Unfair Advantage: Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States under International Human Rights Standards

Unfair Advantage: Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States under International Human Rights Standards

by Lance Compa
Unfair Advantage: Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States under International Human Rights Standards

Unfair Advantage: Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States under International Human Rights Standards

by Lance Compa

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Overview

We are not shy about reporting human rights abuses around the globe. We are much more reluctant to recognize them at home. This book exposes the violations of human rights witnessed daily in workplaces across our country. Based on detailed case studies in a variety of sectors, it reveals an "unfair advantage" in U.S. law and practice that allows employers to fire or otherwise punish thousands of workers as they seek to exercise their rights of association and to exclude millions more from laws that protect their rights to bargain and to organize.

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
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

Lance Compa is a Senior Lecturer at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He is coeditor of Human Rights, Labor Rights, and International Trade.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgmentsix
Introduction, 2004xi
Note on Methodology1
I.Summary6
Policy and Reality9
Workers' Voices10
International Human Rights and Workers13
International Labor Rights Norms15
II.Findings and Recommendations17
General17
Immigrant Workers33
Agricultural Workers36
H-2A Workers38
III.Workers' Freedom of Association Under International Human Rights Law40
The International Background40
International Human Rights Instruments41
Regional Instruments43
ILO Conventions and OECD Guidelines44
U.S. Commitments in the Multilateral Setting46
U.S. Trade Laws48
The North American Free Trade Agreement50
IV.Freedom of Association Under U.S. Labor Law51
The U.S. Legal Framework for Workers' Freedom of Association51
How Workers Form and Join Trade Unions in the United States55
How the National Labor Relations Board Works60
V.Case Studies of Violations of Workers' Freedom of Association71
Context: The Increase in Workers' Rights Violations under U.S. Law71
Service Sector Workers75
South Florida Nursing Homes75
San Francisco, California Hotels88
Food Processing Workers94
North Carolina Pork Processing94
Detroit, Michigan Snack Foods104
Manufacturing Workers113
Baltimore, Maryland Packaging Industry113
Northbrook, Illinois Telecommunications Castings118
New Orleans, Louisiana Shipbuilding123
New York City Apparel Shops130
Migrant Agricultural Workers135
Washington State Apple Industry139
North Carolina Farmworkers and the H-2A Program146
Contingent Workers160
High-Tech Computer Programmers163
Express Package Delivery Workers168
VI.Legal Obstacles to U.S. Workers' Exercise of Freedom of Association171
Defenseless Workers: Exclusions in U.S. Labor Law171
Agricultural Workers173
Domestic Workers175
Independent Contractors181
Supervisors184
Managers186
Other Exclusions186
Public Employees187
Colorado Steelworkers, the Right to Strike and Permanent Replacements in U.S. Labor Law190
Worker Solidarity and Secondary Boycotts208
Conclusion, 2004214

What People are Saying About This

Sandra Polaski

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.

Fred Feinstein

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.

David Bonior

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.

Andy Levin

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.

Jesse R. DeWitt

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.

Peter Spielmann

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.

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