November 8, 2005

COMMENTARY

Bonior: On workers' rights, we can do better than this

David Bonior, AMERICAN RIGHTS AT WORK

Danette Chavez, a single mom who cleaned Austin's federal buildings to provide for herself and her daughter, was fired earlier this year. She wasn't let go for poor work performance. Instead, her employer illegally terminated her because she wanted to form a union to improve working conditions and compensation at City Wide Janitorial.

I met Danette last month while in Austin on the "Workers' Rights are Human Rights Tour," a nationwide series of events sponsored by American Rights at Work, the national workers' rights organization that I chair. Local advocates, including the Equal Justice Center, the Austin Central Labor Council and student and faculty groups at the University of Texas at Austin, introduced me to many workers in a host of industries who shared similar stories of unrelenting maltreatment.

We all know that there is no comparison between the life and death struggle of workers in places such as El Salvador and China and workers here in the United States. However, the tour's delegation of international human rights advocates, U.S. academics and civic, political and religious leaders saw firsthand how union-busting in U.S. workplaces leaves many workers vulnerable to exploitative working conditions that rise to the level of human rights violations.

Stories in Austin confirmed that all workers in today's globalized world are located at different points on the same dangerous continuum of hostile labor relations and the lackluster response of government. As a result, each year in America an average of 23,000 employees like Danette Chavez are illegally fired or penalized for attempting to exercise their democratic right to form a union. Despite international human rights standards and U.S. laws that prohibit employers from intimidating, coercing or firing employees for union activity, it happens every day and most Americans have no idea.

The Workers' Rights are Human Rights Tour demonstrates that a system to protect America's workers has never been more important to our families and our world. As human beings, we all have the right to be treated fairly; to freely associate; to participate in the decisions that affect our lives; to work under conditions that don't cause bodily harm; and, to expect that a fair day's work will be compensated with a fair day's pay.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted unanimously by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948, clearly states that "everyone has the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests." Without the enforcement of these rights, working mothers and fathers face the impossible choice of standing up for themselves or enduring unfair working conditions in order to keep their jobs.

"We continued to work under these conditions and without benefits because we were afraid of losing our jobs," confirmed Danette. "This job is my only income for shelter, food, clothing and transportation for my daughter and me."

When we discover workers' rights abuses in other parts of the world, we call them human rights violations. The same should be said about hostile labor relations practices here at home.

In Austin and throughout the United States, there is no single code of law that is more openly dismissed and abused than our nation's labor laws. Ray Marshall, an Austin leader and former labor secretary under President Carter, said the United States "is the only industrialized democracy in the world which forces its workers into such a high stakes, adversarial environment with their employers."

I fundamentally believe that this is not the face America wants to show the world in the 21st Century. We are a better nation than this. We have a more fundamental respect for human rights than this. The wholesale infringement on Danette's rights and that of all workers to earn a living, provide for their families and contribute to their communities is, at its core, more than a series of obscure labor law infractions. It must be viewed with more gravity. We should all take a stand and demand that workers' rights in the U.S. and around the world are restored, guaranteed, and protected.