This time we're talking workers' rights and, yes, once again America is in the doghouse.
The report also ranks the U.S. a dismal 4, a sign of "systematic violations" — collective bargaining rights are uneven across the U.S.'s states and unions are far weaker than some of their counterparts in northern Europe. “Countries such as Denmark and Uruguay led the way through their strong labour laws, but perhaps surprisingly, the likes of Greece, the United States and Hong Kong, lagged behind,” said ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow in a news release. “A country’s level of development proved to be a poor indicator of whether it respected basic rights to bargain collectively, strike for decent conditions, or simply join a union at all.” ...WaPo
The "ITUC" did this assessment? Who are they? The International Trade Unions Confederation? Well, no wonder.
And so the right will dismiss our ranking as union propaganda. But wait. Didn't I see something about the new NYU campus being built by what amounts to slave labor?
N.Y.U. has said the campus will be built and run as a “cultural free zone,” where the university’s core values prevail, from the treatment of workers to the protection of scholarly inquiry. The university says that its efforts to ensure humane living and working conditions have been unprecedented. ...
... Just a few blocks up the street are the modern buildings that have served as N.Y.U.’s temporary campus; a few blocks in the other direction is the stunning ultraluxury hotel where the university has staged cultural events.
Inside City Falcon’s squalid quarters, the bedrooms are so crowded that the men must sleep three to a stack — one on the upper bunk, one on the lower bunk and one below the lower bunk, separated from the floor by only a thin pad for a mattress. In the space between the beds, the men pile cauliflower, onions and 75-pound sacks of Basmati rice to cook after working all day and washing the construction dirt from their clothes. Tangles of exposed wiring hang down from the ceiling, and cockroaches climb the walls.
In the smaller of the two rooms in this apartment, where the only window is covered over, more than a dozen men share a space of barely 200 square feet. They drape towels down from the bed above them to eke out a tiny realm of privacy. ...NYT
This is how an American cultural center -- a showcase, a university -- is being built in one of the other richest nations in the world, Abu Dhabi.
