Human Rights Day: Celebrate Our Struggles, Build for the Future
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In a dramatic way not seen in years, today’s celebration of International Human Rights Day arrives during enormous and popular ongoing struggles.
In the worldwide job crisis, workers must still have right to decent work and should not be forced to choose between unemployment and precarious work. See the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) message on International Human Rights Day.
Yesterday, people around the world joined a conversation with Navi Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, to talk about human rights—including the right to form or join unions in the workplace and to bargain for a better life.
You can watch a short video or listen to the conversation here.
This has been an extraordinary year for human rights around the world. Millions found their voices using the Internet and instant messaging to inform, inspire and mobilize supporters to seek basic human rights. Social media helped activists organize peaceful protest movements in cities across the globe—from Tunis to Madison, Wis.; from Cairo to Cleveland and New York to Madrid—at times in the face of violent repression.
At the core of the struggles around the globe is the right for all people to have a real voice on the job, and the right to a decent job.
Dec. 10: NYC March for Voting Rights Begins at Koch Industries
Voting rights are human rights. To bring that point home, a coalition of labor, civil rights and community organizations will celebrate Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day, with a Stand for Freedom march and rally, beginning at the Manhattan headquarters of Koch Industries, and ending at the United Nations’ Dag Hammarskjold Plaza.
Where and when:
Saturday, Dec. 10
10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.: Assemble 61st Street and Madison Avenue, Koch Industries New York City office.
11:30 a.m.: March from 61st Street and Madison Avenue to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza at 47th Street and 2nd Avenue
12:30 p.m.: Rally at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, across from the United Nations building
Earlier this year, as anti-labor laws swept state legislatures dominated by Republicans backed by the billionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch (who together own most of Koch Industries), some of these same legislatures passed laws designed to suppress voter turnout, especially targeting African Americans and immigrants. Read the rest of this entry »
Eye-Witness to the Cruel Conditions in Tobacco Farm Labor Camps
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Brenda Loya in AFL-CIO Media Affairs sends us this from North Carolina, where she is on a fact-finding trip to witness the brutal conditions endured by tobacco workers.
We joined a diverse delegation of 25 activists, students, labor and community leaders and traveled to farm labor camps in Dudley, N.C.., to witness firsthand the appalling and abusive conditions of tobacco farm workers.
Our journey began with a visit to the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), where we learned about a recent report, “State of Fear: Human Rights Abuses in North Carolina’s Tobacco Industry,” that brings light to the tobacco industry’s impact on the human rights of farmworkers in the fields of North Carolina. Issued jointly by FLOC and Oxfam America, the report presented human right violations that we would later witness.
We drove 40 minutes into the country to visit labor camps where farmworkers live while they harvest tobacco to supply companies like RJ Reynolds, one of the richest corporations in U.S. agriculture—in fact, one of the largest tobacco corporations in the world, with annual profits of over $2 billion.
We what saw was never to be imagined. Read the rest of this entry »
Leadership Conference Honors Three with Humphrey Rights Award
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, civil activist Shirley Sherrod and Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese will be honored tonight with the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil and Human Rights award by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCR).
The Humphrey award is the social justice community’s highest honor and is presented annually to individuals who best exemplify Humphrey’s “selfless and devoted service in the cause of equality.”
The LCCR, says Trumka “has been a steadfast leader on issues ranging from health and safety to pay equity and economic justice.”
Sherrod, who last year was the target of right-wing smear campaign, including a doctored video, is “committed to seeking justice for America’s historically marginalized farmers and fighting against bigotry in all its forms,” says the LCCR. Read the rest of this entry »
Global Unions Condemn Proposed Anti-Worker Laws in Mexico
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Unions across the United States and around the world are calling on the Mexican government to reject proposed draconian changes to Mexico’s labor laws that if enacted, would lower wages, destroy job security, increase poverty and violate workers’ and human rights.
The proposals, which are supported by Big Business and President Felipe Calderón’s administration, are similar to the anti-worker bills being pushed through state legislatures in the United States. In a statement, the Union Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT), the largest independent trade union confederation in Mexico, says the laws would be:
a regressive initiative that undermines fundamental rights of workers, and strengthens corporate control of labor. It follows the logic of those who think that the only viable offer to overcome the economic crisis is to transfer costs to workers, by reducing wages, lowering job security, and making workers a readily disposable resource for the benefit of capital.
