Wal-Mart: Discounted Workers’ Rights

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/11/06/wal-mart-discounted-workers-rights/

Barb Kucera, editor of Workday Minnesota, sends us this report on Human Rights Watch’s Carol Pier’s presentation on Wal-Mart’s long history of union-busting, weak U.S. labor laws and how the Employee Free Choice Act will protect workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.

Want to understand why so many of America’s workers find it so hard to organize unions in their workplaces? Look no further than Wal-Mart, says Carol Pier of Human Rights Watch who says

Wal-Mart is a case study of the abysmal workers’ rights regime we have here in the United States.


New Yorkers protest Wal-Mart’s labor policies.

Pier is a senior researcher on labor rights and trade for Human Rights Watch, an independent, nongovernmental organization that investigates human rights violations around the world.

In a recent speech at the University of Minnesota, she described her two-and-one-half-year study of Wal-Mart’s labor-management record, which culminated in a 210-page report, issued in 2007, titled Discounting Rights: Wal-Mart’s Violation of U.S. Workers’ Right to Freedom of Association.

The report found that while many American companies use weak U.S. laws to stop workers from organizing, the retail giant stands out for the sheer magnitude and aggressiveness of its anti-union apparatus. Many of its anti-union tactics are lawful in the United States, though they combine to undermine workers’ rights. Others run afoul of soft U.S. laws.

FULL story at lnk.