TY - CHAP T1 - Legal Protection of Workers’ Human Rights: Regulatory Changes and Challenges in the United States T2 - Human Rights at Work: Perspectives on Law and Regulation Y1 - 2010 A1 - L. Compa ED - Fenwick, C. ED - Novitz, T. KW - human rights KW - labor law KW - labor movement KW - trade unions KW - union organizing KW - United States KW - worker rights AB -

[Excerpt] In a 2002 study, the US Government Accountability Office reported that more than 32 million workers in the United States lack protection of the right to organise and to bargain collectively. But since then, the situation has worsened. A series of decisions by the federal authorities under President George Bush has stripped many more workers of organising and bargaining rights. The administration took away bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of employees in the new Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department.18 In the years before the 2009 change of administration, a controlling majority of the five-member National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), appointed by President Bush, denied protection to graduate student employees, disabled employees, temporary employees and other categories of workers.

An October 2006, a NLRB decision was especially alarming for labour advocates. The NLRB set out a new, expanded definition of 'supervisor' under the section of US labour law that excludes supervisors from protection of the right to organise and bargain collectively. This exclusion has enormous repercussions for millions of workers who might now become 'supervisors' and lose protection of their organising and bargaining rights.21 This case is discussed in more detail below in connection with a complaint to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Committee on Freedom of Association.

JA - Human Rights at Work: Perspectives on Law and Regulation PB - Hart Publishing CY - Portland, OR L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/391/ ER - TY - RPRT T1 - A Strange Case: Violations of Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States by European Multinational Corporations Y1 - 2010 A1 - L. Compa KW - anti-unionism KW - Europe KW - freedom of association KW - labor law KW - multinational corporations KW - organizing KW - unions KW - United States KW - workers rights AB -

[Excerpt] A central conclusion of this report is that firms’ voluntary principles and policies are not enough to safeguard workers’ freedom of association. They can be important initiatives, but only when they contain effective due diligence, oversight, and control mechanisms. Otherwise, as shown here, shortcomings in US labor law create enormous temptation - especially among US managers not sufficiently overseen by European parent company officials - to take advantage of them by acts inconsistent with international norms. The pattern that emerges in the examples presented here suggests inadequate due diligence and internal performance controls to prevent and correct US management actions that run afoul of international standards.

Building on prior research by Human Rights Watch and others, this report also gives additional examples of flaws in US labor law that give management the power, in a context of severe disparity in workers’ access to information and the power imbalance inherent in the employment relationship, to use captive-audience meetings, one-on-one anti-union meetings between supervisors and employees, threats of permanent replacement, and other methods permitted by US law to thwart workers’ organizing efforts. In many cases studied here, moreover, the European firms did violate US law. But even if employers cross the line and commit unfair labor practices, US labor law does not provide for penalties or other sanctions sufficient to dissuade repeat violations.

At the end of this report, we offer recommendations to European companies to improve their monitoring of US operations to ensure respect for labor rights, to European governments and institutions to improve their oversight of European company labor practices in the United States, and to US lawmakers to bring US law into closer conformity with international freedom of association standards.

PB - Human Rights Watch CY - New York L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/332/ ER - TY - BOOK T1 - Human Rights in Labor and Employment Relations: International and Domestic Perspectives Y1 - 2009 A1 - Gross, J. A. A1 - L. Compa KW - human rights KW - labor movement KW - labor rights KW - organization KW - public policy KW - union AB -

[Excerpt] This volume is intended to collect the best current scholarship in the new and growing field of labor rights and human rights. We hope it will serve as a resource for researchers and practitioners as well as for teachers and students in university-level labor and human rights courses. The animating idea for the volume is the proposition that workers' rights are human rights. But we recognize that this must be more than a slogan. Promoting labor rights as human rights requires drawing on theoretical work in labor studies and in human rights scholarship and developing closely reasoned arguments based on what is happening in the real world. Citing labor clauses in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is one thing; relating them to the real world where workers seek to exercise their rights is something else. The contributors to this volume provide a firm theoretical foundation grounded in the reality of labor activism and advocacy in a market-driven global economy.

