Newsletter No. 25
AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2004
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The U.S. labour movement fights to organise Resistance from key sectors of the U.S. workforce, including police officers, fire fighters, registered nurses and ‘higher paid blue-collar workers’ has forced the Bush administration to revise its plans to remove overtime eligibility from more than 8 million U.S. workers. Unions, an AFL-CIO official said, ‘think there are some partial fixes in areas where the Labor Department was under attack’, but are sure many millions of workers, often the poorly paid, will still be affected by the proposed law (‘Labor Department revises plans to cut overtime eligibility’ New York Times 21.4.04). This partial backdown shows the power that resides in the United States labour movement if it can effectively organise. However, the right to organise is severely curbed in the United States. Human Rights Watch has found the United States is in violation of international human rights standards for workers (http://www.hrw.org/reports2000/uslabor/). A recent AFL-CIO report documents how the right to form unions is suppressed in the United States and what this means for workers’ living standards, work conditions and job security (The Silent War: the Assault on Workers’ Freedom to Choose a Union and Bargain collectively in the United States June 2002). While only 13 per cent of U.S. workers are in unions, 44 per cent would be if they could. The price paid, by lower paid workers especially, is measured in terms of suppression of wages, enormous and widening gaps in distribution of wealth, weakening of the social safety net, unchecked corporate power and harm to quality of life, including through overwork and working poverty. Before they make a choice to buy more ‘stuff’ or to have more ‘free time’ families must know they can afford health, education, child care and other services essential to life security and well being. This is something disappearing from under the feet of many U.S. workers (see ‘For middle class, health insurance becomes a luxury’ NYT 16.11.03, or Nickle and Dimed in America, Barbara Ehrenrech, 2003) |