“Starting today, guest workers and US workers will work to transform workplaces across the United States together. Starting today, we fight for collective dignity and work to win twenty-first century rights for a twenty-first century economy. And starting today, we will work to expand the right to organize for all global workers regardless of where they were born,” proclaimed Saket Soni of the National Guest Workers' Alliance at the convening of the First International Conference on the Human Right to Organize, held at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City. The focus of the conference was excluded workers and their rights or lack thereof. Conference organizers defined excluded workers as undocumented workers, workfare groups, farm workers, day laborers, migrant workers, taxi drivers, domestic workers, nannies, restaurant workers, ex-incarcerated workers, among others. Among the many labor leaders in attendance were AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Barbara Young of the National Domestic Workers' Alliance, Elizabeth Bunn, AFL-CIO Organizing Director, and Anannya Bhattacharjee, Asia Floor Wage (India). Union workers and representatives from around the United States and across the globe were on hand to celebrate this important event. Betty Hung, Conference Committee Chairperson and counsel for the Los Angeles Taxi Workers' Alliance, opened the conference by lashing out at the corporate world. She explained that “corporate greed and exploitation around the world spurred organizers to convene the conference. International movements want the right to defend bargaining. Grassroots committees demand justice, exchanging ideas and strategies, chart next steps to transform the world into a better place for all workers. We embody the right to organize. We are, together, the new labor movement. Human rights are inscribed in the hearts of the people. The United Nations says so.”
As part of the opening session, the National Guest Workers' Alliance and National Domestic Workers' Alliance signed partnership agreements with the AFL-CIO with enthusiastic applause from the audience. Both groups partnered with the labor federation in an attempt to achieve basic rights for excluded workers and foster long-term relationships, following the model of the New York Taxi Workers' Alliance and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, who teamed up with the AFL-CIO in 2006 to help win fundamental rights for workers in their organizations. Barbara Young, a New York City nanny and national organizer for the National Domestic Workers' Alliance, said that the group is committed to working together with the AFL-CIO in order to achieve rights for domestic workers and build a strong labor movement for the twenty-first century.
At the end of the signing ceremony, Richard Trumka explained: “We are signing these partnership agreements because we can't rely on the law alone if we want to fight for the inclusion of all workers. And we can't win these battles alone. We have to work together and take collective action—whether it's in the streets, at City Hall or at the ILO. We extend our hands to all the organizations of the Excluded Workers Congress and workers around the world who are part of this struggle, in partnership and in solidarity.” He added that labor unions dropped the ball on changing times and there is a need to catch up. Trumka reminded the audience, “the ILO says that the vast majority of the world's workers are unregulated and unprotected. This is the worst economic job climate in a generation… Every state is under attack. Politicians are stripping workers of dignity, fair pay and benefits. Immigrants, women and the environment suffer most.” Citing the 2006 struggle by New York taxi drivers, he emphasized, “We come together today to say this is enough. When we fight together, when we stick together, we will win together.”
Throughout the conference, the same themes arose among various groups who were asked to testify on behalf of their organizations. The Restaurant Workers Organization of New York lamented the deplorable working conditions of its members. Their representative said that the organization provides members with benefits ranging from free training for workers in the restaurant industry to legal support. Not only have foreign workers faced abuses in the workplace; they have been under attack by the media, legal workers, and politicians. Representatives from Community Voices Heard-Workfare Workers argued that people are working for such low wages and then denied long-term benefits by the government that it begins to seem like involuntary servitude. “You get $200 in food stamps if you are unemployed, with no benefits.” They argued that together they can defeat this unfair practice in which workers are paid in food stamps and deprived of cash benefits to sustain their additional needs.
For ex-convicts, the struggle for economic security and dignity is compounded. Because of their criminal records, many are deliberately forced to the margins and can only find employment in the most casualized sectors. Employers hold this additional leverage over them, knowing they cannot easily obtain jobs elsewhere. Members of the Ex-Incarcerated Workers' Organization and the New York Taxi Drivers' Alliance said that they are fighting for benefits such as paid vacation days, health insurance, notice of severance and severance pay. Members of these groups believe that through solidarity they will gain basic rights. Despite the desperate economic context, there was a sense of euphoria throughout the conference that seemed overconfident at times. Nonetheless, it conveyed an energetic mix of aspirational hope and determination to solve problems.
