Open World Conference of Workers

JOIN US IN BUILDING THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE AGAINST DEREGULATION AND FOR LABOR RIGHTS FOR ALL!

Dear Sisters and Brothers:

On September 22, 2000, the Continuations Committee of the Open World Conference in Defense of Trade Union Independence and Democracy (OWC) met in San Francisco. One of the main decisions taken by the Continuations Committee was the decision to co-sponsor an International Workers' Conference Against Deregulation and For Labor Rights For All, scheduled to take place in Berlin, Germany, in February 2002.

This International Workers' Conference was initially proposed by the trade union leaders and activists from 32 countries who met in Geneva, Switzerland, in June 2000 at the Seventh Session of the Trade Union Conference to Defend the ILO Conventions.

The Appeal issued by the trade union gathering in Geneva states in part:

"Throughout the world, workers and youth are facing policies of deregulation which threaten in every area the collective rights and guarantees won by the workers and their organizations during decades of struggle. In country after country, workers are confronted with the repeal of the labor codes, collective-bargaining agreements and statutes which guarantee the collective rights of the working class in each country. ...

"The working class was constituted historically as an organized class through the building of workers' institutions -- workers' organizations, collective-bargaining agreements, statutes, social protection systems, etc. -- which unite each worker into a whole, forming a class welded together by its collective rights and guarantees. ...

"This is why we -- the undersigned, workers and activists from a wide spectrum of political and trade union backgrounds from 32 countries -- hereby state: It is impossible for workers' organizations to accept such a threat to our collective rights."

The OWC Continuations Committee asserted that the objectives of such a conference are fully in sync with the decisions taken at the OWC in February 2000. It is a fact that throughout the world workers and their organizations are confronting policies which are part and parcel of the deregulation offensive promoted by the multinationals and all those in their service -- all for the benefit of the multinationals, whose profits have continued to soar at the very same moment millions of people are thrown into abject poverty.

The OWC Continuations Committee agreed that there is an urgent need to launch a genuine international campaign against deregulation and for labor rights for all.

Workers' Rights Ignored in the United States

Working people in the United States have a particular stake in building, and participating in, this International Workers' Conference Against Deregulation and For Labor Rights For All.

The U.S. government has called for "core labor standards," including workers' freedom of association, to be included in the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA). President Clinton and top administration officials, in fact, have traveled the world to pressure countries to respect the internationally recognized rights of workers to form trade unions, bargain collectively and strike. And yet these basic rights are violated systematically here at home!

On July 14, 1999, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) issued a 15-page report that fully documents the "massive, ongoing, and appalling violations in the United States of the right to freedom of association and the right to organize." The ICFTU is the international trade union federation to which the AFL-CIO is affiliated.

Among the multiple violations of workers' rights highlighted by the ICFTU report is "the threat of permanent replacement, which is used to scare workers during organizing campaigns, to intimidate them at the bargaining table, to break strikes and as a tool to eliminate union representation altogether."

The ICFTU report also points out that "union solidarity is restricted by the law which makes secondary boycotts and sympathy strikes illegal." This is a direct reference to the Taft-Hartley Act, probably the most nefarious anti-labor law on the books.

On August 31, 2000, a full year after the publication of the ICFTU report, a new report by a prominent international human rights organization -- Human Rights Watch -- reached a similar conclusion regarding the rampant violation of labor rights in the United States.

The 217-page report, "Unfair Advantage: Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States under International Human Rights Standards," was based on field research in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Washington and other states. Human Rights Watch examined workers' rights to organize, to bargain collectively, and to strike under international norms. It found widespread labor rights violations across regions, industries and employment status.

The U.S. Must Ratify the Basic ILO Conventions!

The ICFTU report of July 1999 concludes by calling on the United States to "take a series of far-reaching measures to establish genuine respect for core labor standards in the United States. ... The core ILO Conventions should be ratified and the United States' laws brought into conformity with these Conventions."

Similarly, the Human Rights Watch report "calls on Congress to ratify International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions on worker organizing and collective bargaining, and to strengthen U.S. laws protecting these rights." It further notes, "To demonstrate to the world our renewed commitment to workers' rights, we should ratify the many ILO conventions we have thus far failed to ratify, especially the Convention on Freedom of Association and Protecting the Right to Organize."

The ILO, which was founded in 1919, has codified into 176 basic ILO conventions the gains won through struggle by the workers' movement over the past century. When a country ratifies a convention of the ILO, it must bring its own national legislation into conformity with the ILO convention. The substance of the ILO convention therefore becomes the law of the land.

