Volume LIII, No.
10
June, 2000
International Worker Rights:
A Human Face For The Global Economy
Markley Roberts
What will be globalization's impact on international worker rights? How can people concerned about human rights act together to further the cause of international worker rights? United Nations Association advocate Markley Roberts provides an overview of current international covenants and ways in which they can be enhanced.
Why this report? Is it possible to put a human face on the global economy? This report says "Yes, it’s possible. And here are some actions which can help move the world faster and further toward fully effective worker rights and human rights." Why is this a desirable goal? Because it is reasonable and moral to believe that more effective protection and promotion of human rights and worker rights will make the world a better place with higher living standards, more democracy, more economic, social, and political stability, more peace and security.
Furthermore, logic and humanity tell us that human rights and worker rights should be raised at least equal to the property rights of business corporations.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 covers a wide range of issues including many which specifically relate to workers’ rights.
For example, Article 20 declares that "Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. And Article 23 declares:
"(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work, and to protection against unemployment.
"(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
"(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
"(4) Everyone has the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests."
Many other articles and provisions in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights relate to workers’ concerns, including, for example, protection of children, freedom of opinion and expression, protections against arbitrary arrest, and prohibitions against torture.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, as he took office in January 1997, sent this message to the International Labor Organization:
"United Nations organizations, including specialized agencies like the ILO, are part of an effort by States and Peoples to maintain international peace and security and promote better standards of life and the economic and social advancement of all peoples.
"The International Labor Organization has a key role to play in this effort. Its invaluable work for the promotion of good labor practices, including protection of minors, freedom of assembly, and the abolition of discrimination, are part of this system-wide United Nations effort."
More recently, in June 1998, the ILO — a tripartite labor-business-government agency — issued a "declaration on fundamental principles and rights at work." The document commits ILO members to observe these five "core worker rights," even if their legislatures have not ratified the ILO conventions (treaties) that pertain to these rights:
"(a) freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;
"(b) the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour;
"(c) the effective abolition of child labour; and
"(d) the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation."
Freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining are separate rights and are embodied in separate ILO treaties. The rights are particularly important because they make it possible for workers to join together to form unions and through collective bargaining to protect and promote human rights and worker rights for themselves and for the society in which they live.
Unfortunately, globalization of the world economy, with its rapid technological change, highly mobile capital, almost instantaneous communication, and cut-throat competition, puts grinding, downward pressure on workers’ wages and working conditions, labor standards, and worker rights in every part of the world.
Many proponents of human rights and worker rights in the United States look to the key role of the U.S. in international trade and in international financial institutions as an important tool to use to advance these rights. This is the view of the AFL-CIO labor federation. Others, including the U.S. Council on International Business, the key U.S. business representative at the ILO, favor a less confrontational, more multilateral, more cooperative approach using the ILO as the major vehicle to advance worker rights. Still others look to private industry codes of conduct or labor-employer industry agreements or private actions by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) like demonstrations, marches, sit-ins, consumer boycotts or preferential buying to highlight violations and to advance worker rights.
Worker Rights: Human Rights
Worker rights and human rights are so closely related that it is impossible to draw any clear or useful distinctions between them. Where worker rights are denied, human rights are denied. Where human rights are denied, worker rights are denied.
The annual U.S. State Department report, "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices," includes information on each country’s worker rights situation. There is in most countries a striking parallel between behavior on human rights and behavior on worker rights. One horrifying example:
"Gross denial of human rights" including widespread and systematic use of forced labor has been found in Myanmar (Burma) by an ILO commission of inquiry. After testimony from 250 eyewitnesses and a record of more than 6,000 pages, the 1998 ILO commission report revealed "a saga of untold misery and suffering, oppression and exploitation of large sections of the population inhabiting Myanmar by the government, military and other government officials. It is a story of gross denial of human rights." Many workers are physically abused or killed. Many women workers are raped or sexually abused.
