Human Rights Day

Today is International Human Rights Day, marking the U.N. General Assembly's adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948.

Today, I marked Human Rights Day with hundreds of my brothers and sisters by picketing the White House. You see, workers in the United States still have to fight for their rights.

Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his 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 interests.

Workers in the U.S. have the right to form unions under the National Labor Relations Act, but some employers thwart their efforts through firings, intimidation and harassment. To strengthen protections for workers’ freedom to choose a union, a bipartisan coalition created the Employee Free Choice Act.

Introduced into Congress in April 2005, the act would:

require employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers sign cards authorizing union representation;
provide for mediation and arbitration of disputes that arise when management refuses to bargain a union's first contract; and
authorize stronger penalties for employers who violate the law when workers seek to form a union.

In honor of International Human Rights Day, show your commitment to our freedom to form unions as a fundamental human right. Ask President Bush to re-establish the United States as the world's leader in protecting human rights, including the freedom of all citizens of the world to form and join unions, and ask Congress to adopt the Employee Free Choice Act.