Sunday, June 24, 2012

Labor rights do not have room among the bourgeois rights' "watchdogs"

Naked Capitalism has a quite interesting entry today where it shows how the main internationally acknowledged human rights' watchdogs totally disdain labor rights. 

Instead they have full sections in their websites about "business rights", showing who is their real master. 

We are talking here about Human Rights' Watch (HRW), Amnesty International (AI) and US-restricted Union for Civil Liberties of America (UCLA). 

Incidentally all the three are located in Anglo-Saxon countries. I am not really too knowledgeable about UCLA for its US-only dimensions but HRW has been often accused of being a CIA cover up, just like USAID. But Amnesty is generally much more respected. 

But how can we respect an organization that has just appointed as its new US head someone, Suzanne Nossel, who supports the genocide in Gaza?! She is a former US Department of State high officer and also a former HRW chief operating officer, a total CIA dog!

Whatever the case it is worth noticing that in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights there are articles that read:

Article 23

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. 

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. 

(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. 

(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. 

(...)

Article 26

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

(...)

These do not seem important in the work of the so-called human rights' watchdogs, unlike "business rights".

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