Cracks in the American Way, as Labor Stands Strong in Europe

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from In These Times:



Cracks in the American Way, as Labor Stands Strong in Europe

Friday
October 1
11:55 am

By Michelle Chen




The idea of American Exceptionalism has loomed large over the last half century, creating an air of national impunity while spreading a neoliberal capitalist model to every corner of the globe. Now the Great Recession has revealed American workers to be exceptional in the worst possible way: facing exceptional pain and exceptional weakness in the labor movement.

A report published by the International Trade Union Confederation (submitted, ironically, to that pillar of the postwar American hegemony, the World Trade Organization) takes a critical view of the U.S. workforce in the context of global human and labor rights. The ITUC's findings expose many of the cracks in the American Way, from a persistent gender wage gap to a failure to uphold child labor protections to a disturbing prevalence of human trafficking. One of the key systemic problems is the institutional weakness of the labor movement:

U.S. law excludes large groups of workers from the right to organise. These include agricultural workers, many public sector workers, domestic workers, supervisors and independent contractors. Moreover, for most private sector workers forming trade unions is extremely difficult and anti-union pressure from employers is frequent. The report notes that there is a $4 billion union-busting industry which aims at undermining trade union organising.

The U.S. worker certainly stands apart from her compatriots across the Atlantic. They're the ones in the news, mobilizing against the harsh austerity plans governments are imposing in respose to an exceptional American export: the global economic crisis.

This week, worker demonstrations in France, England, Greece and other besieged economies rocked the continent with an old-school militancy seldom seen in the “developed” world and virtually unheard of in American communities. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6493/american_exceptionalism_falters_but_in_europe_labor_rules/