Both historical experience and a review of current conditions around the world indicate that strong, independent, democratic trade unions are vital for societies where human rights are respected. Human rights cannot flourish where workers' rights are not enforced. This is as true for the United States as for any other country.

Labor rights violations in the United States are especially troubling when the U.S. administration is pressing other countries to ensure respect for internationally recognized workers' rights as part of the global trade and investment system - at the World Trade Organization, for example, or in the new Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. U.S. insistence on a rights-based linkage to trade is undercut when core labor rights are systematically violated in the United States.

Without diminishing the seriousness of workers' rights violations in the United States, a balanced perspective must be maintained. U.S. workers generally do not confront gross human rights violations where death squads assassinate trade union organizers or collective bargaining and strikes are outlawed. But the absence of systematic government repression does not mean that workers in the United States have effective exercise of the right to freedom of association. On the contrary, workers' freedom of association is under sustained attack in the United States, and the government is failing its responsibility under international human rights standards to deter such attacks and protect workers' rights.

So long as worker organizing, collective bargaining, and the right to strike are seen only as economic disputes involving the exercise of power in pursuit of higher wages for employees or higher profits for employers, change in U.S. labor law and practice is unlikely. Reformulating these activities as human rights that must be respected under international law can begin a process of change.

What is most needed is a new spirit of commitment by the labor law community and the government to give effect to both international human rights norms and the still-vital affirmation in the United States' own basic labor law of full freedom of association for workers. A way to begin fostering such a change of spirit is for the United States to ratify ILO Conventions 87 and 98. This will send a strong signal to workers, employers, labor law authorities, and to the international community that the United States is serious about holding itself to international human rights and labor rights standards as it presses for the inclusion of such standards in new global and regional trade arrangements.