Labor Rights are Human Rights

http://thepumphandle.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/labor-rights-are-human-rights/

September 4, 2009 in Confined Space @ TPH, Politics | by Celeste Monforton

As I get ready to take in the 3-day Labor Day weekend, I have to remind myself that this national holiday has deep roots in the trade union movement and struggles (sometimes violent) for workers to secure basic human rights. In 1948, some of the fundamental protections sought by our worker-forbears were codified into the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among others, Article 23 of the Declaration emphasizes that workers’ rights are human rights:

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

In the latest issue of USW at Work, several articles remind me that we have a long way to go to ensure these fundamental rights extend to all people, both for U.S. workers and workers across the globe. One short article tells the tale of workers at the Alcoa factory in Hampton, Virginia organizing to join the United Steelworkers, and how anti-union scare tactics by the management squelched their efforts.

“Once workers signed authorization cards and filed a petition for an election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the company fought back with misinformation and intimidation. At the beginning of each shift, workers reported that management held stand-up meetings bashing the union. As the election neared, captive sit-down meetings were held every other day. ‘Probably the biggest advantage that the company had was they could make us go to their meetings, look at their slides, listen to everybody,’ said Billy Mason, a worker with more than 24 years at the plant. Although two-thirds of the workers had signed unions cards, the company’s long scare campaign was successful and the election was lost.

After the vote, Billy Mason was suspended for two weeks in retaliation for his pro-union activities. With the help of the USW, he filed a complaint with the NLRB and was awarded back pay. This is exactly the kind of human rights abuse that the Employee Free Choice is designed to prevent, and why faith leaders and religious scholars support the legislation. As the AFL-CIO notes:

“…current law puts the decisions about forming unions and bargaining in the hands of corporations, not workers. In our company-dominated system, corporations deny workers the freedom to choose a union, and they have free rein to coerce, intimidate and even fire employees to keep them from forming a union to bargain for their economic well-being.”

FULL story at link.