Workers' Liberty Lost

In every presidential address these days, in every White House press release by way of Fox News, we are showered with the resounding rhetoric of liberty. It’s uplifting, really. That is, if you’re not one of the millions of workers who are daily denied their freedom of association—their freedom to form unions.

The Employee Free Choice Act now before Congress, if passed, could start to restore this basic American freedom. So could Harvard—but first we have to change our attitude towards our unions.

Unions? Aren’t those just special interest groups getting in the way of economic growth? On the contrary, unions were historically how workers in America won the rights that we now take for granted: eight-hour days, two-day weekends, workplace safety. Polls reveal that a majority of workers still say they want to be organized in unions. But today, only 12.5 percent actually belong to unions. What’s going on?

The land of the free was supposed to guarantee the freedom to organize. The National Labor Relations Act, enacted in 1935, states that all American workers are protected in their right to “bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing.” Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights contains the same guarantee: “Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions.”

Apparently, civil rights are so 40 years ago. Today they exist only on paper for workers, thanks to the union-busting tactics of employers and the complicity of Bush’s National Labor Relations Board. A recent Human Rights Watch report confirmed that workers across the United States are being prevented from forming associations of their choice. Intimidation and discrimination is at a level unparalleled since the Gilded Age. Only now, the methods are slicker, the modes of control more sophisticated.

When workers try to form a union, they can expect any number of responses—except for cooperation. A majority of employers hire union-busting consultants and force workers to attend one-on-one anti-union meetings. If workers are immigrants, some employers threaten to call the Department of Homeland Security. One in four employers facing a union campaign illegally fires at least one worker.

And corporations are seldom held accountable. When they are, the most fearsome penalty the government can come up with amounts to no more than back pay and a sign posted by the company promising not to repeat the violations. The Ad Board couldn’t even scare a Harvard student with that. What’s more, the penalty comes after years of court procedures, leaving the union dead in the water by the time the case is resolved.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy ’54-’56, D-Mass., and Rep. George Miller, D-Cal., have introduced a new bill on the floor of Congress, the Employee Free Choice Act, which would go a long way towards enforcing workers’ rights under the law. The bill deserves the support of anyone committed to the ideal of a society that works to protect everyone’s freedom, not just those who can afford to buy its protection.

The proposed bill would allow the certification of a union when a simple majority of a workplace signs up, mediated bargaining for a first contract, and some real monetary penalties for employers who infringe on workers’ freedom of association. The bill is gaining momentum in Congress, and pressure from some red staters might even be able to force President Bush’s hand. Don’t hold your breath, though.

In the meantime, the problem of union rights remains Harvard’s problem, too. Four years after the living wage sit-in, Harvard management has been slowly but surely replacing union workers in key sectors of the workforce. The last seven unionized security guards were laid off last year. And four female janitors, all union members, recently came to work to find their own jobs outsourced. They were reinstated only after large worker-student protests. If workers in these sectors try to organize anew this year, Harvard has a moral and legal obligation to recognize their right to do so.

Employers and those who serve them in government are chipping away at one of the greatest of American freedoms, for which past generations of patriots fought and died under the American flag just as surely as our troops in foreign fields. Must we start all over again? Is this really the new birth of liberty we’ve been promised?

Today, the protections extended to large corporations outweigh those granted to working Americans. Apparently, the freedom of faceless institutions is more important to some than the freedom of individuals. We must ask ourselves which side we are on. And ultimately, we must come to recognize union rights for what they really are: a basic thread running through the fabric of a free society. If employers keep pulling away at it, the rest of our freedoms might just unravel, too.

Michael Gould-Wartofsky ’07, a Crimson editorial editor, is a government concentrator in Currier House.