We are not shy about reporting human rights abuses around the globe. We are much more reluctant to recognize them at home. This book exposes the violations of human rights witnessed daily in ...workplaces across our country. Based on detailed case studies in a variety of sectors, it reveals an unfair advantage in U.S. law and practice that allows employers to fire or otherwise punish thousands of workers as they seek to exercise their rights of association and to exclude millions more from laws that protect their rights to bargain and to organize. Unfair Advantage approaches workers' use of organizing, collective bargaining, and strikes as an exercise of basic rights where workers are autonomous actors, not objects of unions' or employers' institutional interests. Both historical experience and a review of current conditions around the world indicate that strong, independent, democratic trade unions are vital for societies where human rights are respected. In Lance Compa's view, human rights cannot flourish where workers' rights are not enforced. While researching workers' exercise of these rights in different industries, occupations, and regions of the United States, Human Rights Watch found that freedom of association is under severe, often buckling pressure when workers in the United States try to exercise it. Cornell University Press is making this valuable report, originally published in August 2000, available again as a paperback with a new introduction and conclusion that bring the story up-to-date.
Multinational corporations exercise power in the United States by integrating themselves into the US economic and legal systems, not by interfering with them. Firms take advantage of the relatively ...deregulated labour market in the United States and its 'at-will' employment relations, compared with 'just cause' requirements elsewhere. Many multinational companies also adopt US management-style behaviour towards trade unions, notwithstanding their publicly declared support for global norms on workers' freedom of association. They exploit US labour laws that violate international standards and interfere with trade union formation. Case studies examine several examples of this 'when in Rome' anti-union phenomenon. At the same time, some counter-examples of companies that adhere to ILO core standards are offered. The conclusion contains recommendations for securing multinational companies' respect for workers' freedom of association in the United States, including application of ILO core standards, UN Guiding Principles, OECD Guidelines and Global Framework Agreements.
Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd.
Quitting the Trans-Pacific Partnership and demanding renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)-- along with its supplemental labor pact, the North American Agreement on Labor ...Cooperation--were among the first actions of the new US Administration in 2017. NAFTA renegotiations concluded for the time being--in Oct 2018 with announcement of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement to replace NAFTA. Controversial proposals on the bargaining table contained important implications for employment, labor rights, and labor standards in North America. Here, Compa examines the status of negotiations, the risks of losing the first-ever international instrument linking trade and labor standards (despite its flaws), and the options for preserving and strengthening trade-labor linkage in a new agreement.
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