In exporting capitalism to nations as diverse as China and Poland, Americans have argued that they also are exporting democratic ideals such as the rule of law and respect for human rights. That's the question raised in a new study published by Human Rights Watch and written by Cornell University professor Lance Compa. Since the 1930s, federal law has guaranteed Americans the right to organize unions and to negotiate working conditions with their employers.
Polls show that most people still support the concept.
Yet Compa finds that thousands of workers are fired every year for actions as simple as wearing a union lapel pin. Drawing on documents from the National Labor Relations Board, Compa finds that the number of workers discharged for union activity has risen from a few hundred annually in the 1950s to more than 20,000 annually in the 1990s. He cites the employees of a Chicago castings company who voted for a union in 1987, but after the company refused to bargain for 12 years, simply disbanded the union in 1999. Compa was himself a union activist before joining the Cornell faculty, and skeptics will dismiss his study as the special pleadings of a special-interest group. Yet findings like his would be a scandal in most developed nations.