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13 July, 2009
Just prior to US President Barack Obama’s state visit late last week to Ghana, the country’s Federation of Labour (GFL) teamed with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) to hold a two-day conference on labour rights in America.
The conclusion, as recited by the GFL’s Executive Board, is that even though the US preaches democracy and human rights, and makes such principles conditional in the granting of aid to developing countries, workers in the US themselves lack fundamental human and labour rights to association, join a union, or to participate in collective bargaining.
A statement from the conference said, “Violations of trade union rights occurring in Africa are influenced by the anti-union practices, especially in the USA, where workers are deprived their fundamental rights to organise and bargaining collectively.
“Strangely, the USA has not yet ratified ILO Conventions 87 and 98 concerning freedom of association and the right of workers to bargaining collectively. This is an indictment on the image of the USA as a founding member of the ILO.”
The 7-8 July conference specifically examined the hurdles US workers and trade unions are facing currently in trying to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. The EFCA is a proposed law that would give American workers the same opportunities to organise and bargain that workers in nearly all other developed countries have. Through decades of US labour law precedents, employers have coerced, intimidated, and threatened their staff from joining trade unions, and current US labour laws have allowed them to do so with impunity.