Human Rights Coalition: A Cry for Help

To the Editor

North Dakota values. Hard work. Quality work. Workers that are the envy of the world. Loyalty.

Reality: North Dakota is short of workers. There are consistently jobs going in want of qualified applicants. North Dakota consistently has the lowest unemployment rate in the country. Employers complain that they cannot recruit workers.

Yet, here in North Dakota we are seeing 1300 hard working, loyal workers locked out of their job. Why? They are unable to come to an agreement with their employer on a new labor contract. They did not strike. They were locked out. 1300 workers, with mortgages to pay, food to put on the table, kids to take care of, suddenly without salary.

The North Dakota Human Rights Coalition supports legislative efforts in the special session this month to redress this shortfall in North Dakota law and they need to address it now. We believe that when two parties are in discussion about issues as basic as salary and benefits there should not be the power discrepancy that allows one side to essentially lock out the other from the means to support themselves. At minimum, workers need to have the means to support themselves and their families during a lock out such as is the case with those workers who are employed at plants in Minnesota. The workers at the American Crystal Plant did not quit. Their employer locked them out of their jobs. These workers should be eligible for unemployment benefits. This needs to be corrected.

We cite Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of which the United State is a signatory:

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable 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 favorable 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.

To pass a law assuring locked workers a means to support themselves through unemployment is assuring the most basic of human rights. We urge North Dakota legislators to support North Dakotan values and North Dakotan workers.

Barry Nelson, NDHRC Chair, on behalf of the board of directors, North Dakota Human Rights Coalition

Barry Nelson
Fargo, ND