Unions Want UN Affiliate to Decide U.S. Labor Policy

Human Events, Nov 12, 2007 by Bandow, Doug

But Rep. Sander Levin (D.-Mich.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee's subcommittee on trade, revealed a much more ambitious agenda to the New York Times: "We believe that putting worker rights into trade agreements is a critical piece of shaping globalization in the world today."

If that's the real intention of the unions, then international treaties will shape law in the U.S. as well as in foreign countries, creating potentially significant new legal obligations for America. So far, the U.S. has ratified only two of eight LLO conventions. But if the U.S. includes these rules in its trade agreements, they could be treated as a backdoor U.S. ratification of the international rules we have declined to endorse.

Who Makes U.S. Law?

"Although some members of Congress are widely expected to contest any such changes as undermining U.S. sovereignty, the United States has already accepted such obligations," says Susan Aaronson of George Washington University. "A trade compromise may provide impetus to meet these longstanding commitments."

Even now, foreign labor activists are suing U.S. companies in U.S. courts for allegedly violating the human rights of foreign workers in foreign countries.

For instance:

* Nigerian villagers are suing Chevron, -alleging that it is complicit in the Nigerian military's killing of demonstrators outside a Chevron subsidiary's refinery. In August, a federal judge said the villagers can go to trial in San Francisco.

* Occidental Petroleum is being sued for civilian deaths caused by the Colombian military in an attack on guerrillas who had sabotaged Occidental's pipeline.

* Another suit pushed by Columbian labor activists claims that a subsidiary of the U.S. mining company Drummond Ltd. hired a death squad to kill workers. It is being tried in Alabama.

* A case from Guatemala blames Del Monte for the alleged kidnapping of workers by thugs hired by a subsidiary.

How far have things gone? Canadian and Mexican unions joined U.S. unions in the complaint against the state of North Carolina for barring public sector unionization. North Carolina was charged with violating the rules of me North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), created to implement NAFTA. North Carolina prohibits collective bargaining by public sector employees, but NAALC says its principles require collective bargaining. A formal complaint was filed in Mexico City, with the Mexican National Administrative Office (NAO), a branch of the country's labor ministry.

The foreign unions launched a full-scale attack on American democratic and federalist principles: "[T]he U.S. government has refused to address the LLO recommendations and has failed to take any steps to ensure that the state of North Carolina integrate the labor principles protected under the NAALC into its legislation. Instead, it has repeatedly stated that its federal political system prevents the federal government from intervening in the states' internal legislation. The U.S. government has used this argument to avoid compliance with its international commitments as a party to NAFTA and the NAALC, the United Nations, the Organization of American States and the LLO."