Public Employee Press

Local president tells U.N. of labor rights violations

At a March 23 panel discussion, Local 154 President Juan Fernández sharply criticized the long overdue report of the United States to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. Fernández and others at the forum raised issues that added up to a broad condemnation of the U.S. human rights record.

Their subjects included race and gender discrimination, violations of the right to privacy through surveillance, impediments to union membership, unemployment rates of women and minorities, treatment of Arab-American and Muslim communities and rights of returning veterans.

The U.N. committee will consider the issues they raised in Geneva in July.

After failing to submit its 1998 and 2003 reports to the committee, the U.S. eventually succumbed to international and domestic pressure and issued its report in October 2005. During the committee’s March meeting in New York City, Fernández joined the distinguished panel of human rights activists and legal experts that responded to the U.S. report.

“It’s a 500-page report, but less than half a page addresses labor rights,” said Fernández. “Workers nationwide are having their collective bargaining rights and pensions threatened. Some states prohibit collective bargaining for public workers. These are very serious issues that the report fails to mention.”

The Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute submitted a report on labor issues to the U.N. committee, citing the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that state employees can no longer sue their employers for violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination Act or the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The panel discussion was sponsored by the National Lawyers Guild, the Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office, the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute. Panelists represented these organizations, the American Civil Liberties Union and other religious and civil rights organizations.