You Have the Right to Join a Union

Back in the 1930s, CIO organizers in the American South would go to factory gates and hand out leaflets with pictures of President Roosevelt, decorated with the national flag. And the leaflets would proclaim in a very large type: "You have the right to join a union." They were talking of the newly-enacted National Labor Relations Act to promote trade unionism in places where it had never been seen before.

Today, 70 years later, unions organizing globally need to make the same use of the International Labour Organization's eight "core conventions", particularly the ones guaranteeing workers' rights to join and form trade unions. You would think that these conventions would be easy to find on the web, but they're not. In my latest column for International Union Rights magazine, I explain the problem, and make some suggestions on what can be done. You can read the column and comment on it here:

http://www.ericlee.me.uk/archive/000110.html

If you want to see the first steps LabourStart has taken, go to Google, search for "ILO core conventions" and look at the advertisement in the upper right corner of the page. Click on the link in the ad to see what happens.