Legal Protection of Workers’ Human Rights: Regulatory Changes and Challenges in the United States

[Excerpt] In a 2002 study, the US Government Accountability Office reported that more than 32 million workers in the United States lack protection of the right to organise and to bargain collectively. But since then, the situation has worsened. A series of decisions by the federal authorities under President George Bush has stripped many more workers of organising and bargaining rights. The administration took away bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of employees in the new Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department.18 In the years before the 2009 change of administration, a controlling majority of the five-member National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), appointed by President Bush, denied protection to graduate student employees, disabled employees, temporary employees and other categories of workers. An October 2006, a NLRB decision was especially alarming for labour advocates. The NLRB set out a new, expanded definition of \u27supervisor\u27 under the section of US labour law that excludes supervisors from protection of the right to organise and bargain collectively. This exclusion has enormous repercussions for millions of workers who might now become \u27supervisors\u27 and lose protection of their organising and bargaining rights.21 This case is discussed in more detail below in connection with a complaint to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Committee on Freedom of Association

Labour Rights in the FTAA

[Excerpt] Without an overall trade agreement containing stronger labour rights linkage than that of the NAALC model, advocates will have no central forum or mechanism for dealing with workers\u27 rights in the Americas. This paper suggests that labour rights advocates can and should shape a new viable social dimension in hemispheric trade and demand its inclusion in the FTAA. The emphasis of this paper is on a viable, not a definitive or triumphant, solution. Workers and their advocates do not triumph in the current conjuncture of economic and political forces. They do not will their way to victory with the sharpness of their criticism or the strength of their denunciations; they hold their losses and make small gains where possible. Workers\u27 advocates must coldly calculate what can be done with the reality they are dealt, hoping the outcomes will advance the longer-term struggle for social justice

Trade Unions and Human Rights

[Excerpt] In the 1990s the parallel but separate tracks of the labor movement and the human rights movement began to converge. This chapter examines how trade union advocates adopted human rights analyses and arguments in their work, and human rights organizations began including workers\u27 rights in their mandates. The first section, Looking In, reviews the U.S. labor movement\u27s traditional domestic focus and the historical absence of a rights-based foundation for American workers\u27 collective action. The second section, Looking Out, covers a corresponding deficit in labor\u27s international perspective and action. The third section, Labor Rights Through the Side Door, deals with the emergence of international human rights standards and their application in other countries as a key labor concern in trade regimes and in corporate social responsibility schemes. The fourth section, Opening the Front Door to Workers\u27 Rights, relates trade unionists\u27 new turn to human rights and international solidarity and the reciprocal opening among human rights advocates to labor concerns. The conclusion of the chapter discusses criticisms by some analysts about possible overreliance on human rights arguments, and offers thoughts for strengthening and advancing the new labor-human rights alliance

Chile: Report from the field, September 1972

[Excerpt] “El pais es pobre.” Sooner or later any Chilean, whichever side he or she is on, makes the point explicit. You know it from the beginning, though; it\u27s the premise for any dialogue about social and political affairs

Thanks to Kareem and His Unbroken Line

[Excerpt] For those of us who are Donald Trump\u27s age, there is a special pleasure in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar\u27s 16th season in the National Basketball Association. Scoring, rebounding, passing off, Kareem is leading the Los Angeles Lakers to another division championship and playoff appearance. There\u27s nothing new about that. More important now is the unbroken line to our youth that Kareem represents. I was upset when the Rochester Royals left my hometown, but get this: A guy my age is still starring in the N.B.A.

...And the Twain Shall Meet? A North-South Controversy Over Labor Rights and Trade

[Excerpt] No country or company should gain a commercial edge in international trade by jailing or killing union organizers, crushing independent union movements, or banning strikes. Gaining an advantage in labor costs should not depend on exploiting child labor or forced labor, or discriminating against women or oppressed ethnic groups. Deliberately exposing workers to life-threatening safety and health hazards, or holding wages and benefits below livable levels should not be permissible corporate strategies. But these are exactly the abuses that happen all too often in a rapidly globalized world trading system based on free trade

Corporate Social Responsibility and Workers’ Rights (Chinese)

[Excerpt] Corporate social responsibility (CSR) brings an important dimension to the global economy. CSR can enhance human rights, labor rights, and labor standards in the workplace by joining consumer power and socially responsible business leadership—not just leadership in Nike headquarters in Oregon or Levi Strauss headquarters in California, but leadership in trading house headquarters in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and leadership at the factory level in Dongguan and Shenzhen. Ten years ago, I would not have said this. I viewed corporate social responsibility and corporate codes of conduct as public relations maneuvers to pacify concerned consumers. Behind a facade of social responsibility, profits always trumped social concerns. CSR was only a fig leaf hiding abusive treatment of workers. But in recent years some concrete, positive results from effectively applied CSR programs convinced me of their value. In Mexico in 2001, workers at the Korean-owned KukDong sportswear factory succeeded in replacing a management and government dominated trade union with a democratic union of the workers\u27 choice. Compliance officials from Nike and Reebok, two of the largest buyers, joined forces with the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) enforcing their codes of conduct to achieve this result

Unfair Advantage: Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States Under International Human Rights Standards

This book exposes the violations of human rights witnessed daily in workplaces across the United States. Based on detailed case studies in a variety of sectors, it reveals an “unfair advantage” in U.S. law and practice that allows employers to fire or otherwise punish thousands of workers as they seek to exercise their rights of association and to exclude millions more from laws that protect their rights to bargain and to organize. Unfair Advantage approaches workers’ use of organizing, collective bargaining, and strikes as an exercise of basic rights where workers are autonomous actors, not objects of unions’ or employers’ institutional interests. Both historical experience and a review of current conditions around the world indicate that strong, independent, democratic trade unions are vital for societies where human rights are respected

Coming Home to Golf

[Excerpt] For a mainstream sports buff turning 40, golf takes on a new allure. Unexpected, even unwanted at first, a reawakened passion for the game has snuck up on me in the past year. After all, golfers excel with the best traits of those of us who have, been through the mill a bit: nerve, judgment, timing and consistency. When a fan turns 40, subtleness and elegance replace sheer force as the highest order of sporting skills

Another Look at NAFTA

Weak, toothless, worthless and a farce —these were some of the epithets applied to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) labor side accord negotiated by the United States, Mexico, and Canada in 1993. Trade unionists and labor rights supporters were upset, first by the text of the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) when it appeared, then by early experiences after it went into effect on January 1, 1994. But those wanting progress on labor rights and standards in international trade should be careful of making some idealized “best” the enemy of the good