In the United States, we take for granted that private-sector employers welcome unions like they welcome an outbreak of the Black Death. And they act accordingly. A recent survey of recruitment ads run by U.S.corporations found dozens seeking HR managers with a demonstrated commitment to a “union free environment.”
After the November 2010 elections – in which Tea Party Republicans won control of many traditionally Democratic states – that anti-union fervor has spread to the public sector. In the wake of new laws in Wisconsin and Ohio stripping half a million public employees of their collective bargaining rights, the National Conference of State Legislatures has identified 744 bills in virtually every state in the country that mostly target public sector bargaining. Even in Detroit, in many respects the birthplace of the 20th century U.S. labor movement, the Mayor is waging war against public sector unions.
Much of this anti-union legislation violates fundamental labor rights and International Labor Organization – a tripartite organization composed of representatives from governments, employers and unions -- must condemn it.
The anti-union bills in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere almost by definition violate the ILO’s “Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work” that states countries will work to "promote and to realize fundamental rights," the first of which is "freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining." After its adoption in 1998, the Clinton Administration lauded the Declaration as a “historic step” towards linking trade liberalization with the promotion of fundamental labor rights.
Most advanced countries take seriously their obligations under international labor rights conventions. In 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada ordered British Columbia to restore collective bargaining agreements nullified by the provincial government. The following year, the European Court of Human Rights found that Turkey's restrictions on public sector bargaining rights violated the European Convention on Human Rights.
And just as U.S. States are stripping teachers of their collective bargaining rights, Canada is moving in the opposite direction. On April 13, 2011, the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled unconstitutional legislation nullifying teacher collective bargaining.
Most advanced countries have a good record ratifying fundamental labor rights conventions. All 27 members of the European Union have ratified two of the ILO’s key conventions -- which have influenced the European Social Charter, European Convention on Human Rights and EU Charter on Fundamental Rights -- convention 98 on the promotion of collective bargaining and convention 87 on freedom of association. Over 90% of the 183 ILO Member states have ratified these two conventions.
The U.S., in contrast, has a poor record on ratification of the most important ILO conventions. Because of opposition from the U.S. Council for International Business (USCIB), the U.S. has ratified neither convention 87 or 98, even though, as a member of the ILO, it is bound by their principals. When the ILO incorporated freedom of association and the right of collective bargaining into its “Fundamental Principals,” USCIB predicted that the U.S. would never ratify conventions 87 & 98.
This aversion to the ILO’s core conventions did not stop the U.S. from criticizing the Soviet bloc’s violation of fundamental rights during the Cold War. In the late 1970s the U.S. withdrew from the ILO for several years in protest at its failure to stand up to the suppression of independent unions in Eastern Europe. And attacking Communist tyranny, Ronald Reagan famously equated collective bargaining with freedom. Shortly before he broke a strike by federal air traffic controller, Reagan stated, “Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost.”
Republicans’ hypocrisy on labor rights has not gone unnoticed. In response to legislation stripping 350,000 Ohio public sector employees of their collective bargaining rights – currently the subject of a repeal petition -- Ohio’s Democratic senator Sherrod Brown stated: “Don’t tell me you support unions internationally but you don’t support unions here. Don’t tell me you support collective bargaining in Poland but you oppose collective bargaining in Dayton, Ohio.”
In the U.S. private sector, the systematic violation of labor rights is a hidden crisis that few notice and fewer still care about. But now, led by Tea Party Republicans in Wisconsin, Ohio, and elsewhere, that same anti-union fervor has now spilled over into the public sector. Republican governors, it seems, are proud to adopt the behavior that their hero Ronald Reagan once condemned in the Eastern bloc.
This anti-union legislation clearly violates fundamental labor rights.
What is much less clear is whether the tripartite ILO is prepared to take a firm stance against it.
