Global Focus on Collective Bargaining Coverage: U.S. Congress Meets the World Labor Movement

Leaders: Assault on American Bargaining Rights Threatens Labor Standards Worldwide

In conjunction with an unprecedented global union conference on workers' rights in December in Washington, D.C., union leaders and workers held a forum for lawmakers on Capitol Hill to stress that the fight for the Employee Free Choice Act in the United States has implications for the entire world.

New York Verizon Business technician John Lindner joined CWA President Larry Cohen as a panelist briefing Senate and House members and their staffs on the techs' struggle for union recognition despite demonstrating clear majority support for a union. Said Lindner, "In most other democracies around the world, majority support for the union would be enough. We'd have our union. But not in the United States and not at Verizon." Lindner served his country in both Iraq and Afghanistan, "But when I returned home, I found that my freedom to join a union is being denied."

Cohen pointed out to participants that in 1948, the United States led the world in democratic rights — both politically and in the workplace — and 35 percent of U.S. workers in the private sector were covered by collective bargaining. "Today, with less than 8 percent in the private sector and 12 percent organized overall, the United States is nearly at the bottom of the world's nations." (Several members of Congress expressed shock when they saw the ranking chart How Does the United States Stack Up? (graphic) reproduced on the cover of this issue of CWA News.)

Union leaders and experts from around the world affirmed to the congressional audience that the low level of union representation in America and the extreme anti-union tactics of U.S. employers are a threat to workers' bargaining rights around the world.

Among those making the point that the proposed Employee Free Choice Act in the United States is of worldwide importance were Sharan Burrow, head of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) — representing 168 million workers in labor federations in 153 countries — and president of Australia's labor federation (click here to read interview.)

Participants were also briefed by Dr. John Logan of the London School of Economics, whose paper on the global impact of U.S. corporate union-busting is described on page 4.

Among the organizers and speakers at the briefing were Cohen, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, and key congressional leaders and supporters of the Employee Free Choice Act, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). 

The global conference, organized by the Council of Global Unions — 10 Global Union Federations (GUF) now working together — brought some 200 participants from around the world to Washington for a 2-day meeting coinciding with International Human Rights day on Dec. 10, when in 1948 the United Nations, at the urging of Eleanor Roosevelt, declared that workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively are universal human rights.

The delegates forged a new resolve among the world's unions to make defending and expanding collective bargaining rights a top objective for the global movement. The participants called for a project to map the levels of collective bargaining coverage more precisely around the world; to target specific multinational corporations to organize; to provide resources to build cross-border campaigns; to project a common, global vision and message and to build national union plans in line with global unions and principles.

At the conference, CWA announced a plan to form a "T- Union," a joint organization with Ver.di, which represents workers at Deutsche Telekom, to fight for bargaining and organizing rights for workers at T-Mobile on both sides of the Atlantic (see page 5). T-Mobile, a Deutche Telekom subsidiary in the United States, has repeatedly fought workers' efforts to gain a union voice. CWA will help T-Mobile employees join the T Union.

In January, a second meeting of 30 top union leaders from around the world, including CWA’s Cohen, met in Brussels to follow up on the Washington conference. They agreed to put a special focus on bargaining rights in the United States and the activities of U.S.-based corporations, here and around the world.