PB - Labor and Employment Relations Association CY - Champaign, IL L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/328/ ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Should Labor Defend Worker Rights as Human Rights? A Debate JF - New Labor Forum Y1 - 2009 A1 - J. Youngdahl A1 - L. Compa KW - human rights KW - labor movement KW - unions KW - worker rights AB -

The authors debate the relative merits and drawbacks of defining the labor movement under the umbrella of human rights, and the virtues of the rights of the individual versus the solidarity of the community.

VL - 18 L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/240/ CP - 1 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Still Unjaded: Jim Atleson’s Twenty-First Century Turn to International Labor Law JF - Buffalo Law Review Y1 - 2009 A1 - L. Compa KW - international labor law KW - Jim Atelson KW - labor law KW - organizing KW - Values and Assumptions AB -

[Excerpt] I came late to the academy and am still more of a trade unionist than a scholar, so I am going to start my remarks from this perspective. When Jim wrote Values and Assumptions I was in my earlier life as a union staffer with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), a great, democratic, independent left-wing union. Like everyone else on the union staff, I was a generalist and an itinerant. I received organizing and bargaining assignments in New England, the Carolinas, and Baltimore, corporate campaign assignments in South Dakota, Pennsylvania, and California, political and legislative assignments in Washington, and a dozen other projects. It was nonstop action from the time I started working for the UE after finishing law school in 1973.

VL - 57 L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/255/ CP - 3 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Corporate Social Responsibility and Workers’ Rights JF - Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal Y1 - 2008 A1 - L. Compa KW - corporations KW - human rights KW - labor movement KW - labor rights KW - social responsibility KW - workers’ rights AB -

[Excerpt] Corporate social responsibility (CSR) brings an important dimension to the global economy. CSR can enhance human rights, labor rights, and labor standards in the workplace by joining consumer power and socially responsible business leadership—not just leadership in Nike headquarters in Oregon or Levi Strauss headquarters in California, but leadership in trading house headquarters in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and leadership at the factory level in Dongguan and Shenzhen. Ten years ago, I would not have said this. I viewed corporate social responsibility and corporate codes of conduct as public relations maneuvers to pacify concerned consumers. Behind a facade of social responsibility, profits always trumped social concerns. CSR was only a fig leaf hiding abusive treatment of workers. But in recent years some concrete, positive results from effectively applied CSR programs convinced me of their value. In Mexico in 2001, workers at the Korean-owned KukDong sportswear factory succeeded in replacing a management and government dominated trade union with a democratic union of the workers' choice. Compliance officials from Nike and Reebok, two of the largest buyers, joined forces with the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) enforcing their codes of conduct to achieve this result.

VL - 30 L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/183/ CP - 1 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Labor’s New Opening to International Human Rights Standards JF - WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society Y1 - 2008 A1 - L. Compa KW - human rights KW - labor law KW - labor movement KW - trade unions KW - worker rights AB -

Most trade unionists were oblivious to international human rights movement in the last half of the twentieth century. For their part, human rights advocates did not include workers’ rights on their agenda. But in the late 1990s, labor and human rights advocates came together to reframe workers’ collective action as a human rights mission rather than a self-interested syndical action. A new labor–human rights alliance built a wide-ranging discourse of workers’ rights as human rights. The expertise and knowledge attributable to human rights actors gave their critique of workers’ rights violations in the U.S. a high measure of authoritativeness compared with trade unionists making the same claims. Critics suggest that a human rights frame moves away from a class analysis, de-emphasizing principles of industrial democracy and mass action in favor of individual rights. This article argues that a human rights argument can help win needed labor law reform to protect workers’ rights.

VL - 11 L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/373/ CP - 1 ER - TY - CHAP T1 - Trade Unions and Human Rights T2 - Bringing Human Rights Home: A History of Human Rights in the United States Y1 - 2008 A1 - L. Compa ED - Soohoo, C. ED - Albisa, C. ED - Davis, M. F. KW - human rights KW - labor movement KW - trade unions KW - United States KW - worker rights AB -

[Excerpt] In the 1990s the parallel but separate tracks of the labor movement and the human rights movement began to converge. This chapter examines how trade union advocates adopted human rights analyses and arguments in their work, and human rights organizations began including workers' rights in their mandates.

