Gravely alarmed that the deprivation of entitled relief assistance to millions of needy individuals and families in this country continues without serious mitigation, but is growing worse in relentlessly accelerated fashion under the prevailing political intransigence; and greatly agitated that a policy of prohibited involuntary servitude, of the massive forced labor foully of "able-bodied" relief dependent adults, is also rapidly taking shape in the several states without any effective political challenge,
We, the undersigned, join here with the E Through mass judicial issue in all the several states upon the historically hard won, positive humanitarian standards in the constitutional and operative international law, what in fact is transpiring and is so vitally at stake in so-called "welfare reform" in these United States today would be defined with simplest clarity and exigent cogency politically for the people of this country and for concerned global publics.
We observe on the law, in particular, that:
I) The obligatory international law is unimpaired by recent changes in U. S. federal welfare law: Nothing in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 Where the implementing power is federally (or confederally) distributed within a national government concurring in any particular international accord, the treaty obligations of the federal (or confederal) state are, upon all familiar principles in the international law, the same as those of non-federative states; it is further the responsibility of the competent national authority of such federative states, under the express standards of the international law, to arrange for the coördinated action of its constituent states to give effect to or to enforce any ratified international treaty or agreement. That principle of the international law is succinctly formulated in Art. 50 of the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights (U.N.T.S. Treaty No. 14668) as a requirement incumbent upon all acceding federative states to extend the rights-conferring provisions of the Covenant "to all parts" of their respective "federal [s]tates without any limitations or exceptions". II) Individual right to relief for the involuntarily unemployed and their families is sufficiently posited in the operative international law to which the United States is party: While the specific rights of individuals and their dependents to social security broadly and to social insurance, that were proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, A third instrument, the Optional Protocol Judicially operative effect by the case authorities under the Supremacy Clause is given to those provisions in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to the extent that they are enacted by the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights of equal protection in law, which proclaim an individual right to social security "in accordance with the organization and resources of each state" for "protection against unemployment" and "in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control". (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Art. 22, Art. 23, Para. 1, & Art. 25, Para. 1). III) Comprehensive social security and social insurance rights in equal protection for the involuntarily unemployed and their dependents are established with particularity under the enacting international agreement: Federal and state judicial jurisdiction to implement the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights, as designated obligatory international law, are affirmed (with unrelated reservations) in the U. S. Senate's ratification resolution:
Among the rights recognized in the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights as ensured upon the undertaking of any participating State Party "to all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction", Those social security and social insurance rights of the involuntarily unemployed set forth with enforceable particularity in the Universal Declaration itself, to the extent to which it is enacted of legally binding effect for the United States of America, encompass the following (which thus do not require and are not given any further specification in the enacting covenants):
By contrast, the right to work with free choice of employment or the right to individually and collectively own property, as proclaimed by the General Assembly, respectively, in Art. 23, Para. 1, and in Art. 17 of the Universal Declaration, which are theoretically also raised of equal protection by the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights, remain abstract ideals without any particular obligatory character in the national laws of acceding State Parties. The right to work was left indistinguishably embracing the merely formal opportunity to seek employment of one's choice and were not a self-operating provision in equal protection, until it was particularized in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as mandating economic and technical measures by government "to the maximum of available resources" for ensuring "full and productive employment" "to achieve the full realization of this right". Upon U. S. case law norms, while a treaty or other international agreement must generally be admitted as self-executing and so as part of the
"supreme Law of the Land" binding upon all state court judges under the Supremacy Clause, any of the provisions of the same treaty or international agreement that may not be manifestly intended by their own terms to prescribe enforceable rules, are not judicially regarded as obligatory. Upon passage of the United State Senate's resolution giving its advice and consent in ratifying the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights (with reservations not affecting any individual right in equal protection of law to social security and social insurance in the event of involuntarily unemployment), the United States declared its understanding that that Covenant, enacting the Universal Declaration of legally binding force in the equal protection of law, would thereby be directly implemented as obligatory international law crucially by both federal and state judicial jurisdiction, as well as on its undertaking to facilitate state and local legislation and administrative measures to give the Covenant full effect.
