 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 idea 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.”

At the Washington rally, AFT executive vice president Antonia Cortese said the anti-worker tone set by the Bush administration had 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.

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 coast-to-coast
In New York City, a crowd of 300 labor supporters braved subfreezing temperatures and biting wind 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.”

In Philadelphia, the commemoration of International Human Rights Day included a rally in support of Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania/AFT (GET-UP), which has been working with the AFT to secure the university’s recognition of the group’s right to bargain. On Dec. 8, about 75 GET-UP members were joined by 50 AFT staff and leaders and 20 members of Jobs With Justice, a national workers rights group. They marched across campus to deliver a petition signed by 350 graduate employees demanding healthcare for all employees by the start of the next academic year. As with its sister union at NYU, GET-UP has been fighting for recognition despite a Bush-appointed National Labor Relations Board ruling in 2004 that graduate employees at private universities are students and don’t have the right to unionize.

Also in Philadelphia, Republican U.S. 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.

Neither snow nor rain ...
Despite a roaring blizzard and up to 10 inches of snow, more than 200 Chicago-area union members, activists 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.

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. Labor activists gathered outside the National Labor Relations Board office, where Stewart Acuff, organizing director of the national AFL-CIO, urged the crowd to support the right to organize unions.

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 all nations to abide by the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights and to fully recognize and defend workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain collectively.