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Articles 1 - 25 of 25
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."
Trade Unions And Human Rights, Lance Compa
Trade Unions And Human Rights, Lance Compa
Lance A Compa
[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 …
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 …
Corporate Social Responsibility And Workers’ Rights (Chinese), Lance Compa
Corporate Social Responsibility And Workers’ Rights (Chinese), Lance Compa
Lance A Compa
[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 …
Perspective Américaine Sur L'Alena Et Le Mouvement Syndical, Lance Compa
Perspective Américaine Sur L'Alena Et Le Mouvement Syndical, Lance Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] Le climat antisyndical qui a cours aux États-Unis a conduit de grandes enterprises européennes à déménager certaines de leurs installations dans ce pays. Par exemple, BMW construit présentement une vaste usine en Caroline du Nord, État qui possède le taux de syndicalisation le plus faible aux États-Unis, et Mercedes-Benz met sur pied une exploitation en Alabama, autre Etat antisyndical. Là où les syndicats existent encore, leurs membres subissent de vives pressions pour accepter une diminution des salaires et des avantages sociaux pour preserver leurs emplois. D'après le Department of Labor des États-Unis, le salaire réel des travailleurs américains a …
Labour Rights In The Ftaa, Lance Compa
Labour Rights In The Ftaa, Lance Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] Without an overall trade agreement containing stronger labour rights linkage than that of the NAALC model, advocates will have no central forum or mechanism for dealing with workers' rights in the Americas. This paper suggests that labour rights advocates can and should shape a new viable social dimension in hemispheric trade and demand its inclusion in the FTAA. The emphasis of this paper is on a viable, not a definitive or triumphant, solution. Workers and their advocates do not triumph in the current conjuncture of economic and political forces. They do not will their way to victory with the …
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 …
El Acuerdo De Cooperación Laboral Del Tratado De Libre Comercio De América Del Norte: ¿Dimensión Social O Decepción Social?, Lance A. Compa
El Acuerdo De Cooperación Laboral Del Tratado De Libre Comercio De América Del Norte: ¿Dimensión Social O Decepción Social?, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] En este país los sindicatos continúan criticando los puntos débiles del Acuerdo, especialmente la exclusión de asuntos referentes a la sindicalización, la negociación y las huelgas, los mecanismos de solución de controversias, y la carencia de soluciones ejecutorias bajo el ACL. Al mismo tiempo, se han dado cuenta de que resulta un foro muy útil para exponer casos de violaciones de los derechos de los trabajadores por parte de corporaciones multinacionales que operan en el marco del TLC. Con ello intentan promover una presión popular dirigida a detener la ampliación del TLC a Chile y el resto de América …
[Review Of The Book From Consent To Coercion: The Assault On Trade Union Freedoms], Lance A. Compa
[Review Of The Book From Consent To Coercion: The Assault On Trade Union Freedoms], Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] Even in disagreement with some of its policy prescriptions, I find From Consent to Coercion a strong, meticulously documented, powerfully argued, thought-provoking work that serious scholars and practitioners of trade unionism and labour law should read and engage. We Americans can still look at Canadian labour law and practice as a model compared with our own, but thanks to Panitch and Swartz's work we can see it with eyes open, not eyes wide
Author’S Reply To Wheeler-Getman-Brody Papers, Lance A. Compa
Author’S Reply To Wheeler-Getman-Brody Papers, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] The contributions of Hoyt Wheeler, Julius Getman and David Brody in the December issue of this journal give important insights into strengths and weaknesses of the Human Rights Watch Report on workers' rights in the United States. Stephen Wood, Sheldon Friedman and the editors are to be commended for advancing a debate on the Report's approach, findings and recommendations. Each of these three major figures in American labour scholarship brings the power of decades of research and analysis on these issues. Together, their critiques stretch the Report backward and forward: back to unstated assumptions that underlie the Report (or …
Globalizíación, Class Actions Y Derecho De Trabajo, Antonio Ojeda Avilés, Lance A. Compa
Globalizíación, Class Actions Y Derecho De Trabajo, Antonio Ojeda Avilés, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] El objeto principal de este artículo consiste en analizar la larga experiencia acumulada al otro lado del Atlántico, en Estados Unidos, en material de demandas extraterritoriales contra empresas norteamericanas ya desde los años setenta. Realizaremos una síntesis de los rasgos característicos de las class actions en ese país, en primer lugar, seguida por una breve Mirada al context internacional del Derecho del trabajo y la jurisprudencia en EE.UU., de los efectos extraterritoriales del Derecho del trabajo estadounidense, en segundo término, y un análisis pormenorizado de tales litigious en Europa.
