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Full-Text Articles in Business
Violations De La Liberté D’Association Des Travailleurs Aux États-Unis Et Normes Internationales Des Droits De L’Homme, Lance Compa
Lance A Compa
A culture of near-impunity has taken shape in much of U.S. labor law and practice. Any employer intent on resisting workers' self-organization can drag out legal proceedings for years, fearing little more than an order to post a written notice in the workplace promising not to repeat unlawful conduct. Many employers have come to view remedies like back pay for workers fired because of union activity as a routine cost of doing business, well worth it to get rid of organizing leaders and derail workers' organizing efforts. [Article in French]
...And The Twain Shall Meet?, Lance A. Compa
...And The Twain Shall Meet?, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] No country or company should gain a commercial edge in international trade by jailing or killing union organizers, crushing independent union movements, or banning strikes. Gaining an advantage in labor costs should not depend on exploiting child labor or forced labor, or discriminating against women or oppressed ethnic groups. Deliberately exposing workers to life-threatening safety and health hazards, or holding wages and benefits below livable levels should not be permissible corporate strategies. But these are exactly the abuses that happen all too often in a rapidly globalized world trading system based on "free trade."
Legal Protection Of Workers’ Human Rights: Regulatory Changes And Challenges In The United States, Lance Compa
Legal Protection Of Workers’ Human Rights: Regulatory Changes And Challenges In The United States, Lance Compa
Lance A Compa
[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 …
Free Trade, Fair Trade, And The Battle For Labor Rights, Lance A. Compa
Free Trade, Fair Trade, And The Battle For Labor Rights, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] Labor rights advocacy is the most direct challenge to the primacy of a marketplace ideology in which efficiency and profit are the highest values. Labor rights advocates promote values of fairness, justice, and solidarity in global commerce. The battle to achieve enforceable hard law that protects workers' rights in the global economy is an important contribution to the labor movement's revitalization. Can a beleaguered movement take on multinational companies and the governments that appease them on these varied international grounds when there is so much still to do on organizing, collective bargaining, and domestic political action? There really is …
Works In Progress: Constructing The Social Dimension Of Trade In The Americas, Lance A. Compa
Works In Progress: Constructing The Social Dimension Of Trade In The Americas, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] This paper reviews labor rights in the trade arrangements of four regional and binational settings in the Americas: • the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among Canada, Mexico and the United States; • the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) among Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay; • the Canada-Chile Free Trade Agreement (CCFTA); and • the Caribbean Community (Caricom) embracing several island nations in a common market. The labor rights agreements, charters and declarations examined here are at different levels of development and experience. They are "works in progress," just beginning to experiment with the central challenge of …
Workers’ Freedom Of Association In The United States: The Gap Between Ideals And Practice, Lance Compa
Workers’ Freedom Of Association In The United States: The Gap Between Ideals And Practice, Lance Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] What is most needed is a new spirit of commitment by the labor law community and the government to give effect to both international human rights norms and the still-vital affirmation in the United States' own basic labor law of full freedom of association for workers. A way to begin fostering such a change of spirit is for the United States to ratify ILO conventions 87 and 98. This will send a strong signal to workers, employers, labor law authorities, and to the international community that the United States is serious about holding itself to international human rights and …
U.S. Workers’ Rights Are Being Abused, Lance A. Compa
U.S. Workers’ Rights Are Being Abused, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] The 200-page Human Rights Watch report is based on case studies across a range of industries, occupations and regions of the United States. The report recognizes that U.S. workers generally do not confront gross human rights violations where death squads assassinate union activists or collective bargaining is outlawed. But the absence of systematic government repression does not mean that workers have effective exercise of the right to freedom of association. The case studies in the Human Rights Watch report uncover a distressing pattern of threats, harassment, spying, firings and other reprisals against worker activists and a labor law system …
Labor’S Weight Beyond Its Numbers, Lance A. Compa
Labor’S Weight Beyond Its Numbers, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] Beyond numbers, what unions are doing on the ground reflects their vitality. Unions are allying with new grass-roots support groups in creative public advocacy for workers' rights generally, not just for their own members. Unions are also experimenting with new forms of social bargaining, using leverage such as pension fund investments and shareholder resolutions. They do this for their own organizational goals, but also for public goals such as transparent corporate governance and honest corporate accounting.
To Cure Labor’S Ills Bigger Unions, Fewer Of Them, Lance A. Compa
To Cure Labor’S Ills Bigger Unions, Fewer Of Them, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] Only big, coordinated unions can stop employers from playing off one group of workers against another. Only strong national union organizations that prove they can stand up to the power of the big corporations will attract unorganized workers to the labor movement.
So We Have More Jobs – Low-Paid, Part-Time Ones, Lance A. Compa
So We Have More Jobs – Low-Paid, Part-Time Ones, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] Granted, there have been complaints about the validity of the unemployment number in the past. Liberals have charged that it ignores people who quit looking for work, while conservatives argued that it misses those who are working "off the books" in cash-only transactions ranging from house-cleaning to illegal drugs. But the real problem with the unemployment rate is that we've devalued American employment in order to have more of it. While corporate stock prices soar to new highs, the working class is paying for this situation.
...And The Twain Shall Meet?, Lance A. Compa
...And The Twain Shall Meet?, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] No country or company should gain a commercial edge in international trade by jailing or killing union organizers, crushing independent union movements, or banning strikes. Gaining an advantage in labor costs should not depend on exploiting child labor or forced labor, or discriminating against women or oppressed ethnic groups. Deliberately exposing workers to life-threatening safety and health hazards, or holding wages and benefits below livable levels should not be permissible corporate strategies. But these are exactly the abuses that happen all too often in a rapidly globalized world trading system based on "free trade."