Human Rights at the Workplace
Americans shouldn’t have to check their rights at the door when they enter the workplace, but, unfortunately, this is often the case due to the state of our labor laws. One of the basic rights that workers are supposed to enjoy, under both US law and international treaties to which we are a signatory, is the right of free association at the workplace, including the right to form a union. While workers do, in principle, have a right to form a union, this right has been largely undermined by management practices over the last quarter-century.
Company managers have discovered a very simple, but effective, way to prevent workers from organizing unions: they fire the organizers. A recent study by Dr. John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer at the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that one in five union organizers can expect to be fired during an organizing drive. This study analyzed data from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that ran through 2005 to update a University of Chicago Law School study from 1991.
It is illegal to fire a worker for organizing a union. However, under current law, the penalties are minimal, even when an employer is found guilty. The average payment for a worker who loses her job for organizing is just over $3,000. Since the process can often be delayed through appeals and other tactics, workers may have to wait several years even to receive this amount.
And, of course, there is no guarantee that a worker will be able to prove that the firing was for union activities, even if this was, in fact, the case. Union organizers, like everyone else, occasionally come late to work. Employers can always find some excuse for firing a worker. Sometimes the NLRB accepts the employer’s pretext, even when the worker was actually fired for organizing.
For a determined anti-union employer, the risk of a modest payment to a few fired organizers is well worth the cost. Workers are unlikely to carry forward with an organizing drive after they have seen the most visible leaders get fired. As a result, firing union organizers is now a standard response to organizing drives.
Just as the tobacco industry tried to dispute that cigarettes caused cancer, corporations have tried to conceal their practice of firing union organizers. They hired a lobbyist to create a front group, the Center for Union Facts, which claims that cases of illegal firing are rare. The front group bases its claim solely on NLRB data that the NLRB itself describes as “unreliable.”
Without a union, workers have few rights at the workplace. Employers can fire workers at almost any time for almost any reason -just ask the 3,400 Circuit City employees the company plans to lay off and replace with cheaper workers. While good employers will treat workers with respect, even if they don’t have a union, many workers are not fortunate enough to have good employers. That is why more than 20 million workers don’t have health insurance, and nearly a quarter of the workforce has no paid vacation or paid time off. These workers can be told by their employer that they must come to work on Thanksgiving or Christmas, or they won’t have a job the following day.
Union workers are far more likely to have paid time off, health care and pensions than their nonunion counterparts. They also tend to earn better wages. The decline in unions is one of the key factors that led to the enormous upward redistribution of income over the last quarter-century. Finally, union workers don’t have to worry about being fired because their boss is in a bad mood.
Congress is considering a bill that would make it more difficult for employers to deny workers the right to join a union. The Employee Free Choice Act would allow workers to organize a union once a majority has signed a card in support of a union. This prevents employers from finding and firing the organizers before an election can take place. Canada already uses this process, and, in fact, it is already used for many purposes in the United States.
There was a time when the United States took pride in being a world leader in promoting human rights. If our workers can again have a meaningful right to form unions, we will have taken a step toward regaining this status.
Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of The
Mary Beth Maxwell is the executive director of American Rights at Work.
“There was a time when the United States took pride in being a world leader in promoting human rights.”
When was that?
Was it in our formative years of colonialism when we all but exterminated the indigenous peoples of North America and began a mindless, rapacious devouring of the natural wealth of our environment that goes on to this day?
Or was it the 350 years during the colonial era to the end of the Civil War when our economy was largely based on slavery, and was enshrined by our “Founding Fathers” in the 3/5 clause of our Constitution? Or in the succeeding Jim Crow Era that produced the bitter fruit of lynchings and mass murder of African Americans in astounding numbers?
Was it during our Westward expansion while claiming Manifest Destiny when we added the appropriation of large parts of Mexico to our other crimes?
Or was it when we took poor laborers from the Mediterranean and Europe to exploit, and laborers from Asia to murder, and laborers from Mexico to both exploit and murder out of a general confusion which clouds the immigration debate to this day?
Or was it the murderous occupations of the Phillipies, Puerto Rico and Cuba after the Spanish-American War? Or the subjugation of the beleaguered nation of Haiti? Or the many invasions of the Carribean, Central and South America that have resulted in millions of deaths, de-stabilized societies, endless poverty and environmental degradation (with the help of Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands and Britain?)
Or was it the Palmer raids which focused on immigrant workers, and unleashed a pandora’s box of attacks against the working class and unions that continues to this day?
Or was it the use of atomic weapons against hundreds of thousands of civilians in Japan that initiated the Nuclear Age which will plague and threaten humanity into the foreseeable future?
Or was it the Cold War and McCarthyism?
Or the many wars in Southeast Asia that resulted in millions of deaths and unimaginable destruction in Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, et al?
Or the occupation of Palestine, which is at the crux of our current “War on Terror.”
Or the development of the corporation into a fascist form of economic and social organization that we are trying to impose on the world with the most powerful and expensive military in human history that has established more than 730 facilities in more than 130 nations?
Or in the endless support of brutal dictators (”our bastards”) throughout the world, throughout our history?
