A recent report shows what many Americans have suspected for years - the United States doesn’t treat its workers very well.
The International Trade Union Confederation compiles a list every year, ranking the world’s countries on how well they respect worker’s rights. Countries are rated on a scale of 1-5, with 1 meaning workers rights are rarely violated, and 5 means workers essentially have no rights at all.
The United States rated a 4 - meaning workers’ rights are “systematically” violated. This is the lowest ranking of every major developed country in the world. But even this low ranking masks the true depth of the issue.
Common Dreams reports that “the countries with the highest rankings include several European and Nordic countries with strong social welfare systems” and high taxes on rich citizens. These countries largely guarantee all workers paid time off for illness and childbirth, cap hours worked, and mandate vacation time.
Countries across the world - including in Africa, Asia, and South America - received positive scores of 1-3. The United States, on the other hand, along with Vietnam, Haiti, Sri Lanka and a number of other countries - most of them struggling with extreme poverty, corruption, war, and political instability - received scores of 4 or 5.
A rating of 4 means “the government and/or companies are engaged in serious efforts to crush the collective voice of workers, putting fundamental rights under threat." Even in the United States? Yes.
American companies such as Amazon have come under fire for low wages, dangerous working conditions, no paid sick leave, and even alleged retaliation against employees who try to form unions or report about unsafe working conditions. Across the country, “right-to-work” laws mean workers can be fired for virtually any reason.
Corporate and government responses during the COVID-19 pandemic have also come under fire: “Federal and state government leaders have also displayed disdain for the rights of workers in the midst of the public health crisis, with several states threatening to end unemployment benefits for any worker who didn't return to their job after the economy began reopening.”
Worker’s rights have steadily gotten worse over the years, especially under the Trump administration, argues The American Prospect. This is especially true for Black Americans.
Though many many unions were originally racist, union membership has been especially beneficial to Black workers, notes The Guardian. Membership in them was hard-fought by Black activists, who faced violence and intimidation. It was to support a sanitation worker’s union strike that Martin Luther King, Jr. was in Memphis, TN when he was assassinated.
But union membership overall is half what it was in the 1980s.
Black Americans face “systematically higher unemployment rates, fewer job opportunities, lower pay, poorer benefits, and greater job instability … as well as outright discrimination,” reports the Center for American Progress.
The wage gap between Black and white workers is worse now than it was in the 1950s.
That means that if overall, conditions for American workers are ranked the lowest out of every developed country, for Black Americans it could be ranked even lower.