On Eve of G-20 Summit, Global Unions Call On Korea to Honor Workers’ Rights
When the leaders of the world’s top 20 economies, also known as the G-20, meet Nov. 11–12 in Seoul, Korea, the global union movement will shine a light on the Korean government’s repeated violations of workers’ rights.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka today joined the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) in calling on the Korean government to honor its international commitments and respect workers’ rights. In a letter to Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak, Trumka said:
Repeatedly workers and trade unions in Korea are subject to violations of human and trade union rights. The number of arrests and severity of prison sentences as well as physical violence is increasing.
The AFL-CIO calls on the Korean government to honor your international commitments and respect workers’ rights.
Human Rights Report Highlights Discrimination, Inequality in U.S.
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The land of the free is not so free if you are poor, a person of color or an immigrant, says a new report. As a result, the U.S. government must aggressively work to eliminate discrimination and disparities throughout society and in the workplace and to ensure that international human rights standards are enforced inside its borders.
The report, compiled by the U.S. Human Rights Network, a coalition of human rights, academic and civil society groups, is part of the United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of human rights around the world. This is the first time the U.S. government has participated in the review, which occurs every four years. As part of the review, the U.S. government will have to defend its human rights record before a U.N. panel in November 2010.
The report on human rights conditions in the United States highlights the nation’s significant shortcomings in complying with international human rights standards and makes recommendations on how the United States can better meet those standards.
Colombia’s Workers Risk Lives to Gain Their Rights
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Four U.S. union leaders report on a recent trip to Colombia, sponsored by the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center. The delegation included Benjamin Field and Jeremy Ray from the South Bay Labor Council, Jennifer Jannon, a Working America regional director, and Richard Shaw, executive secretary-treasurer of the Harris County (Texas) AFL-CIO.
The figures speak for themselves. Colombia is the deadliest place in the world for trade union members. There have been 2,837 murders of union members since 1986 and 564 murders under President Alvaro Uribe, whose term ended Aug. 7. These numbers don’t include the “displacements,” people who were forced to leave or were driven away. The murderers, who most often are members of paramilitary groups, escape prosecution about 96 percent of the time.
Our delegation met with union and community leaders in several areas where workers harvest the palm fruit from African palms. Areas like the Magdalena Medio region, where workers began organizing unions in the late 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s, thugs terrorized and attacked the union members and the government enacted new restrictive labor laws that eliminated workers’ ability to bargain collectively.
Assassinations of Unionists in Colombia Unabated
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Jeff Vogt, an AFL-CIO global economic policy specialist, reminds us that Colombian trade unionists continue to pay with their lives in their struggles for justice on the job.
The Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Colombia( CUT) has reported the assassination of Francisco Antonio Abello Rebollo. This crime was committed in Empresa Inversiones Palo Alto Gnecco Espinosa, an African Palm plantation in the municipality of San Juan de Palo Prieto, Magdalena Department.
Assassins killed Mr. Abello on May 17. Abello, together with his co-workers, went on strike in December 2009 because the employer had refused to recognize or negotiate with the union. Subsequently, the company fired all 185 of the workers. The workers had decided to form the union in response to the company’s failure to pay wages and legally required social security health care benefits. When the workers presented their bargaining demands, they were forced off of the plantation by one of the managers accompanied by a mob of about 10 armed men. The mob fired on the workers, wounding one.
Black Joblessness: A Human Rights Issue
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High unemployment among African Americans is a human rights issue, a coalition of advocacy groups charge in a filing with the U.N. Human Rights Council last month.
As City Limits reports in its latest issue, black male unemployment is at 20.2 percent, more than twice that of white men. The groups charge that the United States has failed to live up to commitments it made under U.N. human rights agreements. Specifically, they claim the country’s anti-discrimination laws, provisions for pregnant women in the workplace and collecting bargaining rights fail to meet international standards.
The filing coincides with a periodic Human Rights Council review of the rights records of all member countries.
