Labor to Press for Workers' Right to Join Unions

By Steven Greenhouse
The New York Times

Friday 09 December 2005

With the nation's labor unions divided and shrinking, the AFL-CIO has organized 100 demonstrations nationwide this week to assert that the right of American workers to form unions is being systematically violated.

Eleven Nobel Peace Prize winners, including the Dalai Lama and Lech Walesa, are backing the protest against violations of the right to unionize in the United States and other nations.

As part of the labor rights push, hundreds of workers marched yesterday along the Freedom Trail in Boston, and hundreds of others at the White House urged the Bush administration to do more to safeguard workers' rights.

"The right to come together in a union is a fundamental freedom that has been eroded beyond recognition," said John J. Sweeney, the AFL-CIO's president. "Companies game the system - they'll do anything to prevent workers from organizing - without a penalty."

The labor federation has run full-page advertisements in which the Peace Prize winners, including Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, protested infringements of the right to form independent trade unions in Burma and China. Then the Nobel laureates added, "Even the wealthiest nation in the world, the United States of America, fails to protect workers' rights to form unions and bargain collectively."

The AFL-CIO has undertaken this effort during International Human Rights Week at a time when the percentage of American private sector workers in unions has fallen to 7.9 percent, the lowest rate in a century and down from 35 percent in the 1950's.

Randel Johnson, vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits at the United States Chamber of Commerce, said labor's problems result from having a message that it is out of sync with today's workers, especially young workers.

As for the day of demonstrations, Mr. Johnson said: "It seems pretty weak linking the US to violations of rights in Burma. It seems to be a fairly desperate effort to shore up membership."

The AFL-CIO noted that union membership was slipping even though surveys showed that more than half of American workers say they would vote to join a union if they could. Labor leaders say that companies often violate workers' rights in an effort to cripple organizing drives, pointing to a new study showing that nearly one-third of companies facing unionization campaigns fire union supporters and that one-half threaten to close work sites.

Ivo Camilo, who worked for 35 years at a Blue Diamond almond packing plant in Sacramento, said he was suddenly fired because he was an outspoken supporter of unionizing. Managers said they had fired him because he had cut his hand and blood had contaminated the nuts.

The National Labor Relations Board has filed charges, asserting that the company had illegally fired him and three other workers. "They fired me to retaliate, to scare people from supporting the union," Mr. Camilo said.

Blue Diamond said that the dismissals were justified and that the vast majority of its employees were happy with their work environment.

Kelvin Banks, a call center worker for Cingular Wireless in Jackson, Miss., said the 340 employees there rushed to join the Communications Workers of America once the center agreed not to fight unionization. He said that when AT&T Wireless ran the call center, before merging with Cingular, the workers dared not back a union.

"When AT&T ran it, there was a lot of fear," he said.

After AT&T Wireless merged into Cingular a year ago, its call centers adopted Cingular's policy of not opposing unionization, and since then the communications workers have unionized 14,000 workers at former AT&T centers.