Working Together: Global Fight for Workers' Rights is Centered Right Here

The struggle for workers' organizing and bargaining rights is a global one — and as this issue of CWA News reports, unions around the world are now more united and focused in that fight.

What really stands out, however, is that the United States is the anchor that threatens to pull down worker rights and labor relations standards everywhere. The chart below tells the tale: America has the lowest collective bargaining rate of the industrialized world — currently 12 percent, the lowest level since the 1930s — and is even lagging behind some of the emerging nations.

One leading expert, Dr. John Logan of the London School of Economics, declared at a recent international labor summit in Washington that every worker and union in the world has a stake in passage of the Employee Free Choice Act to restore U.S. bargaining rights. The degree of union busting in the United States is already infecting labor relations in other countries, emboldening employers to more aggressively fight union drives and take on their workers at the bargaining table, according to Logan (Click here to read more).

Significantly, he singled out Verizon as one of the leading rights violators in its campaign to block unionization in the growing wireless telecom industry. He cited the tactics of Verizon Wireless as a case study in the low-road tactics used in this country — and which he fears are being exported to other nations.

Unions overseas appreciate the fact that collective bargaining strength, and the political power that goes with it, is the key to maintaining access to good health care, retirement security, parental leave standards and other benefits and protections for their citizens. The chart on page 3 demonstrates that linkage very clearly.

Despite surging corporate anti-unionism, there are hopeful signs that workers can build political movements to spur workplace democracy and workers' rights such as we are seeing today in South Africa and countries in South America (click here to read more).

This CWA News features two women from opposite sides of the world whose stories can inspire all of us.

Sharan Burrow heads Australia's labor federation and also the International Trade Union Confederation, representing labor federations worldwide. At the global labor summit, she described how the labor movement in Australia dug deep to mount a 2-1/2 year battle that last year ousted the right wing government which had pushed through laws limiting the right to strike and crippling worker bargaining rights (click here to read more).

It was a tough, tenacious campaign that saw mass rallies and demonstrations and the building of a grassroots movement that began at the workplace and finally ended up successfully at the polling booth.

Burrow also believes that the U.S. struggle is important to workers everywhere: "Your quest for the Employee Free Choice Act is one that will shine a light of hope for workers, not just for America but for workers around the world."

Regina Cain, a steward from Local 6507 in Little Rock, Ark., is among the activists who are building a movement for change in this country. She and her co-workers wanted a union at their call center, but they were subjected to supervisory intimidation tactics that blocked their campaign — until Cingular (now AT&T Mobility) took over.

Because of Cingular's agreement to let workers decide for themselves about whether they want bargaining rights, and to choose through majority card check procedures — as the Employee Free Choice Act calls for — the workers quickly won recognition and a union contract last year.

This brand new steward is shown on page 8 sitting down with her U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln in January to describe how our labor laws have failed us, what having a union means to her and the rest of her largely female workforce, and why we must have the Employee Free Choice Act.

With a Stewards Army of activists like Regina Cain, and with the example of Sharan Burrow and her colleagues in Australia, we can transform our own political landscape, restore collective bargaining rights and win such critical goals as universal health care.