The first section, "Looking In," reviews the U.S. labor movement's traditional domestic focus and the historical absence of a rights-based foundation for American workers' collective action. The second section, "Looking Out," covers a corresponding deficit in labor's international perspective and action. The third section, "Labor Rights Through the Side Door," deals with the emergence of international human rights standards and their application in other countries as a key labor concern in trade regimes and in corporate social responsibility schemes. The fourth section, "Opening the Front Door to Workers' Rights," relates trade unionists' new turn to human rights and international solidarity and the reciprocal opening among human rights advocates to labor concerns. The conclusion of the chapter discusses criticisms by some analysts about possible overreliance on human rights arguments, and offers thoughts for strengthening and advancing the new labor-human rights alliance.

JA - Bringing Human Rights Home: A History of Human Rights in the United States PB - Praeger Publishing CY - Westport, CT L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/390/ ER - TY - NEWS T1 - A Shield Against Corporate Bullying T2 - The Washington Post Y1 - 2007 A1 - L. Compa KW - anti-unionism KW - labor movement KW - union organizing KW - unionization KW - workers rights AB -

[Excerpt] Workers should be able to organize without fear-mongering by bosses or, by the same token, pressure from union organizers. This is how the card-based system already works; safeguards against undue pressure from any side are built in. It includes rapid arbitration to resolve any disputes, compared with years of dragged-out NLRB proceedings and federal court appeals.

JA - The Washington Post L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/364/ ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Corporate Social Responsibility and Workers’ Rights (Chinese) JF - Peking University Law Journal Y1 - 2006 A1 - L. Compa KW - corporations KW - human rights KW - labor movement KW - labor rights KW - social responsibility KW - workers’ rights AB -

[Excerpt] Corporate social responsibility (CSR) brings an important dimension to the global economy. CSR can enhance human rights, labor rights, and labor standards in the workplace by joining consumer power and socially responsible business leadership—not just leadership in Nike headquarters in Oregon or Levi Strauss headquarters in California, but leadership in trading house headquarters in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and leadership at the factory level in Dongguan and Shenzhen. Ten years ago, I would not have said this. I viewed corporate social responsibility and corporate codes of conduct as public relations maneuvers to pacify concerned consumers. Behind a facade of social responsibility, profits always trumped social concerns. CSR was only a fig leaf hiding abusive treatment of workers. But in recent years some concrete, positive results from effectively applied CSR programs convinced me of their value. In Mexico in 2001, workers at the Korean-owned KukDong sportswear factory succeeded in replacing a management and government dominated trade union with a democratic union of the workers' choice. Compliance officials from Nike and Reebok, two of the largest buyers, joined forces with the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) enforcing their codes of conduct to achieve this result.

VL - 18 L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/382/ CP - 5 ER - TY - RPRT T1 - Human Rights and Workers’ Rights in the United States Y1 - 2006 A1 - L. Compa KW - Employee Free Choice Act KW - employment KW - human rights KW - KW- legislation KW - KW - public policy KW - labor law KW - rights KW - standards KW - ULP KW - unfair labor practices KW - unions KW - workers AB -

[Excerpt] Over the past 50 years, a comprehensive body of international law has affirmed human rights to which all workers are entitled, including the right to form unions and bargain collectively. Although the U.S. government has committed itself to protecting these rights, many American employers fail to live up to these international human rights standards for workers.

American workers routinely confront a shameful pattern of threats, harassment, spying, firings and other reprisals against worker activists and a labor law system that is failing to deter such violations.

PB - AFL-CIO CY - Washington, D.C. L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/laborunions/47/ ER - TY - CONF T1 - Trade Liberalization and Labour Law T2 - XVIII World Congress, International Society for Labour & Social Security Law Y1 - 2006 A1 - L. Compa KW - Asia-Pacific KW - Central America KW - Europe KW - labor law KW - North America KW - social security KW - South America KW - trade liberalization AB -

[Excerpt] This general report considers 23 national reports from colleagues in North America, South America, Central America and the Caribbean; in Western, Eastern, Northern and Southern Europe; and in the Asia-Pacific Region. Regrettably, we did not have reports from Africa or the Middle East, or from continental Asian nations.

