Democracy at work?!

Democracy at work?!
Jenny Brown
October 1999

If I told you I had no right to vote on decisions affecting my life, was not allowed to say what I thought, sometimes had to risk my health or life to maintain my livelihood, and could be severely punished if I joined with others to try to improve things, wouldn't that sound pretty undemocratic?

But that's the condition most of us exist under at work. "You check your rights at the door when you enter the workplace," says Elaine Bernard, executive director of the Harvard Trade Union Program. "You learn about democracy outside, you learn that democracy is about the right of citizens to participate in decisions that affect them... In the workplace, you're not only not supposed to, you're not allowed to participate in decisions that affect you."

Do we get a say on whether we're going to work overtime? Do we have the right to say 'No, this work is too dangerous and I'm not going to do it?' Can we say, hey, this company's making a lot of money, let's vote to share it around some? Can we appeal discipline or firings? Do we have the right to join with other workers to make things better at our workplace? Most of us are so used to not exercising democracy on the job, it's hard to conceive of.

For hundreds of years, workers have fought to get their rights on the job by joining together in unions. By sticking together, workers have been able to win basic liberties we don't otherwise have: Participation in determining the conditions of our work. Defense against mandatory overtime. A bigger share of the money that the employer's taking in. A right to refuse to do dangerous work. A right to appeal discipline or firing ('redress our grievances').

According to recent public opinion surveys, 50% of American workers would join a union tomorrow if they had the chance, but only 14% of workers in the U.S. currently have the protection of a union contract (down from 35% in 1945.) The other 86% of us are at the mercy of a dictatorship at work.

Why haven't more workers won the rudiments of democracy at work that a union can provide? "Supreme Court decisions rolling back union and worker rights, as well as management-inspired amendments to labor law, have tied the hands of union organizers while freeing management to penalize workers who attempt to exercise their rights," says Bernard. "We need to question the basic assumption of U.S. labor law that the workplace is naturally union-free with workers having few rights. In a democracy, wouldn't it make more sense to assume such rights and to strictly scruntinize workers who relinquish their rights, not those who exercise them?"

"Employers currently spend over a billion dollars a year on consultants trained in intimidation and psychological tactics to stop workers from forming unions," according to the Labor Party, a political party founded in 1996 out of the union movement.

Even when private-sector workers win a union through voting, 33% of these workplaces never see a first contract--the employer basically refuses to submit to the will of the people. Employers also use all kinds of delaying tactics, mixed with intimidation, in an attempt to use up union resources and make people give up hope. (See article on page 4.)

Employers are bound by certain laws designed to protect the right of workers to form and join unions (see box below), but they break them right and left and rarely get punished. According to Bernard, "Workplaces teach workers that not only do you NOT have the right to participate, but in fact we'll break as many rules and laws to make sure that you DON'T have the right to participate in decisions that effect you, that you will NOT have these rights."

For example, it is illegal to fire an employee for advocating for or joining a union. But in the U.S., one in ten union activists are fired for promoting a union and ten thousand workers lose their jobs every year just for supporting union organizing campaigns, according to the Labor Party, which has laid out ambitious reforms in the labor law to give workers a fighting chance to achieve more democracy on the job.

The Labor Party, which has affiliated unions representing over a million workers, laid out a campaign to bring the Bill of Rights into the workplace at the 1998 convention in a resolution. It reads, in part:

"Whereas, we have wrongly come to accept that at work we are not entitled to the basic rights and privileges we normally enjoy as citizens, and...

"Whereas, employer institutions and Congress through current law have turned democracy exactly backward:

At work, we are guilty until proven innocent.
At work, we obey orders upon penalty of discipline
At work, our most fundamental right, that of free speech, does not apply.
At work, we cannot freely associate with others to protect our interests.
At work, we have to quality for rights by taking extraordinary and illogical legal efforts to gain recognition and bargain for fundamental job rights."

Among the measures they propose are:

The Labor Party rejects the status quo of today's workplace where workers are forced to abandon their Constitutional Rights in order to earn their living and are, as a consequence, subject to the tyranny of the corporation.
The Labor Party demands that all workers have the actual right to concerted activity, free from employer involvement or interference, and that any number of interested workers in a workplace must be free to form a union and bargain with their employer. ...
The Labor Party insists upon the restoration of all rights to peaceful and orderly free association including the voluntary joining together to redress grievances by strikes, economic boycotts, sympathy actions, and common situs picketing without artificial restriction.

This adds to their 1996 platform planks which state: "Restore Workers Rights to Organize, Bargain and Strike:"

"All scabbing must be banned and no workers should be fired without just cause." Right now in the U.S., court decisions have made it legal to replace you if you go out on strike. It's not legal to fire you, but it is legal to hire someone else in your place, a distinction without a difference.
"Card-check recognition of bargaining status, as in Canada." This would mean that if a majority of workers say they want a union, they will automatically have one, without the cumbersome election process which allows the employer time to threaten the workers.
"A law requiring employers who purchase or merge with other companies to honor all existing collective bargaining agreements and contracts." Mergers and name changes are used as a way to get around union contracts, ripping the fruits of a hard-won campaign from the hands of the workers.
Along with these laws, they advocate national laws which all employers would have to abide by:
"Forbid compulsory overtime." The only workers in America who have protection against compulsory overtime are those who have won it in a union contract. Combined with low pay, this makes the 40-hour week a myth for many workers. American workers work the longest hours of any in the industrialized world, surpassing Japanese workers in a recent study.
"20 mandatory paid vacation days for all." U.S. workers have much less paid vacation than workers in other industrialized countries.
"32-hour 4 day workweek and double-time minimum for all overtime.

For more info on the Labor Party, or to join, send $20 to Labor Party, P.O. Box 53177, Washington, DC 20009. www.igc.apc.org/lpa or; 202-234-5190.

For information on the Alachua County Labor Party Organizing Committee, call 378-5655.