UNFAIR ADVANTAGE Workers Freedom of Association in the United States under International Human Rights Standards
Abstract
[Excerpt] Every day about 135 million people in the United States get up and go to their jobs in service, industry, agriculture, non-profit, government and other sectors of the enormous and complex American economy. The rate of new job creation in the United States - almost twenty million in the 1990s - is the envy of many other countries.
Under a wide-angle lens the American economy appears strong. Unemployment is low, and wages are inching up after years of stagnation. In focus, though, there are alarming signals for Americans concerned about social justice and human rights. A two-tier economy and society are taking shape. Income inequality is at historically high proportions.10 Worker self-organization and collective bargaining, engines of middle-class growth and social solidarity in the century just ended, have reached historically low proportions. Although trade unions halted a declining membership trend in 1999, slightly increasing the absolute number of workers who bargain collectively, the percentage of the workforce represented by unions did not increase.