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International Human Rights Day
APWU, Other Unions Rally for Workers Rights
APWU Web News Article #68-05, Dec. 8, 2005
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APWU officers and staff joined thousands of labor activists at a spirited rally today in front of AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, where union leaders denounced a litany of actions the Bush Administration has taken to undermine collective bargaining rights in every sector of the economy.
Postal and federal employees joined teachers, firefighters, airline workers, and others to condemn the rise of unfair practices that employers have routinely used in recent years to interfere with workers’ rights to organize.
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Capped by a spirited march on the White House a few blocks away, the rally was part of a series of demonstrations by unions and human rights organizations across the globe to protect workers’ rights in recognition of International Human Rights Day, Dec. 10.
Dec. 10 is the 57th anniversary of the ratification of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognized the right to join a union and bargain as a basic human right.
Despite the international agreement, workers' rights are under attack in the United States. Every day, American workers are harassed, intimidated, and even fired for exercising their right to unite with co-workers to form a union. These freedoms are protected by law, but in recent years the Bush Administration’s Labor Department has looked the other way when employers break the law.
“Even the wealthiest nation in the world — the United States of America — fails to adequately protect workers’ rights to form unions and bargain collectively. Millions of U.S. workers lack any legal protection to form unions and thousands are discriminated against every year for trying to exercise these rights.” — Excerpt from statement [PDF] by Jimmy Carter, Lech Walesa, the Dalai Lama, the Rev. Desmond Tutu and seven other Nobel Peace Laureates. |
“The Bush Administration is attacking the collective bargaining rights of employees in the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and elsewhere,” said APWU President William Burrus in a letter to the union’s state and local leadership urging participation in the rallies. “Governors in California, Indiana, Missouri, and elsewhere are attacking public employees' rights to a voice at work,” he noted. “And Bush appointees to the National Labor Relations Board are delivering decision after decision undermining the rights of disabled workers, temporary workers, graduate employees — and all of us.”
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Burrus urged APWU members to attend International Human Rights Day observances in their communities, and to sign an on-line petition demanding that Congress pass the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation pending in the House and Senate that would help restore the workers’ rights.
To learn more about the issues and other ways that you can help, visit the AFL-CIO’s Voice@Work Web pages.
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[More Photos from
the
Washington, DC Rally]