The U.S. State Department’s "Country Reports on Human Rights 1998" asserts that forced labor remains a problem in China and that lack of cooperation by China prevents adequate enforcement of an agreement to prevent China’s export of products made with forced labor.
Freedom of association — a basic human right and an essential right for workers seeking to form and to join unions — is under attack around the world.
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) reports that freedom of association "is still being violated with impunity." The ICFTU 1999 "Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights noted "increasing repression, provoked in part by trade union action to denounce the harmful effect of globalization of the economy."
In 1998 throughout the world there were 123 people murdered for trade union activities and another 1,650 union people attacked or injured.
Too many African countries still regard their union movements with "suspicion and hostility," the ICFTU warned. The attitude of Africa’s governments toward labor unions is "verging on paranoia." For example, in Swaziland police broke up a union-led, pro-democracy march with live ammunition.
In Latin America, it’s dangerous to be a union member. In Columbia 156 trade union members were killed in 1997 and 90 were killed in 1998.
In the United States the ICFTU found that at least one in 10 union supporters campaigning to form a union is illegally fired. Furthermore, proceedings in the National Labor Relations Board take too long and "do not provide workers with more effect redress in the face of abuses by employers."
Many, many violations of human rights and worker rights around the world can be found in excruciating and horrifying detail in the annual human rights surveys by the U.S. State Department, in the ICFTU annual survey of violations of trade union rights, and in special country reports by the ILO.
It is reasonable and moral to believe that such violations should be stopped and that more effective protection of human rights and worker rights in the global economy will promote higher living standards, more democracy, and more social, economic, and political stability around the world.
Child Labor
Children around the world are victims of almost unimaginable exploitation, including slavery and forced labor, prostitution and pornography, drug activities, active military service, and other dangerous work which jeopardizes the health, safety, and morals of children. Such abusive child labor is among the worst violations of worker rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Child labor blights the lives of more than 250 million children around the world who are between the ages of 5 and 14 years. ILO surveys indicate that at least 50 to 60 million of these children are engaged in dangerous work.
Most child labor is in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. But child labor occurs also in developed, industrial nations, including the United States and West, Central, and Eastern European countries. Children are especially endangered by farm work, which is among the most dangerous occupations. Injuries, disease, and deaths in farm work come from motorized farm equipment and toxic chemicals. The Child Labor Coalition estimates 800,000 to 1 million children are engaged in migrant and seasonal farm work in the United States.
The Child Labor Coalition — which involves more than 50 U.S. labor, religious, consumer groups, and state labor agencies — is conducting a campaign, "Children in the Fields: End Exploitation of Children in Agriculture," to educate the American public and to press for action by Congress and industry to attack the problem in the U.S.A. and around the world.
Another 50,000 children — some as young as eight years — are working in door-to-door sales of candy and magazine subscriptions. Far too often these children work under deceptive, dangerous, and exploitive conditions. In 1999 the Child Labor Coalition, the Interstate Labor Association, and the U.S. Labor Department launched a national campaign — "Candy Kids: Sweatshops in the Streets" — to educate the public about the terrible conditions facing these door-to-door sales children and to strengthen enforcement of relevant state and federal child labor laws.
The power of publicity has raised the issue of child labor throughout the world. In 1998 and 1999 an international alliance of more than 700 organizations in 100 countries on five continents put on a "Global March Against Child Labor" which ended in June 1999 in Geneva. The publicity was successful in the U.S. A National Consumer League survey found use of sweatshops or child labor was the top concern for 65 percent of consumers. And 77 percent of consumers said they would look for a label showing products were made without child labor, if such a label existed.
The Global March publicity was effective internationally. In Geneva at the June 1999 ILO conference, labor, business and government leaders from 170 countries voted overwhelmingly for an international ban on some of the worst forms of child labor — child slavery, child prostitution, the use of children in production and trafficking in drugs, and any other work that jeopardizes the health, safety, and morals of children. The United States Senate ratified this child labor treaty on November 5, 1999 by voice vote.
