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A basic human right
On Dec. 10, tens of thousands of union members, elected officials, religious leaders and community activists across the nation took part in more than 90 events in 72 cities, united by one message: Workers’ rights are human rights.
Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day, commemorated the anniversary of the ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which established the right of people in every nation to come together into unions and bargain contracts.
The U.S. government had recognized those rights 13 years earlier with the National Labor Relations Act. But today, many workers say those rights exist only on paper. Workers may have the legal right to form unions to negotiate for better benefits, pay and safety standards—but employers across the country routinely block their efforts with threats, coercion and intimidation.
“Employers and anti-worker elected leaders...have systematically stolen the freedom to organize from workers,” says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who led thousands of New York City workers and their allies on a march from Wall Street to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) at Federal Plaza. “This hurts workers, and it is hurting our country.”
One-quarter of private-sector employers fire at least one worker during a campaign to form a union, according to research conducted by Cornell University’s Kate Bronfenbrenner, who also found that almost all private-sector employers—92 percent—force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda.
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Larry Lee’s experience trying to form a union at Wal-Mart bears out these startling statistics. After Lee began forming a union with United Food and Commercial Workers seeking a voice for fair pay, decent benefits and an end to favoritism, managers began their campaign of harassment, he says. “They separated me from talking with other associates [staff members],” says Lee, who spoke at a Dec. 10 rally in Houston. “Associates were told not to talk with me or work with me,” Lee says, also recounting intimidating one-on-one pressure sessions with supervisors.
“Wal-Mart workers aren’t going to get the fair treatment they deserve without a union,” says Lee. “I am not going to stop until we’ve got one.”
Pledging to make this goal of workplace justice real, activists rallied nationwide.
Led by Teamsters President James P. Hoffa, Atlanta activists chanted at the offices of Jackson-Lewis, the nation’s largest union-busting law firm, part of a multibillion-dollar industry that advises companies on tactics to harass and intimidate workers seeking a voice on the job. “Teamsters were proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their fellow union brothers and sisters, civil rights organizations, the religious community and Atlanta’s political leaders,” says Hoffa.
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In New Haven, Conn., more than 100 activists—including Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America—were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct while rallying in support of Yale University graduate workers trying to form a union with Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees and Yale-New Haven Hospital workers seeking a voice on the job with the New England Health Care Union/District 1199 SEIU.
Amnesty International USA Executive Director Bill Schulz told 2,500 activists in New York City that while his organization is well known for defending human rights in faraway countries, the struggle is “just as real in the United States” for working men and women. “Today, 55 years after the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we are here to say justice can wait no longer.”
AFGE President John Gage and AFSCME President Gerald McEntee rallied with 2,500 activists in Washington, D.C., at the U.S. Department of Labor, decrying the Bush administration’s crusade to deny union rights to more than a million federal workers.
More than 5,000 workers marched in Boston from the Boston Common to the NLRB regional office, “the largest AFL-CIO public demonstration in several years,” according to Massachusetts AFL-CIO Treasurer Kathleen Casavant.
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The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) won a victory Dec. 10 when union activists convinced Farmer Jack Supermarkets in Ohio and Michigan to stop carrying Mt. Olive pickles. Migrant farm workers who pick cucumbers for Mt. Olive pickles are facing harsh resistance as they try to form a union with FLOC. Farmer Jack workers, who belong to UFCW Local 911, supported FLOC’s campaign.
Beyond U.S. borders, activists stood up for U.S. workers’ rights. On Dec. 9, union leaders from Europe and the United States met with European Union Social Affairs Commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou to draw attention to employers’ anti-worker campaigns in the United States. A few days later, Diamantopoulou raised the issue at a meeting of the G-8 labor ministers in the presence of U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao in Stuttgart, Germany.
Union leaders say the fight to restore workers freedom to form unions won’t be confined to one day of events. Affiliates, state federations, central labor councils, local unions and community groups plan to hold hundreds of member education and mobilization workshops this year.
“Dec. 10 was just the beginning of an intense effort to win back our bargaining and organizing rights,” says Communications Workers of America President Morton Bahr. “We’re determined that our country recognize that workers’ rights are human rights.” @
