Guaranteeing Workers Rights
HUMPHREY, MURIEL
Thinking Aloud GUARANTEEING WORKERS' RIGHTS BY MURIEL HUMPHREY Anyone concerned about Americans being able to live decently on the fruits of their labor soon finds himself engaged in a...
...and Senators Harrison Williams (D.-N.J...
...As The New York Times stated in announcing its support for the legislation, "Such claims have little merit in the light of the abuses that have grown up under existing legislation, particularly in the South, where many companies depend on the availability of relatively cheap, nonunionized labor...
...The firm was ordered to recompense Swann and her fellow workers with back pay for their years of lost work...
...As President Carter stated in a June 1977 message to Congress, "legal rights have limited value if many years are required to enforce them...
...the Labor Law Reform Act passed the House of Representatives last fall by a vote of 257-163 and is now pending before the Senate...
...terred, voted for the union...
...Introduced by Representative Frank Thompson (D.-N.J...
...In addition, the company has been found in contempt three times for ignoring court orders to end unfair labor practices...
...It is important to note that honest businessmen stand to gain from this, too, for they would no longer have to fear the unfair competition that flourishes on exploitation of human need...
...Accordingly, workers do not have a fair chance to organize where they are opposed by an employer with the resources and the determination to deny them this basic human right-even though it also has been declared both the law of the land and a tenet of national policy...
...The workers, undeMuriel Humphrey, Democratic senator from Minnesota, is the chairman of Americans for Justice on the Job...
...I find this situation intolerable, as must anyone of good will who knows of the shameful abuse of the Wagner Act, voluminously documented in the last few years by congressional hearings, court decisions, scholarly writings, and the opinions of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB...
...Consider, for instance, the record of J. P. Stevens & Co...
...The weaknesses in NLRB's enforcement powers have, in practice, denied these rights to thousands of people like Thelma Swann...
...Forty years ago, the Wagner Act seemed to establish an impenetrable legal shield for the protection of working people eager to exercise their right to organize and bargain collectively...
...It would have little, if any, effect on law-abiding employers and unions, being intended simply to remove the obstacles now preventing workers from enjoying the collective bargaining rights they are already legally entitled to...
...In 1957, at the age of 56, Thelma Swann lost her job, and has since been unable to find another one in the little textile town where she lives...
...The opposition, not surprisingly, has labeled the reform "a labor power grab" and "an effort to force workers into unions...
...Unscrupulous employers-Still relatively few in number, yet in control of a great many jobs-are currently finding it profitable to repeatedly break the law...
...Following House passage of the bill, probusiness forces declared, "we are heading toward a labor-controlled government...
...At that time, he sent Congress a bill to amend the NLRA...
...The admittedly modest Reform Act presents us with an opportunity to correct an outrageous situation...
...second, setting a time limit within which union elections are to be held...
...Groups tend to label anything they oppose as "bad...
...Now, I know there have been crooks in the labor movement, but some people in the church have also stolen from its treasury and we do not abandon our religion on that account...
...Such arrogant disregard of the law and the rights of workers led the NLRB to request a nationwide injunction to stop J. P. Stevens' "unlawful conduct" in its fight to keep unions out of its plants...
...Since then, however, increasingly delayed enforcement, the exploitation of loopholes and a lack of meaningful penalties have steadily weakened the Act's effectiveness...
...Similarly, employers who break our labor laws and deny workers their due are certainly not representative of all employers...
...and morality apparently has no standing in these scofflaw boardrooms...
...The owner said he would shut down the mill rather than let his employees organize...
...This would be accomplished by, first, restructuring the operation of the NLRB to minimize lengthy delays in decisions on unfair labor practices...
...The owner, undeterred, shut down the mill...
...Thelma Swann, for example, went to work at the Deer-ing-Milliken mill in Darlington, South Carolina, in 1915 at the age of 14...
...Nor do we condemn the entire legal profession or medical profession for the transgressions of a few of their members...
...It has fought for the welfare of the nonunionized worker as well as for the unionized...
...Among the most recent evidence of this abuse-and of the need for reform-are the heartfelt outpourings of workers who testified before a House Labor and Education subcommittee...
...unions have been so labeled by those who do not want to see the reform legislation passed...
...All too often in these struggles, though, the unions have been almost alone...
...But this only underlines the continuing importance of the struggle...
...It proposes no fundamental changes in the existing rights and obligations of employees, unions and employers...
...Nonetheless, effective safeguards must be instituted to protect workers from those employers not in the vast majority...
...Over the past 14 years, the NLRB and the courts have handed down 15 decisions against the textile manufacturer, involving over a hundred individual employees and representing thousands of separate labor law violations...
...And yet it has looked out not only for itself but also, as the Scriptures say, for "the least of these...
...It has led our nation in the "politics of compassion," supporting legislation designed to bring into the mainstream of American life those who have somehow been shunted aside...
...This means Congress and the citizens of this country must not be blind to violations of the rights of workers, or deaf to their pleas for prompt correction of the inadequacies of the present law...
...Thinking Aloud GUARANTEEING WORKERS' RIGHTS BY MURIEL HUMPHREY Anyone concerned about Americans being able to live decently on the fruits of their labor soon finds himself engaged in a never-ending struggle...
...She had been working there steadily for 29 years when she and her coworkers decided they wanted a union, for wages were low and working conditions intolerable...
...In 1964, after appeals went all the way to the Supreme Court, the Deering-Milliken Company was found to have violated the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)-as the Wagner Act with its Taft-Hartley and Landum-Griffin amendments is called-by illegally shutting down its Darlington plant to avoid unionization...
...Indeed, it has become one of those depressing "facts of life" with which the cynical excuse their cynicism and the uncaring justify their disinterest...
...Today Thelma Swann, at 77, is still waiting for her money...
...and, third, stiffening the penalties against recalcitrant employers...
...If the United States is to stand before the world as an example of democracy and human rights, it is incumbent upon all of us to join in the effort to keep our own house-our own society-In order...
...and Jacob Javits (R.-N.Y...
...Penalties are simply shrugged off, as is the cost of protracted litigation...
...And its very banality tends to undercut efforts to arouse the national conscience when, as so often happens, the victories won yesterday are eroded...
...it merely seeks to guarantee compliance with the principles set down 43 years ago...
...Any organized body exercises power, of course, and organized labor is no exception...
Vol. 61 • June 1978 • No. 12
