Democratizing the Demand for Workers' Rights: Toward a Re-framing of Labor's Argument: Responses
Compa, Lance
JOSEPH A. MCCARTIN'S essay makes a valuable contribution to debates on labor movement revival. He sees danger in labor advocates' new focus on human rights, and calls instead for making a...
...It did not...
...Majority rule is also built into most union constitutions for electing leaders, setting bargaining demands, and ratifying contract terms...
...Labor Law's Original Sin International human rights were not developed enough in the 1930s to serve as a rights foundation for labor law...
...International human rights instruments and international labor rights law have created careful definitions of the right to organize and the right to bargain collectively...
...The 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) requires majority support in a bargaining unit to negotiate for a contract binding all workers...
...Labor advocates cannot just cry "human rights, human rights" and expect employers to shape up or Congress to enact the Employee Free Choice Act...
...But that is already built into our labor law system...
...There is no compulsory unionism in the United States...
...This committee only cares about blocking dues payments so unions will be divided and weak, and its entire argument is based on a lie...
...Under the law, no one can be compelled to join a union against his or her will...
...The "Right-to-Work" Sham I don't agree with McCartin's argument that a focus on workers' human rights creates space for the National Right to Work Committee's "rights" talk, which is pure fiction...
...Arguing from a human rights base, advocates can identify violations, name violators, demand remedies, and specify recommendations for change...
...Then, as long as non-members tender the dues-equivalent payment, they cannot be fired even if they never join the union...
...Calling for industrial democracy in these terms is pushing an open door...
...The law only requires non-members to pay an amount equal to union dues, not to join the union, and only when a union and an employer agree on such a requirement...
...This is the essence of the "right-to-work" concept, which has nothing to do with rights and nothing to do with work...
...He is author of the 2000 Human Rights Watch report Unfair Advantage: Workers' Freedom of Association under International Human Rights Standards (reissued by Cornell University Press in 2004 with a new introduction and conclusion...
...Labor law reform is daunting, but needed...
...So court decisions allow employers to "predict" workplace closure if workers choose a union, as long as they don't "threaten" closure—a distinction only judges could appreciate...
...In McCartin's primary use of the term, it means majoritarian democracy: "the pro-union majority against the anti-union minority...
...Employers can refuse to bargain with unions over workplace closures because the Supreme Court said they need secrecy, speed, and efficiency in responding to market conditions...
...Calling for industrial democracy cannot remedy these wrongs...
...Beyond that, it implies internal union democracy, with fair leadership elections and protection for union dissidents...
...When economic policies and values moved away from social solidarity toward market triumphalism, employers argued, and courts accepted, that workers' organizing and bargaining interfered with "the free flow of commerce...
...Congress could have based the law on fundamental rights under the First Amendment's promise of speech and association, the Thirteenth Amendment's affirmation of free labor, or the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection of the laws...
...He sees danger in labor advocates' new focus on human rights, and calls instead for making a renewed (and perhaps rephrased) notion of "industrial democracy" labor's central theme...
...WITHOUT GROUNDING in basic rights, workers' organizing and bargaining were vulnerable to shifts in the economy and in economic policy...
...Still, many unions are finding the human rights theme one that resonates and advances their campaigns: the United Food and Commercial Workers in a hog-slaughtering plant in North Carolina, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers in a hospital workers' organizing campaign in Chicago, Teamsters in a drive to help port truck drivers stand up to big container shippers, and many others...
...labor law and practice to comply with international standards—starting with the modest Employee Free Choice Act—begins to address these problems...
...Reality Check All this is not meant to overstate the case for human rights or to reject McCartin's insights into the importance of nurturing the democracy theme...
...It has everything to do with preventing unions and employers from voluntarily agreeing that all workers who benefit from collective representation will share the cost of representation (non-members can get a rebate for the proportion of their duesequivalent payments not related to the union's representation role...
...Employers can bar union organizers' presence on publicly accessible areas to communicate with workers because common law property rights prevail over workers' organizing rights...
...Such voluntary agreements between unions DISSENT / Winter 2005 n 67 WORKERS' RIGHTS and employers are not mandated by law in "union shop" states like New York and California...
...labor law and international labor rights...
...Just as "industrial democracy" likely might not have resonated as much among rank-and-file workers as it did among labor intellectuals, "human rights" is still an abstraction for most workers...
...Calling for U.S...
...They are only prohibited in "right-to-work" states like North Carolina and Texas...
...labor law and practice are set on an economic policy foundation, not a fundamental rights foundation...
...Law constricts and channels workers' exercise of organizing and bargaining rights...
...The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the NLRA in 1937, saying the law reduces strikes, not that it protects basic rights...
...Fundamental rights were not an issue in these and other court decisions that undermined labor law...
...Undocumented workers illegally fired for union organizing cannot be reinstated or get back pay because immigration policy trumps the NLRA...
...All these are important, but with such dispersed meanings, industrial democracy lacks the precision and unifying force of the human rights argument, especially in a campaign setting...
...Reports and advocacy by Human Rights Watch, American Rights at Work, the AFL-CIO's Voice@Work campaign, and others are doing just that...
...Perhaps in the years ahead, with some victories to show from a human rights base in its organizing and bargaining campaigns, the labor movement and its allies can advance a rights-centered public policy agenda raising economic and social rights under international human rights standards...
...Congress based passage of the NLRA on the Constitu6 6 n DISSENT / Winter 2005 WORKERS' RIGHTS tion's commerce clause, saying that workers needed protection for organizing and bargaining to reduce industrial strife and promote freer flowing interstate business...
...LANCE COMM is a senior lecturer at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations in Ithaca, New York, where he teaches U.S...
...Industrial democracy can also mean workplace democracy, with workers gaining a greater voice in business decisions...
...I appreciate McCartin's insights but disagree on emphasis...
...Law matters...
...These and other ravages of our labor law violate international human rights standards on workers' organizing and bargaining...
...Industrial democracy is too diffuse a concept to sustain organizing, bargaining, and labor law reform campaigns...
...Labor advocates' human rights focus is still new and may not show results soon...
Vol. 52 • January 2005 • No. 1
