Dec. 5, 2005—The Rev. Desmond Tutu, former Polish President and Solidarnosc leader Lech Walesa, former President Jimmy Carter and the Dalai Lama are among 11 Nobel Peace Prize Laureates issuing a joint statement calling every nation, including the United States, to “truly protect and defend workers’ rights, including the right to form unions and bargain collectively.”
The statement, appearing in full-page newspaper ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post and the International Herald-Tribune, highlights the Nobel Laureates’ concern “about the state of workers’ rights in many countries” as International Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, approaches. Dec. 10 is the anniversary of the ratification of the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which included the right of people in every nation to come together into unions and bargain contracts.
United States Among Nations Failing to Protect Workers’ Freedom to Form Unions
“Even the wealthiest nation in the world—the United States of America—fails to adequately protect workers’ rights to form unions and bargain collectively,” the Nobel Laureates wrote. “Millions of U.S. workers lack any legal protection to form unions and thousands are discriminated against every year for trying to exercise these rights.”
In fact, half of the private-sector employers in the United States, when faced with employees who want to join together in a union, threaten to shut down partially or totally if employees join together in a union, according to research by Cornell University scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner.
The statement notes the right to form unions “is vital to promoting broadly shared economic prosperity, social justice and strong democracies.” But in many countries, workers trying to exercise their rights are brutally suppressed though beatings, arrests and even murder.
Worldwide Events Set for Dec. 10
The statement is part of the worldwide events this week leading up to International Human Rights Day. Workers in countries as diverse as Bosnia and Cambodia will join U.S. workers in mobilizing through rallies, teach-ins and other events as part of a worldwide effort to support workers’ freedom to form unions and other basic human rights. In the United States, thousands of activists in more than 100 cities will call on employers and lawmakers to restore the freedom of workers to form unions.
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