Corporate America has never accepted labor unions. Since the organizing drives of the 1930s organized workers in over 40% of factory occupations, Big Business has been on an anti-labor offensive. With the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, corporations succeeded in crippling labor's ability to organize by outlawing or severely restricting labor's basic organizing tools: strikes, boycotts, and pickets.

The Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 Ö

• re-instituted court injunctions against strikes,
• gave the government the ability to break strikes by declaring 80-day cooling off periods,
• outlawed organizational picketing,
• gave employers the right to hire scabs as permanent replacements for striking workers,
• banned election campaign contributions from union dues and union treasuries,
• banned "secondary boycotts" making it illegal for workers to refuse to cross a picket line when they themselves were not directly party to a labor dispute and illegal to refuse to handle "hot goods" coming from or going to a struck plant,
• forbade sympathy and solidarity strikes by one union with another where a contract was in effect,
• encouraged state anti-union "right-to-work" laws which outlaw union shops where union membership is a condition of employment,
• prohibited unions from expelling company spies as long as they paid their union dues, and
• enabled employers to deplete union treasuries with endless litigation.

The major result of the Taft-Hartley Act was to divert unions from organizing to cautious administration of contracts so the company could not sue the union for violating the contract. Unions began devoting most of their resources to handling grievances through "proper channels" and defending themselves from lawsuits by corporations with far more resources to go to court.

The Landrum-Griffith Act of 1959 tightened up the prohibitions on secondary boycotts and organizational picketing and enabled scabs to vote in union certification or decertification elections. This latter measure encouraged employers to break strikes and unions by hiring scabs during strikes and then having the scabs call union certification or decertification elections.

The Taft-Hartley Act quickly ground union organizing to a halt. Union membership peaked at 35% of the US workforce in 1955 when the AFL and CIO merged. With the recession of the early 1970s, Big Business launched a campaign to rollback union membership. With Democrats controlling the White House and both Houses of Congress, organized labor pushed a Labor Law Reform Bill in 1997 that would have speeded up union certification elections and unfair labor practice decisions by the National Labor Relations Board, certified union recognition if 55% of a bargaining unit signed authorization cards, given union organizers greater access to employer premises, awarded back pay at time and a half for workers discharged illegally for union activity, and provided monetary penalties for employers who refused to bargain. It was a modest reform bill which did not touch Taft-Hartley's "right-to-work," secondary boycott, and injunction provisions. But the Democrats didn't even get it out of committee for floor votes.

Employers then went on government-backed offensive against unions and workers' rights generally that is now into its third decade. The right to organize unions and bargain freely has been destroyed in the US. Appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and the courts have tilted the field of labor-management relations sharply toward management. Employers now violate labor laws with impunity to defeat union organizing drives and bust existing unions because the adjudication takes years and the sanctions are minimal. Today, nearly 1 in 10 workers involved in union organizing drives is illegally fired. The proportion of the workforce in unions has declined to 14% today, and less than 10% in the private sector. Consequently, the average worker's wage has declined 15% in the last 25 years.

The corporate elite has chosen the low road of low-wages and deregulation to make profits by exploiting cheap labor and natural resources. The Greens favor the high road of high wages and high environmental standards to create social wealth by raising the productivity of both labor and natural resources.

The high road of economic development pre-supposes increasing workplace democracy which is key to raising productivity. Today, workers surrender their first amendment rights of free speech, association, and assembly when they walk into the office, store, and factory floor.

The Greens call for a Workers' Bill of Rights to extend democratic rights into the workplace, reforming labor laws to restore the rights of workers to band together in democratic labor unions, strengthening the Fair Labor Standards Act to cover all workers and insure that all workers have the opportunity to contribute to and receive from the social wealth their labor creates, and a Workers' Superfund to provide full income and benefits to workers displaced by the conversion of military and polluting industries to peaceful, ecological technologies.

Workers' Bill of Rights

Greens call for the enactment of a Workers' Bill of Rights that establishes a set of legally enforceable civil rights, independent of collective bargaining, which guarantees to all workers Ö …

• the right to a living wage job;
• the right to portable pensions;
• the right of association and assembly at the workplace;
• the right of free speech at the workplace;
• the right not to be discharged at will;
• the right to freedom from search and seizure at the workplace;
• the right to freedom from sexual harassment;
• the right to equal pay for equal work or work of comparable worth;
• the right to information about chemicals used in the workplace;
• the right to refuse unsafe work;
• the right of whistleblowers to report fraud and violations of labor and environmental standards without being disciplined or fired;
• the right to strike;
• the right to engage in boycotts and secondary boycotts;
• the right to form unions;
• the right to speedy union elections and resolution of labor law violations by employers;
• the rights of democracy in unions and worker organizations;
• the right to vote on contracts;
• the right to have worker representatives on corporate boards of directors.

