December 10 is International Human Rights Day
Dec 10, 2007
December 10 is International Human Rights Day. This date is observed by the international community every year to commemorate the day in 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration was one of the UN’s first major achievements, and remains a powerful instrument and symbol worldwide.
Few people know that the historic document’s first draft was written by a Canadian. The principal author of the Declaration was a native of New Brunswick named John Peters Humphrey. In 1946 he was appointed as the first director of the human rights division of the United Nations Secretariat, where he was the principal drafter of the Universal Declaration.
The National Union has a longstanding history of placing human rights at the forefront of our day-to-day work. That includes all human rights, from equality and civil rights to social and economic rights. It also includes labour rights which are inseparable from all other rights. One cannot pick and choose among human rights, ignoring some while insisting on others. Only as rights equally applied can they be rights universally accepted. Nor can they be applied selectively or relatively.
For the past several years the National Union has been promoting labour rights as a critical component of human rights, helping to protect and promote the social and economic well-being of the human population. We assert that human rights cannot flourish where labour rights are not enforced.
Article 23
Article 23 of the Universal Declaration speaks to labour rights in that it recognizes the right to join a union and bargain collectively as a basic human right and a cornerstone of democracy.
In the past 25 years Canadians have endured a serious erosion of this basic human right, creating a ‘human rights deficit’ in this country. Over 97% of the 180 labour laws passed in Canada in the last 25 years have not advanced, but restricted labour rights. This legislative assault on labour rights has hurt the labour movement and our ability to organize new members.
This year, however, might well be the year that we turned the tide and reversed the attack on labour rights in Canada.
A major cause for this cautious optimism stems from a critical decision by the Supreme Court of Canada earlier this year. On June 8, the Court reversed 20 years of its own jurisprudence by ruling that the guarantee of freedom of association in the Charter of Rights protects the rights of Canadian workers to join a union and bargain collectively. The judgment, the most significant court decision in support of labour rights in the past 20 years, explicitly repudiated the restrictive interpretation given to it in a series of rulings in the 1980s, when it was defined to mean only the right to join a union, but not to engage in union activities.
The decision was a great and unexpected victory for our movement. It offered very positive and powerful language recognizing the legitimacy of labour rights as human rights in Canada. The following is one of many encouraging quotes from the decision:
“Recognizing that workers have the right to bargain collectively as part of their freedom to associate reaffirms the values of dignity, personal autonomy, equality and democracy."
Let’s take a moment today to acknowledge the importance of this declaration and all that it stands for.
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