On December 10, 1948 Eleanor Roosevelt and delegates from over 80% of United Nations member states adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration forms the cornerstone of the modern human rights movement. It sets forth the inalienable economic, social, civil and political rights of every human being. The Declaration serves as both benchmark and beacon. It measures how well human rights are respected and protected, and it lights the path to a better world.
Workers’ rights are an integral part of the Declaration, which states unequivocally that “everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association,” and “everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.” The Declaration recognizes the freedom of workers to organize and bargain as fundamental human rights, on par with and deserving of the same protection as others such as freedom of speech and religion.
Despite the lofty words of the Declaration and the protections theoretically provided under U.S. law, the sad truth is that here in the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth, working men and women lack the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively today, and the situation is getting worse, not better. When workers seek to exercise this right they nearly always run into a buzz saw of intimidation, coercion and disinformation that suppress their rights with devastating effectiveness.
Working people and the nation as a whole are paying a heavy price for the suppression of the freedom to form unions. Collective bargaining is a vital public good that makes for a more just, equal, and democratic society. When it is suppressed, wages lag, inequality and poverty grow, race and gender pay gaps widen, society’s safety net is strained, civic and political participation is undermined and a crucial counterweight against unbridled corporate power is weakened. The bottom line: millions of U.S. workers want collective bargaining but are denied it in a wholesale violation of human rights that leaves them and the nation worse off.
Since 1998, the 50th anniversary of the ratification of the Universal Declaration, people around the world have begun to recognize December 10 as International Human Rights Day. The unions of the AFL-CIO will observe International Human Rights Day this December 10 by inaugurating a massive campaign to educate and mobilize our members, community leaders and the public about the widespread suppression of workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain collectively in the United States.
In Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis and other cities across America, thousands of union members and people of conscience will gather to hear from workers who have been victimized by employer interference and government inaction - and to call for legislative change to restore the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively. We invite all people of good will to join us on December 10 - and for as long as it takes thereafter - to demand government action. We will campaign until U.S. law allows workers to choose unions freely, by simple majority rule, without privileging elaborate employer campaigns to stop them; and until it promotes collective bargaining as a vital tool for social justice that allows workers and employers to negotiate a just division of the national pie.