Harry Targ
The massive atrocities of World War II led nations to commit themselves
permanently to the protection of basic rights for all human beings. Eleanor
Roosevelt, the widow of the wartime President, Franklin Roosevelt, worked
diligently with leaders from around the world to develop a document, to
articulate a set of principles, which would bind humankind to never carry out
acts of mass murder again. In addition, the document also committed nations to
work to end most forms of pain and suffering.
Over 70 years ago, on December 10, 1948, delegates from the United Nations
General Assembly signed the document which they called “The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.” It consisted of a preamble proclaiming that all
signatories recognize "the inherent dignity" and "equal and
inalienable rights of all members of the human family" as the
"foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world." The preamble
declared the commitment of the signatories to the creation of a world “…in
which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from
fear and want…”
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights consisted of thirty articles, with
varying degrees of elaboration. The first 21 articles refer primarily to civil
and political rights. They prohibit discrimination, persecution for the holding
of various political beliefs, slavery, torture, and arbitrary arrest and
detention. Persons have the right to speak their mind, travel, reside anywhere,
a fair trial if charged with crimes, own property, form a family, and in the
main to hold the rights of citizenship including universal and equal suffrage
in his or her country.
The remaining nine articles address what may be called social and economic
rights. These include rights to basic social security in accordance with the
resources of the state in which the persons reside; rights to adequate leisure
and holidays with pay; an adequate standard of living so that individuals and
families have sufficient food, clothing, shelter, and medical care; and
education, free at least at the primary levels. In addition, these nine
articles guarantee a vibrant cultural life in the community, the right to enjoy
and participate in the arts, and to benefit from scientific achievements.
While each article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides a rich
and vivid portrait of what must be achieved for all humankind, no article
speaks to our time more than Article 23. It is one of the longer articles,
identifying four basic principles:
*Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and
favorable conditions of work, and to protection against unemployment.
*Everyone, without discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
*Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring
for himself (or herself) and his (her) family an existence worthy of human
dignity, and supplemented, if necessary by other means of social protection.
*Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of
his (her) interests.
Using the language of our day, the principles embedded in Article 23 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights constitute a bedrock vision inspiring the
global 99 percent to rise up against their exploiters from Cairo to Madison, to
Wall Street, to cities and towns all over the world. But the global political
economy is broken. The dominant mode of production, capitalism, increasingly
cannot provide work, fair remuneration, and rights of workers to speak their
mind and organize their own associations. In addition, the economic system
cannot provide a comfortable way of life because the value of what workers
produce is expropriated by the top one percent of global society.
Right to Work laws, for example, which can be found in over twenty states allow
workers to gain the benefits of union representation on the shop floor without
joining unions or paying for union services which are provided to all workers.
The basic goal of RTW laws is to bankrupt the labor movement. The result, as
data suggests in every state, is to reduce rights, benefits, and working
conditions for all workers. The National Right to Work Committee, the American
Legislative Exchange Council, and other rightwing groups funded and organized
by the one percent, want to eliminate hard-fought worker rights which will
reduce the costs of labor, wages, working conditions, and the standard of
living of all workers, unionized or not.
Data about the world and data about the United States make it clear that there
has been a forty-year trajectory in the direction opposite to the rights
enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Global inequality is
growing. The rights and abilities of workers to form unions are shrinking.
Standards of living of most of humankind are declining. The ability of most
workers to acquire secure jobs is declining. Globally there has been a quantum
shift from agricultural, manufacturing, and service employment to the informal
sector, oftentimes “street hustling.” In 2020, the global pandemic has afforded
the capitalist class the opportunity to increase exploitation and immiseration.
But the good news in 2022 is workers of all kinds-from factory workers, to service employees, to health care professionals, to teachers- are fighting back and broad publics support the right of workers to organize.
In the end, anti-worker politics in the United States, like anti-worker politics virtually everywhere around the globe, violate the fundamental principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, especially its precious Article 23. On this Labor Day weekend progressives must recommit to the fundamental proposition that the workers’ agenda is fundamentally the human rights agenda.
To paraphrase Joe Hill: “Don’t Mourn, Organize!”
“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. (Woody Guthrie).