The ILO Declaration of June 18, 1998
The ILO is unique in the United Nations system because private sector representatives of labor and business have equal voting power with national government representatives in a genuinely tripartite process. This structure was set up in 1919 in response to demands from various national labor movements. Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, was an early supporter and founder of the ILO.
The ILO has no enforcement powers. It is a standard-setting agency. It can monitor compliance and make reports on compliance with its conventions. It can use persuasion and the power of publicity to promote compliance. But it cannot compel compliance.
On June 18, 1998, by an overwhelming vote of 273 with no dissenting votes and 43 abstentions, the International Labor Organization adopted the "ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and Its Follow-Up."
The so-called "core rights" described in the 1998 ILO document are freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining, elimination of forced labor, abolition of child labor, and elimination of discrimination in employment and occupation. They are embodied in existing ILO conventions of which the United States has ratified only the convention on forced labor. The U.S.A. has one of the worst records of all ILO members on ratification of ILO conventions.
Section 2 of the ILO document "Declares that all Members, even if they have not ratified the Conventions in question, have an obligation, arising from the very fact of Membership in the Organization, to respect, to promote and to realize in good faith and in accordance with the Constitution, the principles concerning the fundamental rights which are the subject of those Conventions."
Because some underdeveloped countries fear that higher labor standards and expansion of worker rights will be used by more advanced countries to exclude their low-wage products in international trade, Section 5 of the document states that "labour standards should not be used for protectionist trade purposes," and that "the comparative advantage of any country should in no way be called into question by this Declaration and its follow-up." This provision is obviously aimed at preventing bilateral and multilateral trade agreements from requiring sanctions based on ILO-approved "core worker rights."
Although the ILO is a standard-setting agency and has no enforcement powers, it has "powers" of inspection and monitoring and reporting. In the past this has involved on-site inspections and in some cases (for example, Myanmar-Burma) negative publicity, which may or may not have an effect, depending on the offending country’s responsiveness to world opinion. An ILO Committee on Freedom of Association has published its opinion on some 2,000 complaints. And another ILO committee reported more than 2,000 cases over the past 30 years in which national legislation or national practice was changed to meet the requirements of a ratified convention after some action or comments from the ILO.
In the future, an ILO "global report" each year will cover "one of the four categories of fundamental principles and rights in turn." It will get a report on the preceding four-year period. Thus, over future four-year periods, each of the "core" worker rights will get an ILO global assessment, in theory to help determine ILO priorities for technical assistance, but more realistically to publicize the "bad apples."
Ratification of an ILO convention by the United States Senate would give this treaty the force of law in the United States, but it still would not give the ILO any enforcement powers. Nevertheless, employers in this country tend to be suspicious of international treaties they fear may supersede state and federal labor laws. U.S. business representatives supported the general propositions of the ILO "core worker rights," but the specifics which give substance to the general propositions become more controversial. This helps to explain why theoretical recognition of the crucial role of higher labor standards and worker rights in the economic and social progress of nations is so slowly, if at all, followed by concrete political and governmental action, even in an advanced industrial democracy like the United States, where opposition by business and some conservatives has hitherto stymied almost all ILO conventions in the U.S. Senate.
A 1995 American Bar Association international law section report declared: "The ILO supervisory system relies on the power of persistent persuasion and the mobilization of shame against governments that fail to live up to the obligations they have voluntarily undertaken. This has proved to be both a strength and a weakness. Its obvious weakness is the fact that it is not a sanction in the coercive sense known to domestic law. But this is also a strength: it does what can be done in an international system that would not tolerate a global sheriff with real power to punish sovereign governments for their failure to live up to accepted labor standards."
Standards, Codes, Trade, and Sanctions
Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 is an important but little enforced worker rights protection written into U.S. trade law and trade policy. It defines violation of worker rights by trading partners of the United States as an "unfair trade practice," subject to the same remedies under American laws as other unfair trade practices, like below-cost dumping. Section 301 states that the United States Trade Representative is authorized to "suspend, withdraw, or prevent the application of benefits of trade agreement concessions" to any country which
"(i) denies workers the right of association.