In that instrument of its ratification, then, the United States expressly accepted its responsibilities under the established principles of international law to see that its constituent state and local governments take all appropriate steps to enforce the Covenant. Together with the number of detailed reservations the United States took to implementing certain provisions of the otherwise unreservedly ratified International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights as recognized obligatory international law, Because the social security and social insurance rights of the involuntarily unemployed and their families are both stated with enforceable particularity in an instrument that has also been raised of equal protection by an international covenant inarguably to legally binding force in the United States upon its succession under the Supremacy Clause of its Constitution, those otherwise unsuperceded rights are unassailably the "supreme Law of the Land". As is objectively manifest in the language of the Covenant and in the U. S. Senate's ratification resolution, the rights asserted are invested in real individuals and so are justiciable rights; by the same token, implementation of the there coördinate obligations of government is to that extent expressly given to the judiciary. No concurrence of the U. S. Congress or of the constituent states in their severalty is at all necessary for those rights-conferring provisions to be judicially enforceable. They are neither stated as abstract goals nor declared to be merely recommended international law. In contemplating what can only be considered "supplementary legislation" "for the better protection of the right[s] secured" under the Covenant, Moreover, that the United States has not yet ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Culural Rights, is also no excuse for any state or federal court judge to not dutifully admit that the proclaimed social security and social insurance rights of the involuntarily unemployed recognized in the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights 30 are binding federal civil rights in the equal protection of law. No absolute distinction between civil and economic or social rights in equal protection is created by the titular division of the two international covenants for the enactment of the principles promulgated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.31 Nor is any such absolute distinction otherwise drawn in legal theory. Both significantly overlapping species of right exist in each covenant. The essential difference between the two enacting covenants, as affects social security rights in general, is that the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights goes further, mandating that each concurring State Party eliminate economically caused unemployment "to the maximum of its available resources", establishing an individual right in the equal protection of law to assured employment in a freely chosen or accepted occupation and a material right to free and enabling education or technical training (including the progressive introduction of free higher education).32
IV) Deprivation of labor rights under workfare assignment is strictly unconstitutional: Exclusion of workfare assignees from the scope of protection under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 Congress found in 1938 that the very existence of sub-minimum wage labor in the domestic economy causes "commerce...to spread and perpetuate such labor conditions among the workers of the several States" and generates social disorder. Whatever the inequities and irrationalities in past and present exemptions under the Fair Labor Standards Act, those exemptions have to date not been against any sub-class of persons as such, such as would be an exemption of workfare assignees from the protections of the Act, irrespective of the kinds of work they would be required to perform. That would be a discriminatory deprivation based merely and prejudicially upon the involuntary unemployment of the workfare subject. But equal protection of the laws under the United States Constitution is principly a formal guarantee of protection from prejudicial abrogation or discriminatory deprivation under color of state law of any equal right. Any revision of the Fair Labor Standards Act to exempt workfare labor would, however, impliedly supercede all international agreements for the protection of labor and of equal rights in law, as well as constitute a complete rejection of the purposes of the domestic Act itself. Such a radical departure cannot be otherwise rationalized than as a rejection by the United States of the principles and of the entire corpus of the international labor and human rights law to which it is now party. Nor can workfare be forcibly construed as community service for exemption from the protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act inorder to evade implying rejection of the international law. For non-punitive community service, under the norms of the obligatory international law, would have to both equitably fall on all similarily situated persons based on relevant and not prejudicial criteria, and be strictly limited both to some general social benefit and in the duration of the tasks for the so required individual.
