Of the world's richest nations, the United States ranks absolute last, where it comes
to workers' rights. RT's Brigida Santos joins me now to tell that story. Brigida, what can
you tell me about the latest findings by the world's largest trade union federation?
Well, the international trade union confederation has ranked the United States last among the
world's seven largest advanced economies when it comes to workers' rights. Now the ratings
go from best to worst on a scale of one to five, depending on compliance with collective
labor rights. The US has been given a rating of four, which means that the government and
companies engage in serious efforts to crush the collective voice of workers and put fundamental
rights under threat. America is the only group of seven nations with systemic violations
of rights in the workplace. Other countries around the globe that also bear four ratings
include Mexico, Nigeria, the Congo and Venezuela, all of which have fewer resources than the
United States. Hmm. What kinds of violations, Brigida, are
the most common against employees right now? What do you see as the trend?
What the global rights index has exposed is a breakdown in the social contract that governments
and employers have with workers. Now, this isn't only happening in the United States,
but on a global scale. And in fact, violations against workers around the world have reached
a seven year high with upward trends in restricting collective bargaining, criminalizing striking,
and excluding workers from joining or establishing unions. While it's not illegal to strike or
establish unions in America, workers who try to do so here are often retaliated against
by employers. You know, back in 2017, a judge had ruled that Tesla CEO, Elon Musk broke
the law by threatening employees and retaliating against them for wanting to unionize. Another
US-based company that does things like this is Amazon, you know, they've been accused
time and time again of firing workers who have led or participated in strikes.
Yeah. One story that we did awhile back, I thought it was really interesting, is that
they were actually doing plants. They're putting plants inside around workers to act as spies
to figure out whether unions are developing. To find out who, who, who has a complaint.
It's, it's really an ugly process. But the point to me that's important here is as we
beat down unions in the United States, the American middle class is disappearing. They're
not around anymore. And that's, and what that ends up doing is moving to the .0001% of the
economy of, of Americans holding onto all the money. This is a really, it's a really
ugly story. When this federation says, look, we looked at everything and this is bad. I
want to ask you this. How has the coronavirus pandemic allowed companies to even advance
this further on worker agendas? Well, since the COVID-19 outbreak, many companies
have changed the rules to boost their own financial interests at the expense of workers.
Now, in some industries, employees have even been asked to sign away their rights to sue
their bosses if they can track the virus on the job. And the US chamber of commerce is
now lobbying for national liability protections. But we really see violations of worker's safety
and health playing out in the meat packing industry. Thousands of pages of documents
reveal how major meat packing companies like Tyson foods, national beef, Smithfield, and
others have failed to protect over 24,000 workers from contracting the coronavirus.
Emails and records show how meat packing plants were too slow to implement social distancing
measures, install protective barriers and have workers wear masks. Meat packing companies
have even used their protective, their power to circumvent recommendations from local health
officials. And this has happened in other industries as well. Unfortunately, coronavirus
is giving these companies sort of like permission to change the rules and they say that they're
doing it to protect worker, workers, but they're really not.
Hmm. Yeah. You've always said, Brigida, it's going to get worse before it gets better.
You're right. Thank you for joining me and let's continue doing these stories and talk
about the beat down of the American worker. Thank you for joining me. Okay.
Thanks Mike.