"(ii) denies workers the right to organize and bargain collectively,
"(iii) permits any form of forced or compulsory labor,
"(iv) fails to provide a minimum age for the employment of children, or
"(v) fails to provide standards for minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health of workers."
The law — which applies to all U.S. trading partners — provides a broad range of sanctions, from setting a higher tariff on a single product, company or industry, to removal of the entire country’s trade preferences.
Much weaker worker rights language — and no human rights protection language — has been included in other U.S. trade laws like the Caribbean Basin Initiative, the Export-Import Bank, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). As a result of political pressures, a weak labor "side agreement" ( as well as an environment protection "side agreement") was added to the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which does not include worker protections in the main text. By contrast, intellectual property rights and other business property rights are very thoroughly described in NAFTA.
The general point here is that there is already on the books U.S. law to help protect the rights of workers in U.S. trading partner countries. However, enforcement of these rules leaves much to be desired in the judgment of many worker rights supporters.
In addition to U.S. trade policy, human rights and worker rights are strongly influenced by actions of international institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
In 1994, in the foreign operations appropriations law (Section 526-e),, the U.S. Congress directed the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury to use the "voice and vote of the United States" to press the World Bank and IMF "to encourage borrowing countries to guarantee internationally recognized worker rights" as defined in U.S. trade law. There has been much criticism of the World Bank and the IMF and the WTO for putting "labor market flexibility" far ahead of human rights and worker rights.
American business, represented by the U.S. Council for International Business, views the strengthening of trade sanctions as a "unilateral, sanction-based approach (which) would undermine the rule-based trading system in which most countries have a stake, destroying the certainty and predictability that is essential to future growth." Instead, the U.S. Council called for a less confrontational, more multilateral, more cooperative approach to worker rights. "Sanctions will not improve labor rights abroad; growth through trade and investment will."
"We believe that ‘sunshine,’ in the form of peer review and publicity and targeted technical assistance will do much more — and much more quickly — to promote workers’ rights than the sledgehammer approach of trade sanctions, which is bound to encounter strong resistance from other countries," the U.S. Council declared. "If we are serious about improving the lot of workers in developing countries, we must give the ILO’s Declaration a chance to work."
Yet another approach to human rights and worker rights emphasizes the role of private parties operating without government involvement. Some U.S. companies adopted a code, "U.S. Business Principles for Human Rights of Workers in China," — under pressure from U.S. NGOs like Amnesty International USA, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, and the International Labor Rights Fund — and said they would try to help end sweatshop labor practices in China. Mattel cut off some of its 300 contractors in China when it found they did not meet minimum standards for treatment of workers. But human rights and worker rights abuses in China continue on a large scale and remain very serious and difficult problems. Harry Wu of the Washington-based Laogai (prison labor camps) Research Foundation is a persistent critic of China’s worker rights and human rights practices. And American labor unions oppose "permanent normal trade relations" for China because of its violations of worker rights and human rights.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a January 31, 1999 Speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, asked world business leaders to take action on worker rights:
"Specifically, I call on you — individually through your firms and collectively through your business associations — to embrace, support, and enact a set of core values in the area of human rights, labor standards, and environmental practices ...
"Essentially there are two ways we can do it. One is through the international policy arena. You can encourage States to give us, the multilateral institutions of which we are all members, the resources and authority we need to do our job ...
"The second way you can promote these values is by taking them directly, by taking action in your own corporate sphere. Many of you are big investors, employers and producers in dozens of different countries around the world. That power brings with it great opportunities — and great responsibilities. You can uphold human rights and decent labor and environmental standards directly, by your own conduct in your own business."
Private non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are particularly free to take actions like promoting consumer boycotts which produce change in labor standards. For example, the 20-year international Rugmark campaign to end child labor in manufacturing of carpets involved hundreds of NGOs in many different countries, including the Asian countries where child labor in rug-making is widespread.