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 …
Labor’S New Opening To International Human Rights Standards, Lance Compa
Labor’S New Opening To International Human Rights Standards, Lance Compa
Lance A Compa
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 …
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.
[Review Of The Book Advancing Theory In Labour Law And Industrial Relations In A Global Context], Lance A. Compa
[Review Of The Book Advancing Theory In Labour Law And Industrial Relations In A Global Context], Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] The ideas and insights in Advancing Theory are an important contribution to the on-the-ground social justice movement challenging corporate rule in the global economy. It can even help rescue labor law and industrial relations as intellectual disciplines and career trajectories for a new generation of students and practitioners excited about thinking globally and acting locally.
A World Without Work? [Review Of The Books The End Of Work And The Jobless Future], Lance A. Compa
A World Without Work? [Review Of The Books The End Of Work And The Jobless Future], Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] These two books take different routes to the same conclusion: This Time It's For Real. The end of work is now upon us, and the jobless future beckons. This was portended in the past--by the development of steam-powered machinery, then electrical power, then by mid-twentieth century automation reflected in numerically-controlled machine tools, and even by the first and second generations of computers--but never realized as new outlets for employment took shape. Those days are done now. Advanced computers and software are bringing into being what Jeremy Rifkin calls a "near-workerless economy."
Job Blackmail [Review Of The Book Fear At Work: Job Blackmail, Labor, And The Environment], Lance A. Compa
Job Blackmail [Review Of The Book Fear At Work: Job Blackmail, Labor, And The Environment], Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] Ever since the establishment of environmental and workplace protections in the early 1970s, private employers have resisted further curbs on corporate conduct by threatening job destruction. The refrain has been that occupational health and safety standards wipe out existing jobs and make new ones impossible. In Fear at Work, Richard Kazis and Richard L. Grossman detail the use of this job blackmail to split trade unionists from environmentalists, making unnatural enemies of those who should be allies.
Breaking Ranks: On Military Spending, Unions Hear A Different Drummer, Lance A. Compa
Breaking Ranks: On Military Spending, Unions Hear A Different Drummer, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] What remains to be seen is whether the labor movement's study of military spending will uncover the unions' material self-interest in reducing it, and in conveying that interest to the membership. For besides its general damage to the economy, which is now recognized even by many conservatives, the big, endless military buildup also threatens to inflict fatal damage on the trade union movement and its individual unions—not just indirectly but directly and concretely, in the form of fewer members, fewer contracts, fewer organizing victories, and less political power for working people. In effect, the Reagan Administration's plan to boost …
Another Look At Nafta, Lance A. Compa
Another Look At Nafta, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
"Weak," "toothless," "worthless" and "a farce"—these were some of the epithets applied to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) labor side accord negotiated by the United States, Mexico, and Canada in 1993. Trade unionists and labor rights supporters were upset, first by the text of the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) when it appeared, then by early experiences after it went into effect on January 1, 1994. But those wanting progress on labor rights and standards in international trade should be careful of making some idealized “best” the enemy of the good.
The Art Of Ignoring Impatient Elephants, Lance A. Compa
The Art Of Ignoring Impatient Elephants, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] Migrant labour was the elephant in the room when American, Mexican and Canadian negotiators hammered out the North American Free Trade Agreement last year. The elephant is still in the room, as negotiators now try to work out a "side agreement" on labour rights and labour standards to fulfill a campaign promise by President Bill Clinton. They never mention migrant worker rights, the single biggest issue affecting labour standards and labour conditions on the North American continent.