2023-06-17 22:21:44
The richest country in the world is lagging behind in guaranteeing wages, protections and rights for millions of workers. The lobbying carried out by large companies in the United States, dominated for decades by neoliberalism, has been shaping labor legislation that leaves them unprotected, denies them basic rights such as sick leave and makes it difficult for them to unionize, as demonstrated by the resistances against growing movement which is being expanded by business giants such as Amazon, Starbucks, Apple or Tesla.
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Further
These are the conclusions of a strong report by Oxfam America, Where hard work doesn’t pay, which analyzes 56 labor policies in the 38 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). US legislation ranks “consistently near the bottom” of the various rankings analysed: it ranks last for worker protection, 36th for wage policies, and 32nd for union rights. In contrast, the countries of the European Union lead these lists, and Spain holds the fifth position in salary policies, the ninth in union rights and the eleventh in worker protection.
“No matter how you look at it, America is a nation of plenty. And yet, the social safety net it offers to the population, and especially to workers, is much weaker compared to other high-income nations,” the report says. “Despite having a strong economy, the US does little to share revenue with workers and does even less to ensure that workers are safe and secure while on the job. They are political decisions, not inevitable.”
No labor protections
In the North American country, it is not offered by law no day off for paternity or maternity leave, unlike European countries, where weeks and months of paid paternity leave are recognized. In this sense, Oxfam states that the US “could learn a lot from a peer nation like Spain, which guarantees 16 weeks of paid paternity leave to both parents, encouraging a more equitable approach to care responsibilities.”
Another reason that explains why the North American power is in the last position in worker protection, or care, is that it does not offer even one day of paid sick leave. This fact causes many low-paid employees to choose to go to work sick, putting their health and that of their colleagues at risk, before risking losing part of their salary, or directly their job, in retaliation for their absence.
In addition, in the US, healthcare is not a universal basic right, but “is tied to employment,” the report recalls, “and even then it often remains prohibitively expensive.”
Healthcare prices began to skyrocket in the 1980s, after deregulatory policies and the dismantling of Ronald Reagan’s public health. However, Oxfam acknowledges that progress has been made in decoupling employment from healthcare in recent decades. He cites the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacarewhich subsidizes the payment of health insurance for low incomes, as well as the Medicaidwhich in recent years has expanded in various states governed by Democrats, such as New York, while it has declined especially in southern and Republican states.
“In the US, many basic rights – like healthcare – are directly tied to employment. Others, like housing, food, and access to transportation, require individual funds, and that requires a job. In a country where you have to work to live, the protection of workers is scandalously scant,” adds the report, which also identifies “extreme inequality” that affects especially “black people, women, immigrants and refugees.”
Union membership at record lows
In addition, the possibilities for workers to Organize and demand better working conditions they are null. The US is the sixth country in the OECD with the worst union legislation, in a ranking dominated by Slovenia, Sweden, France and Denmark. Despite the fact that the right to organize a union is recognized, and even with the recent rise in popular support for unions and the drive for a new unionism, the level of affiliation is at historical lows: fell in 2022 to 10%while only 12% of workers are covered by collective bargaining.
Unions are regulated according to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935, which was one of the key pieces of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’, probably the most important set of interventionist social policies in US history.
The main objective of this law was to facilitate the creation of unions to equalize the bargaining power between workers and companies. He created a federal agency for this purpose (NLRB) which is still used today for the union building process. However, he also established a base on which all subsequent legislation has been based and which has made union organization difficult: the contracts cover a certain professional category within a company, that is, they are not sectoral agreements.
The union movement grew a lot after the Second World War (to around 40%), and began to collapse from 1970, with the mandate of Richard Nixon, which coincided with the oil crisis of 1973. The Republican appointed five reactionary figures in the federal agency that oversees unions and allowed companies to act much more aggressively against attempts to organize their workers.
That’s where the anti-union propaganda campaigns: the law still allows an employer to organize “informative meetings” with the workers, in which they can pressure them to vote against the creation of the union. A decade later, Reagan deepened the breach opened by Nixon, and reduced the role of the NLRB to a minimum, leaving business to roam free.
The Oxfam report highlights the success of private companies and some branches of government in “consistently attacking union safeguards”. Large companies, such as FedEx, Amazon, Nestlé or Bed Bath & Beyond, have been investing significant amounts of money for years in hiring consultants specialized in hindering the self-organization of workers. according to plasma A study from the Economic Policy Institute, FedEx invested $836,000 between 2014 and 2018 to prevent union organizing.
The technique was also used by Amazon against members of the Amazon Labor Union, which won the first worker-led union vote last year in the company’s 27-year history. Or the Tesla workers in Buffalo, who launched a union campaign, to which the tycoon and owner, Elon Musk, declared war and suppressed. They are examples of an incipient new trade unionism that is gaining ground in the US. However, it is still easy for companies to prevent it, since the law is on their side.
The slaveholding legacy of inequality
The Oxfam report notes that the “long legacy of slavery and subsequent immigration policies in the US underscore the way the US government has crafted laws and policies aimed at creating hierarchies of labor in which Black people , especially black women, were left out of protections, stable wages, and the ability to organize.”
Precisely, the NLRA excluded the right to organize farm workers, domestic employees and workers whose work depends on tips. According to Oxfam, these employees continue to receive “far less” pay and “since these are sectors in which black workers are the majority, this exclusion perpetuates wage and wealth inequality in the US.”
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