While the Employee Free Choice Act has a great deal of positive value on its own merits, we need to separate discussion of it from such cliches as the United States ever being a leader in promoting human rights.
If we are going to discuss the history of this nation, it should be in a clear-eyed manner that has some relation to reality.
You’re quite right, tj. I think the sentence should have been “There was a time when the United States misleading grandiose propaganda about its goodness was more widely believed by both its citizenry and those abroad.”
Good article. I work not in an “at will” state meaning that your boss can fire you “at will” any time for any or no reason without notice. The workplace is anything but a democracy and you cannot have a democracy if it doesn’t exist in the workplace. People are afraid to speak out or be seen taking a stand in public because thier bosses might see and they worry about thier jobs. We’re all slaves in this bosses paradise. It’s time we break the chains of our servitude.
Jaded, I agree.
It’s a known fact that American democracy ends at the threshold of American workplace. It means that most Americans who spend their lives working, working, working (70 hours a week) and collapse outside “wonderful” American workplace, are not active members of the so called democratic system. They don’t time and energy to be humans, they don’t have time and energy for themselves, their families, their communities, their country and the world.
I think the authors are referring to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or Chicago of 1886 (?)
On the good side - in a couple of years the CEOs will be getting billions a year. What not to celebrate?
All workers in the U.S. who do not have union contracts or personal service agreements (individual contracts) are at will hires. That means the boss can change your wages and working conditions, discipline you or fire you “at will.” S/he does not have to give a reason, give notice or do anything else but kick your sweet self onto the street.
While having a contract - either a collective bargaining agreement or an individual agreement - does give you some protections, the contract must be enforced in courts and/or by actions, such as public support campaigns, strikes, filing grievances, etc.
U.S. law guarantees neither paid vacations, nor sick days. About half of the workforce has ZERO paid sick days. About 1/4 has ZERO paid vacations. The U.S. is the only developed (if you can call it that) country on Earth that does not provide these basic economic rights by law.
If a boss should discriminate against a worker on the basis of race, nationality or gender - or those conducting what is called “concerted activity,” i.e. banding together with other workers to express a grievance or form a union - s/he may have some legal protections as well. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has just made a decision that guts the ability to file many discrimination actions in a realistic timely manner.
In any case, a boss can (and usually does) claim that s/he wasn’t discriminating against a worker, but the worker was, incompetent, lazy, absent too much, insubordinate, a thief, spent too much time online, took drugs, drank too much, etc. ad nauseum. It goes on all the time.
While the Employee Free Choice Act should make signing up for a union easier, the union still has to get the employer to go to a bargaining table, settle a contract and enforce that contract.
The U.S. Constitution makes no mention of workers’ rights or basic economic rights whatsoever. The primary agency to legally enforce contracts and most U.S. labor law is the National Labor Relations Board, which is usually stacked with pro-business members.
It is an extremely bureaucratic process, but a worker generally must take her/his case to the NLRB(or to the Employment Equal Opportunities Commission - EEOC - in discrimination cases) and only then to federal courts. Obviously this takes a great deal of time and demands a great amount of resources - often beyond the ability of most individuals and many unions. Even then, the various adjudication agencies and courts along the way are pro-business by default.
Class warfare - as bureaucratic as it may appear - is alive and well in the United States. The Constitution does not apply when you enter the workplace in terms of the Bill of Rights or due process of any kind. U.S. labor relations are regulated by the law of the jungle. Anything goes: power prevails. Employers understand this reality extremely well. Not enough workers do.
No Justice/No Peace
“Class warfare - as bureaucratic as it may appear - is alive and well in the United States.”
Frankly, I don’t see any class warfare. I see someone very miserable on the ground, and some brown-shirted giant kicking.
All I have to say is “…that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
IT’S TIME.
Rarely, if ever, do I hear about unions being brought in by the employer as a preemptive move. I’ve lived it. The CWA was brought in by the owners at the small telecom where I was previously employed. No bargains, no debate, just sign here and we’ll deduct $15 a week from your paycheck.
It’s not just about labor unions. It’s also about discrimination and workplace bullying among other things. People put up with so much garbage at work, and they do it because they have no choice. You go to management, nothing happens and you’re turned into a pariah. No snitchin’. Nuh-uh.
People tell me, “why don’t you just quit?” Yeah, like it’s that easy to find another job. And then people chastise you for not “learning new skills”. In America, if you’re poor or working and miserable, it’s usually seen as your own dumb fault. We’re in the Land of Opportunity after all. What’s wrong with you? Pull yourself up by the bootstraps. Salute the flag. And work your tail off. Not making ends meet? Get another job. Or a third. Go into debt and get a degree. When that job gets outsourced, go back to school again.
And be sure to put up with abuse. Remember. That employee who insults you daily has more seniority than you. He’s our boy and everyone likes him. There must be something wrong with you since he offends only you. And besides. Worry about the work in front of you. Get a thick skin and a sense of humor. Don’t retaliate. You’ll get fired, and you’ll be without a paycheck. And you’ll be destitute and it’ll be your own fault.
In other words…
…screw you! I got mine, now go away.