For Workplace Rights

How many of us are free, truly free? We are told over and over that we are ‘free’, that we possess inalienable rights, guaranteed by the Constitution. But, all across the US, there are innumerable places in which the right to free speech, to be secure in our persons and effects, to due process of law, are routinely ignored. Indeed, we spend most of our waking hours in these places: they are our places of work.

At work, we can be disciplined or fired for the things we say, even if we say them outside of work; even using the wrong tone can lead to discipline. You can’t be insubordinate and expect to keep your job most of the time. The standard of proof you need as a worker to win in a grievance, an arbitration, or a court case is far beyond what you think justice is. There is no legal protection for you if you are disciplined or fired for expressing political opinions different than your employer’s. You can be fired for a hairstyle your employer doesn’t like. The courts have held that women can be fired for “being too pretty” or because their presence at work might tempt a male boss and put his marriage at risk. Most Constitutional rights either do not exist at work or exist in limited ways. We are subject to near-total surveillance and arbitrary searches. Human Resource departments maintain secret files, not on a select few ‘dissidents’ or troublemakers, but on all employees. Their officers carry out secret investigations into our conduct and performance. With the help of outside consultants, they conduct background checks, prying into the most intimate details of our lives. If a state security service behaved this way, it would be denounced as totalitarian.

We are told constantly by the media that this or that is ‘un-American’ or ‘anti-American’. Is it American to be subjected to arbitrary searches and thought policing? Employers do not even have the excuse that their repressions will bolster national security. We should demand that all authority, whether public or private, should not be arbitrary, but lawfully constituted, just as the Founders insisted. Our rights and freedoms as citizens---people with full rights described in law and in the U.N. Declration of Human Rights---should apply in all spheres of life, public and private.

What is the path to freedom? How do we emancipate ourselves from the dead hand of tyranny in the workplace? We do so first by joining together and insisting that, first and foremost, workers are citizens with full human rights, regardless of legal status. Most of U.S. labor law comes to us from old English master/servant law, so this is actually a revolutionary idea for our country! From this idea, we begin to build worker sovereignty, or worker self-determination, the idea that those of us who do the work should make the decisions, too. Another name for worker sovereignty is socialism.

Our right to collective action still exists. We can, we must, organize our coworkers to support one another. Here are some concrete examples of efforts to get involved in right now: getting real “just cause” standards for discipline and discharge into law; removing barriers to union organizing; covering free speech at work as a protected right; removing all barriers to the hiring and advancement of women and people of color at work; higher minimum wages for all workers without exception; strengthening the laws in Oregon which protect workers against last-minute schedule changes; linking rent control to a higher minimum wage; banning aerial pesticides and protecting farmworkers, health and safety monitors, and medical workers who are in the fields; and changing the laws defining insubordination. Some organizations or unions or worker centers are working on these issues, so reach out to them. Don’t give up---things can, and will, change!

Organizations to get started:

Fight for $15

Portland Jobs with Justice

Portland Workers' Rights Education Project