Unfair Advantage: Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States under International Human Rights Standards
264Unfair Advantage: Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States under International Human Rights Standards
264Paperback
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Overview
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. In Lance Compa's view, human rights cannot flourish where workers' rights are not enforced. While researching workers' exercise of these rights in different industries, occupations, and regions of the United States, Human Rights Watch found that freedom of association is under severe, often buckling pressure when workers in the United States try to exercise it. Cornell University Press is making this valuable report, originally published in August 2000, available again as a paperback with a new introduction and conclusion that bring the story up-to-date.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780801489648 |
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Publisher: | Cornell University Press |
Publication date: | 07/28/2004 |
Series: | A Human Rights Watch Book |
Pages: | 264 |
Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.59(d) |
Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments | ix | |
Introduction, 2004 | xi | |
Note on Methodology | 1 | |
I. | Summary | 6 |
Policy and Reality | 9 | |
Workers' Voices | 10 | |
International Human Rights and Workers | 13 | |
International Labor Rights Norms | 15 | |
II. | Findings and Recommendations | 17 |
General | 17 | |
Immigrant Workers | 33 | |
Agricultural Workers | 36 | |
H-2A Workers | 38 | |
III. | Workers' Freedom of Association Under International Human Rights Law | 40 |
The International Background | 40 | |
International Human Rights Instruments | 41 | |
Regional Instruments | 43 | |
ILO Conventions and OECD Guidelines | 44 | |
U.S. Commitments in the Multilateral Setting | 46 | |
U.S. Trade Laws | 48 | |
The North American Free Trade Agreement | 50 | |
IV. | Freedom of Association Under U.S. Labor Law | 51 |
The U.S. Legal Framework for Workers' Freedom of Association | 51 | |
How Workers Form and Join Trade Unions in the United States | 55 | |
How the National Labor Relations Board Works | 60 | |
V. | Case Studies of Violations of Workers' Freedom of Association | 71 |
Context: The Increase in Workers' Rights Violations under U.S. Law | 71 | |
Service Sector Workers | 75 | |
South Florida Nursing Homes | 75 | |
San Francisco, California Hotels | 88 | |
Food Processing Workers | 94 | |
North Carolina Pork Processing | 94 | |
Detroit, Michigan Snack Foods | 104 | |
Manufacturing Workers | 113 | |
Baltimore, Maryland Packaging Industry | 113 | |
Northbrook, Illinois Telecommunications Castings | 118 | |
New Orleans, Louisiana Shipbuilding | 123 | |
New York City Apparel Shops | 130 | |
Migrant Agricultural Workers | 135 | |
Washington State Apple Industry | 139 | |
North Carolina Farmworkers and the H-2A Program | 146 | |
Contingent Workers | 160 | |
High-Tech Computer Programmers | 163 | |
Express Package Delivery Workers | 168 | |
VI. | Legal Obstacles to U.S. Workers' Exercise of Freedom of Association | 171 |
Defenseless Workers: Exclusions in U.S. Labor Law | 171 | |
Agricultural Workers | 173 | |
Domestic Workers | 175 | |
Independent Contractors | 181 | |
Supervisors | 184 | |
Managers | 186 | |
Other Exclusions | 186 | |
Public Employees | 187 | |
Colorado Steelworkers, the Right to Strike and Permanent Replacements in U.S. Labor Law | 190 | |
Worker Solidarity and Secondary Boycotts | 208 | |
Conclusion, 2004 | 214 |
What People are Saying About This
Lance Compa brings a scholar's breadth, a practitioner's depth and an advocate's passion to this careful research. The case-study method is well suited to examine the complex mix of legal and economic issues involved in labor relations. Compa's book shows that even in developed countries, good labor laws and vigilant enforcement are needed to ensure a level playing field in workplace relations and the rapid, effective settlement of disputes. Such labor rule of law contributes to sustained economic growth, to democratic stability, and to the full enjoyment of human rights by the weak as well as the strong.
The original release of Unfair Advantage played a pivotal role in building an understanding that labor rights are fundamentally grounded in human rights. Applying this essential framework, the report brilliantly described how U.S. labor law falls short in critical respects in meeting international labor rights standards. It's a report that is even more timely today than when it was originally released.
Unfair Advantage is a landmark publication that has become a 'must read' for anyone concerned about workers' rights. This seminal report examines of one of the least known but most significant current threats to American democracy-the pervasive violation of workers' human and civil rights in the American workplace. Unfair Advantage has become a valuable resource for workers' rights and other social justice advocates who work to promote union organization and collective bargaining as a standard of social advancement abroad and in the United States.
When, at long last, U.S. workers regain the basic human right to form unions for a voice on the job, Unfair Advantage will be remembered as a turning point. It marks the moment when the global human rights movement began to focus on the massive violation of workers' freedom of association in the U.S. The fairness and care of its research make its stories of workers' struggles powerful, and the power and breadth of its stories make its conclusion irrefutable: American workers have effectively lost the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively, and it will take major reform for the U.S. to come into compliance with the basic requirements of international law.
The reissuing of Unfair Advantage calls us to reconsider the rights of workers to legally organize and acknowledge that matter as a human rights Issue. The moral and ethical implications of this shift in emphasis require labor, management, governmental agencies, and religious leaders to a new understanding regarding workers' rights.
The American labor movement's campaign to improve job conditions was once in the vanguard of the human rights movement, but it has been hobbled and marginalized for decades. Unfair Advantage expertly traces the erosion of the right to unionize in America through court rulings and laws that allow replacement hires for strikers, curb organizing in the workplace, ban secondary boycotts, and swell the ranks of millions of workers excluded from basic U.S. labor law protection—agricultural workers, domestic workers, independent contractors, 'supervisors' in title only, and undocumented immigrants. Lance Compa's analysis points out new ways for human rights activists and workplace organizers to unite in their common cause. Perhaps most importantly, Compa points to new tools they can use—the labor rights provisions of international trade agreements that were written to protect workers overseas, but can also be used as moral and legal levers to improve American workplaces and the rights of U.S. unions to organize.