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SINCE THE PUBLICATION OF UNFAIR ADVANTAGE: WORKERS' FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION in the United States under International Human Rights Standards1 by Human Rights Watch, the idea of framing labor struggles as human rights issues has come to occupy center stage within the conversation among serious advocates of the revitalization of the labor movement. The AFL-CIO has underwritten a human rights non-governmental organization (NGO), American Rights at Work, and now seems to give as much attention to "International Human Rights Day" as it does to May Day or Labor Day.2
A human rights approach, it is urged, facilitates partnerships with human rights allies, works well with the inexorable internationalization of labor struggles, allows the "naming, blaming, and shaming" of labor abusers, and is more responsive to the current political and cultural Zeitgeist than traditional labor arguments. Lance Compa, the principle author of the Unfair Advantage report, argues that a human rights reframing will "bring authoritativeness to labor discourse that trade unionists can never achieve."3
While the motives of those advocating a human rights approach are laudable, the reliance on reframing labor struggles as first and foremost human rights struggles is misplaced. It is not hyperbole to say that the replacement of solidarity and unity as the anchor for labor justice with "individual human rights" will mean the end of the union movement as we know it.4 This is true tactically, strategically, and philosophically. Rights discourse individualizes the struggle at work The union movement, however, was built on and nourished by solidarity and community. The powerless can only progress their work life in concert with each other, not alone. Fighting individually, workers lose; fighting together, workers can win. There is a reason why the lyrics to "Solidarity Forever" read: "what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one? But the union makes us strong."5
A complete turn toward the individual rights approach by the labor movement will signal the surrender of the fight for workplace solidarity and the unique and crucial position that our movement has occupied over the last 100 years in the permanent struggle for justice for those at work6 Without the primacy of solidarity, the union movement is little more than a political grouping along the lines of the environmental movement...