Labor Law Reforms

The Greens call for comprehensive labor law reforms to restore the right of workers to organize unions, including the following measures: …

• Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act
• Repeal the Landrum-Griffith Act
• Repeal State "Right-To-Work" Laws
• Card-Check Recognition of Unions: As in Canada, recognize union bargaining status as soon as 55% of the workforce signs authorization cards.
• Speedy Union Elections: Require that union elections be held within one month after 40% of a workforce has signed union representation cards. Delays between card signing and union elections enable employers to mount anti-union campaigns and defeat union drives.
• Strong and Speedy Penalties for Employers Who Violate Labor Law: Employers engage in unfair labor practices and illegal anti-union actions at will because the National Labor Relations Board is not empowered to apply strong enough punitive sanctions to deter employer violations of labor law. The NLRB is also far too slow in making decisions. By the time sanctions are imposed years after the violations, most of the original workforce violated is usually gone.
• Legalization of Minority Union Membership and Activity: Unions whose membership includes only a minority of the workforce should still have the right to meet and advocate their positions in the workplace.
• Binding Arbitration for First Contracts at Union Request: Today, half of newly recognized unions never get a contract because employers refuse to bargain in good faith. Members of newly recognized unions must have the right to submit a first contract to binding arbitration at the request of the union.
• Labor Rights for Farmworkers: Extend all labor rights under federal labor relations, minimum wage, and fair labor laws to farmworkers.
• Full Labor Rights for Public Employees: All federal, state, and local employees must have full collective bargaining rights. They must also have full political rights-the Hatch Act restrictions must be repealed.
• Full Labor Rights for "Workfare" Workers: Workfare assignments in return for welfare checks should be converted into public jobs at living wages with full labor rights.
• Ban Prison Slave Labor: Ban the use of US prison labor for the production of goods and services for sale to the public.

Fair Labor Standards

The Fair Labor Standards Act should be substantially strengthened to provide a national minimum wage that is a living wage and fairer distribution of work and income by cutting the standard workweek without reducing income. …

• National Living Wage of $12.50/Hour: Raise the national minimum wage to a living wage at an hourly rate sufficient to enable one adult employed 1500 hours a year to support a family of four at a decent standard of living. $12.50 an hour in 2000 and indexed to the cost of living in the future will bring a 30-hour per week worker $19,500 in wages, enough to bring a family of four above the 1999 poverty line of $17,000.
• 30-Hour Workweek-6-Hour Day, No Cut in Pay: Cut the standard workweek to 30 hours without loss of pay or benefits.
• Social Dividends: Establish a Social Dividend system to pay workers a second paycheck to enable them to receive 40 hours pay for 30 hours work. The burden paying the hours not worked will not fall on particular enterprises, but on society as a whole through progressive taxes on income and wealth. Labor productivity has increased 33% since 1973, but average weekly wages have declined 12%. Workers should start getting their fair share of increased labor productivity as a Social Dividend. A minimum wage worker at $12.50/hour would earn $19,500 a year in wages and $6,500 in social dividends, for $26,000 a year, or a decent standard of living at 150% of the poverty line for a family of four.
• Prohibit Mandatory Overtime
• Double-Time Pay for All Overtime: Require double-time pay for all hours worked over a 30-hour week or an 6-hour day.
• 4 Weeks Paid Vacation: Require twenty days of paid vacation in addition to federal holidays.
• 1 Year Paid Leave for Every 7 Worked: Provide one year of paid educational leave for every seven years worked.
• Right to Work Short Hours: Forbid discrimination in pay and promotion against workers who choose to work short hours.

End Child Labor Exploitation

250 million children under the age of 16 currently serve in the world's work force. The exploitation of child labor is growing in many newly industrializing countries, where children are frequently exposed to hazardous conditions, subjected to mental, physical, and moral harm, and denied the opportunity for education and personal development. The exploitation of child labor continues to exist in the United States in agriculture nationally and in sweat shops in New York and California. Child labor not only harms children, it takes jobs away from adults. We believe no child should be denied the opportunity for quality education and personal development. We therefore call for:

• a ban on the importation of products made with child labor;
• international agreements to ban trade in products made by child labor;
• an amendment of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, which prohibits the exploitation of children, to cover agricultural workers; and
• increases in the fines and the addition of jail sentences for employers convicted of violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act by exploiting child labor.

A Workers' Superfund for a Just Transition to Ecological Production

The Environmental Superfund pays for the clean-up of toxic wastes created by corporate polluters. It is effectively a subsidy to corporations. We should also have a Workers' Superfund to subsidize workers displaced for environmental reasons. There must be a "Just Transition" for workers from polluting to ecological production. Paid for by taxes on corporate polluters, create a Workers' Superfund that guarantees income and benefit maintenance during retraining and new jobs at comparable income for all workers displaced by conversion of industries to ecological technologies.