Yet the United States has ratified only one of the seven core labor standards -- ILO Convention 29 on forced labor. This is one of the worst ratification records in the world.

The seven core ILO conventions are:

1. ILO Convention 87 concerning freedom of association and the protection of the right to organize (1948)

2. ILO Convention 98 concerning the right to organize and bargain collectively (1949)

3. ILO Convention 29 on forced labor (1930)

4. ILO Convention 105 banning forced labor (1957)

5. ILO Convention 100 on equal wages for work of equal value (1951)

6. ILO Convention 111 on discrimination in employment (1958)

7. ILO Convention 138 on the abolition of child labor (1973)

Three additional ILO Conventions which the United States must ratify, as they concern some of the burning issues facing U.S. workers, are:

7. ILO Convention 103 on maternity rights (1952)

8. ILO Convention 11 on the right of association in agriculture (1921), and

9. ILO Convention 143 on the rights of migrant workers (1975)

The conclusions of the ICFTU and Human Rights Watch reports are right on the mark. Any country that pretends to be a democracy and to uphold workers' rights must begin by ratifying and implementing these basic ILO conventions.

As Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, noted: "The cards are stacked against workers in the United States. The U.S. government cannot effectively press another country to improve labor standards while violating them itself. It should lead by example."

Ratification of these ILO Conventions is a central task which U.S. working people and their unions must press for energetically. A campaign for the U.S. government to ratify and implement these ILO conventions is a campaign for labor law reform in the United States. ILO Conventions 87 and 98 upholding the right to organize and strike are incompatible with "permanent replacements." Ratification of these two core ILO Conventions would require the immediate ban on "permanent replacements" -- as all U.S. laws must be brought into compliance with the ratified ILO Conventions.

ILO Conventions 87 and 98 are, likewise, incompatible with Taft-Hartley. Ratification of these two core ILO conventions would require the immediate repeal of Taft Hartley.

This message must be sent loud and clear to the U.S. Congress: The time has arrived to bring all workers' rights in the United States to the modern standards codified in the Conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO).

Building the International Workers' Conference Against Deregulation and For Labor Rights For All as broadly as possible will provide an excellent vehicle to promote this campaign.

Preparing a "White Book" on Deregulation and Workers' Rights in the U.S.

Throughout the world, governments that are deregulating and privatizing public services and industries point to the United States as the example to follow to promote "economic growth" and "prosperity."

Working people the world over need to know the full truth about the conditions under which this so-called "prosperity" is being generated. They need to know that workers' rights in the United States have eroded, or are simply ignored, and that workers' bargaining power has declined, with union membership plummeting to its lowest level in 60 years. They need to know that U.S. corporations, which are reaping mega-profits, portray unions and labor rights as "old-fashioned" and out of step with the needs of the "new economy."

Working people the world over need to know that the "free trade" agenda promoted by the multinationals and the U.S. government has been devastating to U.S. workers, as it is an agenda that encourages employers (1) to move jobs overseas where workers have even less power and (2) to whipsaw workers at home into accepting lower wages and working conditions or else face the prospect of delocalizations. NAFTA, in particular, has resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs. Under NAFTA, employers continue to threaten plant closures and production shifts to Mexico in their quest to lower the wages of all U.S. workers and hamper union organizing drives.

Indeed, in their drive for maximum profits, global corporations -- primarily U.S. corporations -- pit working people, our communities, and entire nations against one another in a downward spiral of take-backs, concessions, and direct assaults -- what has come to be known as "the race to the bottom."

And working people the world over need to know about the effects in the United States of deregulation in the airline, transportation, telecommunications, and electrical industries -- as well as in the education and health-care sectors.

This is why, the OWC Continuations Committee appeals to U.S. workers to join us in preparing before the end of the year 2000 a "White Book" on Deregulation and Workers' Rights in the United States.

Let us prepare questionnaires on the effects of deregulation and the lack of labor rights in our workplace and our specific industrial or professional sector, and let us assemble this information for distribution to working people around the world. This information, without a doubt, will provide powerful ammunition for workers internationally to answer the pundits of the "new global economy" and to organize the fightback to defend their rights. These questionnaires, moreover, will help link workers in a specific industry or professional sector in the United States with workers in that same industry or professional sector in other countries.

The OWC Continuations Committee calls on all U.S. working people to join us in building the International Workers' Conference Against Deregulation and For Labor Rights For All. A totally unified global response is the very response the bosses and the politicians most fear. This is precisely the response we must forge. We must send out the message: Labor is on the Move -- No More Boundaries. By working together, WE SHALL OVERCOME!

- Appeal issued by the U.S. Members of the OWC Continuations Committee

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