Sarita Gupta, the Executive Director of National Jobs with Justice, explained that the right to organize is a human right and the Excluded Workers Congress supports this right. Conference leaders rely on the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. While so much of American political rhetoric avoids discussions of class, power, and economic justice by using the euphemistic “middle class” as a universal, Gupta explicitly asserted that the working class is constantly being denied basic rights. And the working class is looking a lot more like this assembled group. As Gupta and others made clear, excluded workers are becoming the norm in the United States and around the world and people are becoming more aware of the loss of their basic rights.
Gupta's claims seemed to be bolstered by a report from a group of Asian Indian and Peruvian workers brought to the US after Hurricane Katrina to help with the cleanup efforts. They reported that they were forced to work under involuntary servitude -like conditions before they began to organize and fight for better working conditions and equal rights as workers. Workers were kept in cramped living quarters, forced to work beyond eight hours a day (without overtime pay), six days a week, and denied vacation days. The group was contracted at the rate of $6 an hour—below minimum wage. They were not allowed to organize, but extremely poor working conditions forced them to organize. After years of legal “wrangling,” and with the help of US Senator Robert Menendez, they were able to receive the green cards that were promised to them and to bring over the families they left behind in the home countries.
Members of the audience showed their disgust for non-union practices in the American South when Jaribu Hill, Mississippi Workers' Center for Human Rights, said that they are still fighting Jim Crow laws in the South. She lamented the fact that the South is still not unionized and workers have bought into the claims of conservative politicians and industry executives who insist it's to their benefit because industries are more willing to relocate to their states.
Most of the second and third days of the conference, held at the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies of the City University of New York, dealt with member issues, brainstorming and sharing strategies for change going forward. Stephanie Bloomingdale of Wisconsin AFL-CIO put the conference ideals and objectives into focus when she said that workplace action is important and fighting back is the way to stop corporate greed. In addition to emphasizing that the American labor movement has got to pay more attention to immigration and migration, she made a striking point about dependence on the establishment and the law. “The legal status of unions is always temporary,” she said. The challenge is to believe in the power of union solidarity and vision to overcome the contingent unreliability of law and the state and produce real change in the lives of working people. The old law doesn't work and the old strategies don't work. Excluded workers are becoming the core of the US workforce, as was the case in the early 1930s, when there also was no legal right to organize. Yet, workers built a new movement. Labor can no longer afford the gate keeper model, drawing an illusory protective wall around middle-class workers and allowing the poor to be further marginalized through exclusive tactics such as “workfare,” which pays less than the minimum wage to welfare recipients who must work in menial jobs just to “earn” subsistence. We are capable of taking care of ourselves. “We need to show strength and solidarity by marching in the streets and standing up for ourselves,” Bloomingdale said. “Collaboration breaks down barriers and creates respect. We are in the middle of a crisis. Attacks on workers and families are unacceptable. We are all excluded workers.”
On the final day of the conference, the audience was presented with three areas of focus: the minimum wage, the POWER (Protect Our Workers from Exploitation and Retaliation) Act, and excluded workers' rights. The Excluded Workers Congress articulated a demand for a fair minimum wage for all workers, defined as a “living wage” based on a realistic cost of living index. The POWER Act helps workers to organize without fear of deportation. Many workers are in fear of organizing because they often face retaliation from immigration officers and many have been deported as a scare tactic for others in the group. The conclusion after discussions among the audience and the panel was that the Excluded Workers Congress needs to work with the Department of Labor to build alliances and that there should be an ongoing relationship between them. The United Nations/ILO has a role to play in labor organizations throughout the world to ensure fair labor practices and end discrimination against women in hiring and union positions. Women deserve a place at the bargaining table. ILO standards should be met and fair wages should be paid to all workers. Guest workers need to be advised of their rights before they leave their home countries or sign documents.
Audience participants and conference planners raised fundamental questions for the developing agenda of this movement. These included how to define a global living wage, whether there should be a global worker ID, and how do we bring back principal employers rather than sub-contractors. Other questions discussed included: What is the new framework for the right to organize? If strikes, lobbying and advocacy are the old way, what is the new way? How does the Excluded Workers Congress lead in this new global context? How do we define the excluded worker/precarious worker? How do we build understanding trust between communities, especially immigrants and African American workers? How do we build understanding between migrant workers and US workers? What roles can EWC play in making connections between the public sector workers and excluded workers and stronger ties between excluded workers and included workers?
At the end of the conference, one student representative from the United Federation of Teachers paraprofessional program said that she was overwhelmed by the tremendous amount of support that excluded workers receive from various unions and organizations. What impressed her most was their ability to organize themselves and, in the case of the Indian guest workers, demand and receive their rights against numerous odds.