The national reports reflect complex realities that sometimes converge and sometimes diverge. Their diversity and rich detail make clear that, beyond broad generalizations like those in this general report, separate analyses are required to understand distinct developments in each major region and in each country. North America, Central America and South America each have different realities. So do Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western Europe, and different regions of Asia.

Even finer distinctions flow from analysis of developments within these regions: in sub-regions, in individual countries, and in states and provinces within countries. Participants in this Congress should refer to the national reports for these details and nuances. The attempt here is to provide a broad overview of common themes and key differences that emerge in the national reports.

JA - XVIII World Congress, International Society for Labour & Social Security Law CY - Paris, France L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/conference/6/ ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Labor Rights in the Generalized System of Preferences: A 20-Year Review JF - Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal Y1 - 2001 A1 - L. Compa KW - generalized system of preferences KW - GSP KW - labor rights KW - trade AB -

[Excerpt] In the fall of 1982, a small group of labor, religious, and human rights activists began charting a new course for human rights and workers' rights in American trade policy. The principles of these labor rights advocates were straightforward:

1. No country should attract investment or gain an edge in international trade by violating workers' rights;

2. No company operating in global trade should gain a competitive edge by violating workers' rights; and,

3. Workers have a right to demand protection for labor rights in the international trade system, and to have laws to accomplish it.

The coalition that took shape 20 years ago made a labor rights amendment to the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), the chief policy vehicle in U.S. law to promote these principles. This article reviews 20 years' experience with the GSP labor rights clause.

VL - 22 L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/171/ ER - TY - RPRT T1 - Unfair Advantage: Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States Under International Human Rights Standards Y1 - 2000 A1 - L. Compa KW - enforcement KW - freedom of association KW - labor law KW - labor movement KW - organizing KW - unions KW - United States KW - workers’ rights AB -

[Excerpt] Human Rights Watch selected case studies for this report on workers’ freedom of association in the United States with several objectives in mind. One was to include a range of sectors - services, industry, transport, agriculture, high tech – to assess the scope of the problem across the economy, rather than to focus on a single sector. Another objective was geographic diversity, to analyze the issues in different parts of the country. The cases studied here arose in cities, suburbs and rural areas around the United States.

Another important goal was to look at the range of workers seeking to exercise their right to freedom of association - high skill and low skill, blue collar and white collar, resident and migrant, women and men, of different racial, ethnic and national origins. Many of the cases involved the most vulnerable parts of the labor force. These include migrant farmworkers, sweatshop workers, household domestic workers, undocumented immigrants, and welfare-to-work employees. But the report also examines the rights of U.S. workers with many years of employment at stable, profitable employers. These include packaging factory workers, steel workers, shipyard workers, food processing workers, nursing home workers, and computer programmers.

The cases studied here offer a cross-section of workers’ attempts to form and join trade unions, to bargain collectively, and to strike. The cases reflect violations and obstacles workers met in the exercise of these rights. In many cases, workers’ voices recount their experiences. Human Rights Watch also made written requests for responses and comments from employers identified in the report. Most of them declined. Of those who did respond, most did not want to be identified by name. In several cases, the names of individual managers are known to Human Rights Watch, but they are omitted so as not to profile them unduly in a human rights report with wide distribution to the public. This report is intended to illuminate systemic problems in U.S. labor law and practice, not conduct of individuals.

PB - Human Rights Watch CY - New York L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/330/ ER - TY - BOOK T1 - Human Rights, Labor Rights, and International Trade Y1 - 1996 A1 - L. Compa A1 - Diamond, S. F. KW - human rights KW - international trade KW - labor rights KW - workers’ rights AB -

Labor rights have traditionally been a concern of labor law scholars and practitioners whose work concentrates exclusively on domestic developments. In the past decade, however, the globalization of investment and production has expanded the bounds of labor rights discourse.

Contributors to this volume provide the first comprehensive view of labor rights in the international system of commerce. They consider the avenues open to worker rights claims in the global economy under international human rights instruments, U.S. trade laws, free trade agreements, labor rights litigation, and corporate codes of conduct. They address worker rights from the standpoints of human rights concerns, trade and development policy, and labor law principles. (publisher's statement)

PB - University of Pennsylvania Press CY - Philadelphia, PA L2 - eng ER -