In the United States, we take for granted that private sector employers welcome unions as they welcome an outbreak of the bubonic plague. And they act accordingly. A recent survey of recruitment ads run by US corporations found dozens seeking HR managers with a demonstrated commitment to a "union free environment".
After the November 2010 elections – in which Tea Party Republicans won control of many traditionally Democratic states – that anti-union fervour has spread to the public sector. In the wake of new laws in Wisconsin and Ohio stripping half a million public employees of their collective bargaining rights, the National Conference of State Legislatures has identified (pdf) 744 bills in virtually every state in the country that mostly target public sector bargaining. Even in Detroit, in many respects the birthplace of the 20th-century US labour movement, the mayor is waging war against public sector unions.
Much of this anti-union legislation violates fundamental labour rights and International Labour Organisation – a tripartite institution composed of representatives from governments, employers and unions – must condemn it.
The anti-union bills in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere by definition violate the ILO's "Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work" that states countries will work to "promote and to realise fundamental rights", the first of which is "freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining". After its adoption in 1998, the Clinton administration lauded the declaration as a "historic step" towards linking trade liberalisation with the promotion of fundamental labour rights.
Most advanced countries take seriously their obligations under international labour rights conventions. In 2007, the supreme court of Canada ordered British Columbia to restore collective bargaining agreements nullified by the provincial government. The following year, the European Court of Human Rights found that Turkey's restrictions on public sector bargaining rights violated the European Convention on Human Rights. And just as US states are stripping teachers of their collective bargaining rights, Canada is moving in the opposite direction. On 13 April 2011, the supreme court of British Columbia ruled unconstitutional legislation nullifying teacher collective bargaining.
Most advanced countries have a good record ratifying fundamental labour rights conventions. All 27 member states of the European Union have ratified two of the ILO's key conventions – which have influenced the European Social Charter, European Convention on Human Rights and EU Charter on Fundamental Rights – convention 98 on the promotion of collective bargaining and convention 87 on freedom of association. The US, in contrast, has a poor record on ratification of the most important ILO conventions. Because of opposition from the US Council for International Business (USCIB), the US has ratified neither convention 87 or 98, even though, as a member of the ILO, it is bound by their principals. When the ILO incorporated freedom of association and the right of collective bargaining into its "Fundamental Principals", USCIB predicted that the US would never ratify conventions 87 and 98.
This aversion to the ILO's core conventions did not stop the US from criticising the Soviet bloc's violation of fundamental rights during the cold war. In the late 1970s, the US withdrew from the ILO for several years in protest at its failure to stand up to the suppression of independent unions in eastern Europe. And attacking Communist tyranny, Ronald Reagan famously equated collective bargaining with freedom. Shortly before he broke a strike by federal air traffic controllers, Reagan proclaimed, "Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost."
Republicans' hypocrisy on labour rights has not gone unnoticed. In response to legislation stripping 350,000 Ohio public sector employees of their collective bargaining rights – currently the subject of a repeal petition – Ohio's Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown remarked: "Don't tell me you support unions internationally but you don't support unions here. Don't tell me you support collective bargaining in Poland but you oppose collective bargaining in Dayton, Ohio."
In the US private sector, the systematic violation of labour rights is a hidden crisis that few notice and fewer still care about. But now, led by Tea Party Republicans in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere, that same anti-union fervour has now spilled over into the public sector. Republican governors, it seems, are proud to adopt the behaviour that their hero Ronald Reagan once condemned in the eastern bloc of the Soviet era.
This new wave of anti-union legislation clearly violates fundamental labour rights. What is much less clear is whether the tripartite ILO is prepared to take a firm stance against it.