Another example is the successful five-year "Foulball Campaign" — with the International Labor Rights Fund as coordinator — to get children out of soccer ball industry, mainly in Pakistan, and out of other sports equipment manufacturing. Children stitching soccer balls have largely been replaced by women workers. The industry, under threat of consumer boycotts, worked with the ILO and UNICEF to give up child labor and monitor the results.
Yet another example of private NGO activity: students at some 50 colleges and universities —working with more than 50 national organizations —are successfully demanding a code of conduct to guarantee that the sweaters and caps licensed by the colleges and sold in campus stores are not made in overseas exploitive sweatshops. With almost $3 billion in college name merchandise sold each year in the United States, college students are using their moral concerns and the financial power of their colleges and universities to bring about changes in overseas production of these college name items. This campaign is spreading to high schools and elementary schools. A coalition of New York State labor, religious, and community groups is working to get school systems to adopt a code of conduct that they will not allow sweatshop labor to produce school apparel. The Catholic Diocese of Albany, with 42 schools, was one of the first to adopt the code.
Thus, it appears that ILO standard-setting, monitoring, and reporting can influence worker rights practices to some extent in many countries. It appears that unenforced U.S. trade laws exist to promote human rights and worker rights in the global economy. It appears that some international institutions like the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO, give low priority to human rights and worker rights. It appears that American business is becoming more sensitive to human rights and worker rights as a result of pressures and publicity from U.S. and international human rights and worker rights-oriented NGOs. And it appears that NGO pressures and publicity can influence businesses and governments in the U.S. and in other countries to some extent to improve their human rights and worker rights practices.
But the persistent themes of free association and assembly (which enable labor unions to exist), the right to form free, democratic unions, and the union right to bargain collectively suggest persuasively that workers with these rights are in a better position to protect and promote human rights and worker rights in general for themselves and for the country in which they live and work.
How to Promote Worker Rights in the Global Economy
If workers are empowered to look after their own interests with free, democratic labor unions, to participate in setting the rules of the workplace and the rules of the society in which they live, self-interest will lead them to strengthen their own ability to protect and promote other worker rights, human rights, higher living standards, and a more democratic society.
This is the rationale behind freedom of association, the right to form and join labor unions, and the right to collective bargaining. But specific actions to promote worker rights in the global economy should include the following :
1. Support ratification by the United States Senate of all International Labor Organization-approved "core worker rights" conventions.
2. Enforce existing U.S. trade law explicit worker rights provisions (Section 301). Human rights and worker rights must be a principal trade negotiating objective of the United States and the U.S. must insist in all trade negotiations that strong worker rights protections are necessary if agreements are to be reached. This applies to the World Trade Organization, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and any agreements on investment.
3. Urge the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to make protection and promotion of human rights and worker rights a condition for loans and loan guarantees to borrowing countries.
4. Encourage and support U.S. business corporations operating abroad or using foreign contractors to require their local operators or foreign contractors to protect and promote human rights and worker rights with written policy documents and follow-up enforcement.
5. Encourage and support voluntary industry agreements by U.S. multinational corporations and related U.S. labor unions to work together to set codes of conduct, monitoring and reporting procedures, and effective follow-up enforcement of worker rights in foreign subsidiaries and foreign contractors.
6. Encourage and support U.S., foreign, and international private Non-Governmental Organizations to publicize violations of human rights and worker rights, to organize demonstrations and boycotts, to seek voluntary progress, and to press for appropriate treaty ratifications and passage of appropriate legislation to advance human rights and worker rights in the United States and throughout the global economy.
About the Author
Dr. Markley Roberts lives in Washington, D. C. He was born in China, where his parents were missionary college teachers. He worked at the AFL-CIO for 34 years. This article is adapted from a report he wrote recently for the United Nations Association. The United Nations Association maintains a website at http://www.unausa.org/
