Draft GPUS Platform Amendment Labor

DRAFT AMENDMENT FOR THE 2010 PLATFORM OF THE GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES CHAPTER 2: SOCIAL JUSTICE

Section title: G. Labor

Section subtitle: Re-building the labor movement

Our Position: Greens want to strengthen workers' rights and their ability to form unions.

Greens believe that growing the labor movement is crucial to bringing economic and social justice to America, because it is a countervaling force to the overwhelming power of large corporations.

Green Solutions

Restoring workers’ freedom to form unions

  1. Strict enforcement of the fundamental legal right of all workers to organize, form a union and bargain collectively.

  2. The Employee Free Choice Act, which guarantees workers’ right to form a union by majority sign-up, ensures a first contract through mandatory arbitration, and imposes meaningful penalties on employers who violate the law.

  3. Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act, which makes it difficult to organize unions, allows states to enact “right-to-work” laws, and outlaws the closed shop.

  4. Give workers’ labor rights the status of civil rights under the Civil Rights Act of 1991, enabling harsher punishment for corporations, including compensatory and punitive damages, injunctive relief and legal fees.

  5. Provide all workers the right to inform others or be informed about union organizing at their workplace, including via advertising and recruiting.

Bolstering workers’ rights and protections

  6. Enact national and state living wage laws.

  7. The 35-hour work week.

  8. At least one month of paid vacation per year for all full-time workers.

  9. Day-care services at every workplace when feasible, or reasonably near-by when not feasible at the workplace.

 10. Strict enforcement of occupational safety and health laws, add more OSHA inspectors, and sharply increase corporate penalties for OSHA violations. Employers have a responsibility to inform workers of hazards and to protect them from those hazards.

 11. Expand the Family and Medical Leave Act to cover more workers, provide for paid family and medical leave and guarantee workers seven days of paid annual sick leave.

 12. Grant workers the following rights and protections:

        a. To elect representatives to the Board of Directors of the business where they work. Workers' representatives must have the same powers as management's representatives.

        b. To elect their own union officers.

        c. No permanent replacement of striking workers.

        d. No forced overtime.

        e. Flexible working schedules to allow workers to manage personal and family concerns.

        f. Until we have universal health care, employers must pay at least half the cost of workers' health insurance.

        g. All workers must have unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, and access to a job search program when unemployed.

        h. All full-time workers must have minimum pensions, vested and portable.

 13. Require companies to honor all existing collective bargaining agreements and contracts when they purchase or merge with another company.

 14. Mediation with an agreed-upon time limit must be the first available solution to labor-management disputes.

 15. Grant labor the first right to buy out a company that is for sale, going bankrupt or being outsourced.

 16. Give agricultural and other excluded workers the protection of federal labor laws, except where state laws offer greater safeguards.  Insist on agricultural practices that don’t endanger farm workers.

 17. Ensure union members the right to submit a first contract to binding arbitration when a new union is formed.

 18. Provide labor the right to stock ownership and oversight of the investment of its own funds in the company where it works.

 19. Limit management's ability to close its workplace and move to a lower-pay locale to the degree necessary to protect the local workforce and their job security.

 20. Government subsidies for cooperative ownership and management of enterprises whenever a buy-out is possible.

 21. Oppose privatization and contracting-out of public services.

 22. Eliminate tax incentives to ship jobs overseas.

 23. Include guarantees for workers' rights in treaties, trade agreements and other international obligations. Re-negotiate those treaties and agreements that lack strong protections for workers' rights.

 24. Union leaders should not be paid greatly in excess of compensation of the workers they represent.