From Fall 2005 issue of Business Ethics
A new organization raises an issue that CSR has largely neglected.
By James Hyatt
THIS SUMMER'S BREAKUP of the AFL-CIO puts renewed emphasis on the future of union organizing in the U.S., as the breakaway Change to Win Coalition vows to focus more on organizing. It's an apt time to begin discussion of ethical corporate labor practices, which is the aim of the just-launched Socially Responsible Business Program at the two-year-old organization American Rights at Work (ARW) in Washington, D.C.
"The extent of illegal employer resistance to workers forming unions is shockingly high," reported American Rights at Work in June. "Every 23 minutes a worker in the United States is fired or penalized for supporting a union." The advocacy group notes that 57 percent of employers hire "union- avoidance" consultants, and one in four illegally fire at least one worker. In the manufacturing sector, 71 percent of employers threaten to close down work sites if a union forms. Currently only 8 percent of private sector workers belong to labor unions, and in the public sector the figure is just 12 percent, down from a historical high of about one in three.
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