As I sat there, I thought: Why is this not a human rights issue? Why is it that human rights advocates, and occasionally the U.S. government, can expose injustices overseas -including workplace injustices - yet say nothing about the abuses we suffer here?
There were real people to whom I listened. They were not paid organizers who had gone to Wal-Mart to help workers form a union. Rather, these were individuals who wished for their humanity to be recognized and respected by one of the world's wealthiest employers. This is a company that tells us that they believe in high moral principles, yet I had to ask: Where is the morality in treating workers as expendable commodities? How can one listen with a straight face to Wal-Mart's pronouncements of morality when we hear about or experience the level of immorality described by these workers?
Like you, perhaps, I have watched television advertisements where Wal-Mart employees praise their employer. I wish them well. I don't know how much, if anything they have been paid for their television appearances, but I hold my breath hoping that they do not lose favor with their employer and find themselves cast into the lower reaches of hell, otherwise known as ostracism and unemployment.
So, in sitting and listening to these workers, I returned to the question of human rights. The problem we face with human rights is that we actually do not have them. It's not just a problem that takes place "…over there…" in some other country, but over here as well. The separation of the issue of human rights from the regular, day-in and day-out mistreatment sustained by workers across the U.S.A. turns those particular incidents into something that is near invisible, and often suffered by isolation in seeming isolation.
If the rights of workers are not to be considered human rights, does that mean that workers are in fact considered something less than human?
