Labor Rights Are Human Rights

by Schuyler Kempton, HVR

Mississippi was ground zero of the civil rights movement, a land once soaked with the blood of the oppressed fighting to be free. Today, the state’s 99% continue to act as pioneers. Although you likely don’t know it, a groundbreaking labor campaign is currently underway in Canton, Mississippi, spearheaded by Nissan workers demanding union representation using a new approach.

Workers rally in New York City during the fast food industry's largest strike in its history this April. 

An article in the May issue of Z Magazine by Roger Bybee describes the campaign:

“The worker discontent has taken the form of a unique organizing drive for representation by the United Auto Workers, based on the notion that labor rights are human rights. This central theme---closely related to the civil rights teachings of civil rights giant Martin Luther King---resonates deeply among Nissan workers and a fast-growing group of supporters...The Mississippi organizing drive has the potential to re-invigorate the U.S. labor movement at a time of wide-spread defeatism caused by events like the passage of anti-worker legislation in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan. Much of its progress can be explained by its reliance on the moral intertwining of labor rights and human rights which deeply connected with Mississippians---especially African-Americans---and exerts a worldwide moral appeal.”

The public apathy for many labor struggles likely results from the perception that the dispute is a crude, materialistic struggle. And, indeed, at the most basic level labor struggles are simply about wages & hours. However, on a deeper level the struggle is about dignity & democracy. A worker can usually squeeze by on the wages provided by their employer. What she or he lacks is fairness--- the right to be compensated for the full value of their labor; and a voice--- or the right to democracy at the workplace. 

The piece goes on to quote Wayne Walker, a black auto worker at the plant. He touched on both the issue of democracy and fairness: “It’s not all about the money. It’s about having a collaborative effort...The price of the vehicle goes up, but your pay and benefits degrade. That’s why we need a union. Corporations want to sit on profits and do not share.” 

However, this the framing of labor rights as human rights is not confined to Mississippi.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April, 4th 1968. 45 years later, fast food workers in New York City staged the largest strike in the industry’s history.

In a piece for MSNBC.com, Ned Resnikoff wrote,

“The date of this second strike is not a coincidence: April 4 is also the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. When King was shot and killed in 1968, he was visiting Memphis, Tenn., to rally on behalf of striking sanitation workers. The 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike, the last major campaign of King’s life, came at a pivotal moment for both workplace rights and racial justice. Now, New York fast food workers are consciously borrowing that strike’s rhetoric and tactics, and framing their struggle as a direct continuation of the great civil rights leader’s final battle... The fast food strike has adopted some of that language of freedom and dignity, even borrowing the iconic slogan seen on many 1968 Memphis workers’ picket signs: ‘I AM A MAN.’”

Here in the Hudson Valley, a campaign has kicked off to defend a Black Ferncliff nursing home employee facing racial discrimination. The story, as I understand it, goes like this:

After Ferncliff nursing home (located in Rhinebeck, NY) changed hands sever years ago, the management has been consistently abusive to workers, especially to people of color. Aside from other acts of discrimination against African-American employees, management has targeted Fillipino workers, taunting competent workers by suggesting that they learn English.

In this case, a white nurse was told by management to prevent a Black nurse from using the main employee restroom. At other times, she was harassed for living in what management called "ghettoville."

The white nurse who was effectively told to enforce a system of apartheid was appalled and began to complain. However, when a formal grievance was filed, by Black and white nurses alike, it was dismissed, supposedly for lacking evidence. To this day, Ferncliff predictably denies that anything amiss ever happened.

1199 SEIU, the union representing workers at Ferncliff organized a well-attended rally at Starr Park in Rhinebeck on Monday, May 20th. Attendees listened to testimony by workers and supporters, accentuated by chants of "No Justice, No Peace."

The union, and the workers, vow to continue fighting until racism is addressed at the nursing home. Although this struggle focuses specifically on addressing racial injustice, this injustice occurred at the workplace, and is tied in inextricably with class oppression. Indeed, it is a union, the basic unit of workers' struggle, that is leading the charge. So, we have it hear too: the equation of labor rights with civil rights, and with civil rights as human rights.

The moral dimension to labor struggles has its share of pitfalls to be avoided. We need to remember Malcom X’s criticism of Martin Luther King’s reformism. We shouldn’t copy the Gandhian strategy of putting pacifist soldiers on the front lines to get their heads bashed in. 

And yet, in a system as amoral and unjust as ours, it strikes me as viscerally wrong that the trumpeters of the status quo to maintain a monopoly on morality. 

While capitalism pit humans against each other, solidarity compels an individual to defend another’s humanity. While capitalism only forces workers to meet a standard dictated at the whim of the bosses, a society based upon solidarity should ask of each individual only what is within their ability and return back to them what meets their needs. While capitalism provides only the possibility for a half-baked democracy isolated from the economic sphere, a society based upon solidarity should provide for democracy in every sphere of our lives, including at work and in our communities. 

I cannot imagine a higher moral standard, and I firmly believe that the denial of our abilities to realize this on the part of corporations and state constitutes a very real denial of our human rights.