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:: Tuesday, December 09, 2003 ::

America's Hidden Human Rights Problem by Mark Weisbrot, ZNet
'Unions -- the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend,' reads a popular union T-shirt. It's true enough -- and we could add a sizeable list of other benefits that most people associate with social progress: employer-sponsored health insurance, pensions, and paid vacations.

But unions in the United States find themselves increasingly having to fight for their very existence. This week, on International Human Rights Day (December 10) thousands of union members and their allies around the country will demonstrate for the right to organize.

This is something that was supposedly established here in 1935 during the New Deal. But this right has been so eroded in recent decades that -- to the disgrace of the world's richest democracy -- it hardly exists at all.

That was the conclusion of a 213-page report by Human Rights Watch, one of the world's largest human rights organizations, written three years ago. And it keeps getting worse. Tens of thousands of workers are fired each year for joining or attempting to organize a union, in violation of U.S. law. But the penalties for employers are so slight that they have what Human Rights Watch calls 'a culture of near impunity.'

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