Commentary: Low wages violate internationally recognized human rights

Recently the press has been reporting on impoverished workers who are demonstrating for better working conditions and wages that would allow them to a live at least a modestly dignified life. What is missing in this reporting is the fact that the impoverishing wages paid to such workers, at the very least, aid and abet in the violation of the internationally recognized human rights of these workers.

What rights, you ask? These are the human rights that were developed and adopted almost 66 years ago, on Dec. 10, 1948, by the United Nations General Assembly, with the active support of the United States. They are known to the world as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Also missing in this reporting is the fact that low minimum wage laws that permit such impoverishing wages are also aiding and abetting in violating the internationally recognized human rights of these impoverished workers.

What specific Articles of that Declaration are being undermined, and possibly violated by impoverishing wage policies of employers and impoverishing minimum wage laws?

Let’s begin with Article 4 which declares freedom from slavery and involuntary servitude. If a person has no real choice but to work for impoverishing wages in order to survive; that constitutes involuntary servitude.

Article 23.3 of the Declaration deals with workers’ rights; including “…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”. If you, as an impoverished worker, are in need of a safe, sound, sanitary and affordable place in which to live and, as may be the case in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, you may need to wait five to seven years for a subsidy in order obtain such a place; that would constitute a violation of Article 23 of the Declaration. In such a case, both the employers and the government are aiding and abetting in the violation of the human rights of that impoverished worker and his/her dependents.

By the way, Article 23.2 states that “Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work”. Today, after almost 66 years, workers are still fighting for recognition of that right in our own homeland!

Article 24 says that “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay”. Should the impoverished worker have to involuntarily work 50, 60, 70 or more hours simply to acquire the basic needs of a minimally dignified life; that would constitute a violation of Article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Article 25.1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “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”. Combine the current impoverishing minimum wage with holes in our safety net and you have still another human rights violation that is at least aided and abetted by both the employer and the government.

Unfortunately, over the last 65 years our educational institutions, including our business schools, have done a very poor job of educating our people about these universally recognized human rights and of our obligation, as human beings and responsible citizens, to respect and implement these rights in our social, economic and political systems in a timely way.

The challenge remains for us, as a nation, to make these systems compliant with these internationally recognized human rights, preferably in a peaceful manner.

For more information about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its history, visit the United Nations website.

Roland Westerlund is a retired sociologist, public policy analyst and planner, administrator and consultant.