What are Worker Rights?

1. What are Worker Rights? The easiest way to frame this question is to consider the concept oflabor standards

2. Modern industrial (or post-industrial) democracies accept the idea that regulations can and should be applied to the workplace. Over the last century or so, the notion of human rights has been expanded to incorporate the labor process.

3. Legal Principle: Goods, services and trade in goods and services cannot be separated from the conditions of labor that create them.

4. On our jobs, we have obligations and responsibilities to our employers. Our employers have obligations and responsibilities to us, too…

5. Your rights on the job are determined by labor standards dealing with: • Wages • Hours of work • Breaks • Safety and Health • Discrimination • Sexual Harassment

6. Why do we have standards for wages, hours and working conditions? Our society long ago determined that labor regulations are an essential part of our economy. We have learned that all workers have dignity and deserve respect.

7. But it wasn’t always this way... For example: • Unions once were illegal and leaders could be fined or sentenced to jail for union activities. • Strikes often were met with violence. • There were no laws protecting safety and health. • Average work week stretched to 70 hours or more. • Child labor was common. • Sweatshops were considered a viable production system

8. Lewis Hine photographs: A picture is worth a thousand words. Rhodes Mfg. Co. Spinner.A moments glimpse of the outer world. Said she was 11 years old. Been working over a year. Lincolnton, N.C 1908

9. Workers in the Tifton Cotton Mills. All these children were working or helping. 125 workers in all. Some of the smallest boys and girls have been there one year or more.Tifton, Ga. 1909

10. Noon hour at cotton mill. Indianapolis, Ind. 1908

11. 9 P.M. in an Indiana Glass Works. 1908

12. Why Did Lewis Hine Take These Photographs? It shows how we really have improved in the slow process of years that, where Mr. Hine is shocked at finding something over one hundred violations in 15 mills, I found 260 in one day, in one factory, the Illinois Glass Bottle Works in Alton, Illinois. There is no violation possible that was not multiplied many times in that factory. Florence Kelley (1915) Responsibility of the Federal Government The Child Labor Bulletin 4, 1 p. 107

13. We should question commonly accepted notions of social progress as simple or inevitable… The Census Bureau reported that the number of working children age 10 to 15 years rose from 13 percent to 18 percent between 1870 and 1900. [For boys, the totals went from 19 percent to 26 percent.] In 1900, over 1.7 million were reported working and there is reason to believe Census may have undercounted this total.

14. During 1929-1930, 1.3 million children between ages seven and 15 were not enrolled in school. Another 2 million 16 and 17 year olds had left school. In 1930, one out of twelve children between ages 10 and 15 were working, as were one of seven 14 and 15 year olds and fully one-third of 16 and 17 year olds.

15. “The children must be protected against the greed of their parents as well as the exploitation of their employers.” Samuel Gompers (first President of the American Federation of Labor) to the Indiana Legislature, Feb. 21, 1911

16. What protects worker rights?(hint: Not the Constitution!) • Rights are limited by balancing workers’ interests with those of property owners. • The law is not a neutral force that is devoid of politics. • Social reform movements always precede legislation, not vice-versa.

17. Who makes sure labor standards are upheld and enforced? • Employers • Governments • Workers Themselves • Unions • Other organizations/coalitions

18. What do you do when you disagree with your boss or a company policy? Alternative Methods for Resolving Workplace Disputes • Negotiation (individual bargaining) • Adjudication (statutory procedures) • Arbitration • Legislation • Litigation (individual suits) • Mediation, Conciliation, Fact-Finding • Use of Collective Economic Power (unions)

19. Relative Advantages of Various Dispute Resolution Methods • Cost • Timeliness • Expertise of Decision Maker • Integrity of Bargaining Process • Privacy • Predictability or Consistency of Result • Finality

20. Why would governments take an interest in worker rights? • Promote economic stability • Prevent violent conflict • Take a moral stand on social problems

21. Traditional methods to secure rights in the depend on worker control. “Shop-floor” actions in the workplace were more significant than social legislation in establishing worker rights in the U.S.

22. Four reasons workers join unions: • Dissatisfaction • Failure of other remedies to solve #1 • Belief that unions have the power to help • Unions can demonstrate that power

23. Union Density by State - 1983 0% to 9% 10% to 20% 21% & over Source: U.S. Department of Labor

24. Union Density by State - 2000 0% to 9% 10% to 20% 21% & over Source: U.S. Department of Labor

25. Is this What We Want from a Global Economy?  Up to 2.5 billion people lack adequate food, clean water, sanitation, housing, medical care, education, transportation, and energy sources.  As much as one-third of the world’s workforce are unemployed or underemployed.  The 225 richest people in the world own assets worth over $1 trillion. This equals the annual income of the poorest 47 percent of the world’s population -- 2.5 billion people. Source: United Nations: Human Development Report, 1998/2000/2001 and the ILO World Employment Report 2001

26. Promoting adequate labor standards is a global challenge • We don’t tolerate sweatshops and child labor in the United States. • Demands for living wages and decent working conditions in the developing world are quite modest by U.S. standards. • It is a moral principle that we should do what we can to support workers’ self-determination and human rights everywhere.