(A useful addition to understanding just how low the right-wing organizing against workers has taken us. – promoted by eli_beckerman)

I was recently an invited speaker at a conference on health and human rights at Seoul National University in South Korea. The occasion was the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the School of Public Health and I was asked to give a keynote address on the “right to know”.  It’s an important issue in Seoul because a number of young workers at Samsung factories have become ill (some have died) and the company refuses to provide information on hazardous exposures claiming “trade secrets”.  Although community and worker rights to information about dangerous chemicals and processes were won in the United States in the 1980’s, the issue is still a live one:  BP refused to give information to the public on the chemical dispersant used in the Gulf of Mexico claiming trade secrets, but EPA (which did get the information) was badgered by the press until it finally released the data.  

During my preparation for the talk I looked into some old documents and re-discovered the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an international treaty sponsored and signed by the United States after the Second World War. This is the treaty which reputedly paved the way for a post-War global regime of freedom, liberty, justice for all.  The document was one that the victorious anti-fascist allies agreed upon with the fall of the regimes in Germany, Japan and Italy.  The United Nations, an alliance of the victorious, declared that “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind …” and first and foremost, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”  In addition, the UDHR endorsed the rights of workers in Article 23, stating that  “Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. ”  Further, “Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.”  On this grounding of worker rights as human rights, collective bargaining and the right to strike have been embedded in the international consensus about fundamental human rights.

I was taught as a child of immigrants that the United States was a democracy, a nation of laws – including a serious national commitment to international treaties.  We have espoused these values of democracy and human rights, whether led by Democratic or Republican presidents. How then can we become a nation of law-breakers, denying fundamental rights to public workers? The rights to belong to trade unions and to bargain collectively – these are not optional, they are commitments which we must honor as a nation of laws.    

Charles Levenstein, Ph. D., M.S.

Professor Emeritus

University of Massachusetts Lowell