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DECEMBER 2005
Freedom must extend to the American workplace
by Rick S. Bender, President of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO

America’s middle class is shrinking fast. Poverty and job loss are up. Paychecks and pensions are down. Everybody worries about affording health care.

As president of the largest labor organization in the state, you can probably guess what my advice is for reversing these trends. A union contract is the best economic-uplift program for working people in our nation’s history. Unions mean good jobs, and good jobs mean strong communities. 

But the problem isn’t trying to convince people that they could improve their quality of life by joining a union.  More than half of Americans who don’t already have a union say they’d join one tomorrow if given the chance, according to a national survey by Peter D. Hart Research Associates.

The problem is that the basic human right to band together and form a union has been effectively taken away from many Americans.

Employers in this country routinely violate workers’ freedom of association, and the federal labor law is too weak to stop them. Nearly all private-sector employers fight their employees’ efforts to form unions, according to a Cornell University study. A quarter of them even illegally fire workers who stand up for a union. Even when workers manage to win their union, they never get a contract in one out of every three cases.

December 10 is International Human Rights Day.  That day in 1948, the United States joined 80 percent of the members of the United Nations to promulgate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that specifically states that the freedom to form a union is one of the basic human rights to be protected, along with the freedom of speech, assembly and religion.

And yet, a Human Rights Watch report found that our nation is a violator: “Legal obstacles tilt the playing field so steeply against workers’ freedom of association that the United States is in violation of international human rights standards for workers.”

Historic legislation called the Employee Free Choice Act has been introduced in Congress to reform our country’s ineffective labor laws. It would require employers to recognize the union when a majority of workers sign cards authorizing representation, just as Cingular Wireless recently did when nearly 1,000 call-center workers in Bothell signed cards to join the WashTech/CWA union.

The EFCA also would provide mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes and establish stronger penalties for violation of the rights of workers seeking to form unions or negotiate first contracts.

There are 204 EFCA co-sponsors in the House and 40 co-sponsors in the Senate, including every Democratic member from Washington state.  But Republican congressional leaders refuse to allow a vote on the EFCA.

Basic human rights should not be a partisan issue.

That’s why events have been organized across the country this Dec. 10 to remind Americans that workers’ rights are human rights.  Here in Washington state, we will be encouraging folks to call Republican Reps. Dave Reichert, Cathy McMorris and Doc Hastings, and urge them to support the EFCA and restore the freedom to form unions.

This is America. We are supposed to set the standard for freedom and democracy. We do not check our freedom at the workplace door.

Rick Bender is President of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO,
the largest labor organization in the state.

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Copyright © 2005  Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO