I was reading the 2010 Human Rights Report on Ethiopia by the US State Department (if you are asking why, please read my previous diaries), and I found the following section ironic. Below the fold, we meet ...
For those of you who are not aware, the US Department of State releases a report that "provides encyclopedic detail on human rights conditions in over 190 countries." See the list of countries and reports for 2010. These reports are one of the main sources human rights activists cite as they hound abusive governments to mend their ways.
As I am reading through the 2010 report on Ethiopia, I found a section entitled "The Right to Organize and Bargain Collectively". My interest piqued, so I dug in. The report on Ethiopia states that:
The [Ethiopian] law protects the right of collective bargaining for most workers, and in practice the government allowed citizens to exercise this right freely. Labor experts estimated that collective bargaining agreements covered more than 90 percent of unionized workers. Representatives negotiated wages at the plant level. Unions in the formal industrial sector made some efforts to enforce labor regulations.
Although the law prohibits antiunion discrimination by employers against union members and organizers, unions reported that employers frequently fired union activists. Lawsuits alleging unlawful dismissal often take years to resolve because of case backlogs in the courts. Employers found guilty of antiunion discrimination were required to reinstate workers fired for union activities and generally did so in practice.
Please note that this section on collective bargaining is within a report on human rights. On one hand, we consider the right to collectively bargain for fair wages to be a human right - for other nations. On the other hand, we dismantle collective bargaining rights for American citizens. Tragedy and Irony.