V) Forced or Compulsory Labor is formally defined and proscribed, with specificity, by and for all participating State Parties, in both the principal Conventions of the International Labour Organisation and in the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights of 1966; and thus, upon the ratification of the United States of America to those international accords, that prohibition is also of legally operative effect for it: All the constituent several states of the United States are bound thereby, under the Federal Constitution, to uphold and to adhere to those basic labor protective standards positively established in the so obligatory international law as the "supreme Law of the Land" in this country:
By the Slavery Convention of September 25th, 1926, "compulsory or forced labour" for private benefit, as distinct from slavery itself, is also, for the first time, internationally prohibited and its surviving forms were to be progressively terminated. Further advancing the 1926 Slavery Convention's objective "to take all necessary measures to prevent compulsory or forced labour [as originally only implicitly defined there] from developing into conditions analogous to slavery", From 1930, the State Parties ratifying the first I.L.O. Convention against what in U.S. Constitutional parlance and case law norma is prohibited "involuntary servitude", undertook "to suppress the use of forced or compulsory labour in all its forms within the shortest possible period", Of judicially enforceable effect in all participating countries for both its comprehensive particularity and stringent delimitation of what constitutes prohibited forced labor, and pertinent to resolution of the "workfare" question in this country today, the statutory definition promulgated in the Forced Labour Convention of 1930, that remains a fundamental principle in all later evolved international law, is, as follows:
1. For the purposes of this Convention the term "forced or compulsory labour" shall mean all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.
2. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this Convention, the term "forced or compulsory labour" shall not include (a) ...compulsory military service...for work of a purely military character;
(b) any work or service which forms part of the normal civic obligations of the citizens of a fully self-governing country;
(c) any work or service exacted as a consequence of a conviction in a court of law...
(d) any work or service exacted in cases of emergency, that is to say, in the event of war or of a calamity or threatened calamity, such as fire, flood, famine, earthquake, violent epidemic or epizootic diseases, invasion by animal, insect or vegetable pest, and in general any circumstance that would endanger the existence or the well-being of the whole or part of the population;
(e) minor communal services of a kind which, being performed by the members of a community in the direct interest of the said community, can therefore be considered as normal civic obligations incumbent upon the members of the community, provided that the members of the community or their direct representatives shall have the right to be consulted in regard to the need for such services.47 Reaffirming and augmenting the standards delineating prohibited forced labor as first implied in the Slavery Convention of 1926 and as first formulated in the Forced Labour Convention of 1930, while also invoking from the developing body of international labor law the specific prohibition established in the Protection of Wages Convention of 1949 (a) as a means of political coercion or education or as punishment for holding or expressing political views ideologically opposed to the established political, social or economic system;
(b) as a method of mobilising and using labour for purposes of economic development;
(c) as a means of labour discipline;
(d) as a punishment for having participated in strikes;
(e) as a means of racial, social, national or religious discrimination.51 Without any remotely arguable, nullifying supercession anywhere in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, What is embodied in the obligatory international law as a higher, a civilised norm, cannot easily or respectably, however, be legislatively renounced by any State Party before a watching world. That, in crucial part, is why there is no proclaimed or implied supercession of the obligatory international labor and human rights law in the United States by recent revision of its domestic welfare-workfare law. While the very first and most fundamental legal principle engendered by the United States against forced labor remains its internationally declared constitutional policy of prohibiting any form of forced or compulsory labor, neither allowing it if for some public and not private benefit, but only "except as punishment for crime of which the person shall have been duly convicted", Accordingly, any deprivation or threatened deprivation in the United States of social relief benefits to the involuntarily unemployed or their dependents, inorder to enforce or to compel compliance with any workfare requirement, would therefore satisfy on all fours the juristically positive definition established in the obligatory international law of what "forced or compulsory labour" is Under the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights of 1966, a concentrated restatement in developed form of the allowable exceptions to otherwise prohibited labor at any requirement is expressly made, reinforcing the principle first formulated in the Forced Labour Convention of 1930, and rendering any doctrinal abrogation or practice in violation of that fully particularized labor protective right a positive (and not merely constructive) offense also in the international human rights law. Without neglecting the internationally declared policy of the United States of America not to allow any form of forced or compulsory labor (even for public, not private, purposes), 2. No one shall be held in servitude.
3. (a) No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour.
