Today, Freedom House released a new report rating the level of repression of workers' rights in 165 countries across the globe. Each of the countries' rankings was given based on a five-category scale ranging from "Free" to "Very Repressive."

Some of the report's significant findings:

• 1/3 of the global population live in societies in which workers' rights suffer a significant degree of repression.

• Workers in the U.S. exist in a more restrictive labor rights environment than Western Europe, Canada and even Israel.
  
  
• A decline in union membership is not unique to the U.S. Declines have taken place in almost every developed country, and in countries such as Australia, Britain, Germany, and New Zealand, the decline has been substantial.

"Unique" State of Workers' Right in the U.S.

The report shines on a light on the crisis point we've reached on workers' ability to organize unions in the context of constant employer attacks--especially when looking at the state of workers' rights in the United States.

The problems of workers are not restricted to countries with authoritarian political environments.

The most glaring example of this phenomenon is the United States. While the country has adopted laws that in principle guarantee the rights of workers to form unions, engage in collective bargaining, and conduct strikes and other forms of workplace protest, these rights have been circumscribed in practice over the past three decades through a combination of court decisions, political initiatives, and government policies.

According to Freedom House's Arch Puddington, the distinct hostility of our country's overall political environment towards unions is so prevalent it's actually unique. According to the report's findings, this is largely due to mounting resistance by employers. The arsenals of tactics used by employers to stall unionization, combined with "a willingness to violate labor law" and the NLRB's slap-on-the-wrist penalties for these violations are all contributing in a big way to the decline of our unionized workforce.

The rising role of permanent replacement workers has also played a big factor. Before 1981, no major U.S. industry had hired permanent replacements during a labor strike, even though the law allowed them to do so. This is no longer true, and has had the effect of nullifying the strike as a significant weapon in labor relations.

The report, Global State of Workers' Rights: Free Labor in a Hostile World, can be downloaded in all its full (PDF) glory here.