(b) Paragraph 3 (a) shall not be held to preclude, in countries where imprisonment with hard labour may be imposed as a punishment for a crime [such as in the U. S.], the performance of hard labour in pursuance to such punishment by a competent court.
(c) For the purpose of this paragraph the term "forced or compulsory labour" shall not include:
(i) Any work or service, not referred to in sub-paragraph (b), normally required of a person who is under detention in consequence of a lawful order of a court, or of a person during conditional release from such detention;
(ii) Any service of a military character and, in countries where conscientious objection is recognized, any national service required by law of conscientious objectors;
(iii) Any service exacted in cases of emergency or calamity threatening the life or well-being of the community;
(iv) Any work or service which forms part of normal civil obligations.60 No special proofs are needed to make good the obvious truth that workfare is not justifiable as if a lawful and normal requirement upon a duly convicted and incarcerated person; or as if it were some form of national service or in any way analogous to some universally required military service; or as if it were a legitimate demand in some proclaimed natural or social disaster befalling the nation or some region of the country; or as if it could be construed as some sort of "normal civil obligation" for "community service" work. Under the Covenant's equal protection standard, What, in terms of domestic origin, is therefore deprived by such forced labor impositions is the relief dependent person's constitutional liberty interest not to be subject to involuntary servitude under the Thirteenth Amendment, Sec. 1, prohibition in the U. S. Constitution. Only by so far guardedly presuming that involuntarily unemployed but employable, adult relief dependent persons, who have been convicted of no crime, nonetheless are, as a class, invested with no Thirteenth Amendment guarantee against the imposition of involuntary servitude; and by so far purely disregarding the correlative prohibitons against forced or compulsory labor in the obligatory international law, the "supreme Law of the Land" under Art. VI, Cl. 2, of the U. S. Constitution, have the courts, in the few cases brought against welfare deprivations for non-compliance with workfare demands, actually been able to dispositionally rationalize that doubly constitutionally criminal policy and practice. But the class of workfare subjects are not duly convicted persons who, under the "Exception Clause" to the Thirteenth Amendment prohibition against involuntary servitude, may be lawfully subjected to a labor requirement under penalty as a means of inculcating "labour discipline", Whether, then, any required labor is intrinsically debasing in the manner of its obligation or is some esteemed public service in a rationally based universal duty, formally has everything to do with whether its character may be one of prohibited "involuntary servitude" and whether the penalty for any non-compliance may be one of a "menacing" nature or not. Workfare by definition is both "not voluntary" and is an invidious servitude, else it would not be workfare but a regular job. What separates it from the common necessity among the unpropertied classes to accept some employment is precisely the legal requirement and the penalty or threat of penalty of official deprivation of the fundamental labor-protective and human right of the involuntarily unemployed to social assistance for themselves and their families. That violation, on its present scale, can neither be tolerated nor given minimal importance by labor itself, without voluntary submission to a greatly impaired historical position economically in law for all working people in this country. VI) Some Further Entailed & Consequential Labour-Protective Rights, Ancillary Under The Obligatory International Law In The United States, That Are Also Being Violated Or Threatened By Its State-Level Workfare Practices:
Having established that both the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights of 1966 and the Forced Labour Convention of 1930 (as further amended by the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention of 1957), specifically allow, then, only for required civilian labor in cases of natural or social disaster or in fulfillment of normal and limited civic obligations on an equal standard, we observe that certain other crucial labor-protective rights, further restraining the scope of any lawfully required civilian labor, which are in part posited in the Forced Labour Convention of 1930 and in other part in the Protection of Wages Convention of 1949, are indirectly made of legally binding effect in the United States as the "supreme Law of the Land" under Art. VI, Cl. 2, of the United States Constitution. While expansively reiterating the international prohibition from 1926 against the use of any form of forced or compulsory labor for private benefit, The restrictions on recourse to admitted forms of forced or compulsory labor under the Forced Labour Convention of 1930 differentiate the allowable purposes and scope of application, while defining the persons who may be obligated and the limits of such obligations. Further, they extend the abstract meanings of the criteria of social (as opposed to individual) voluntariness, of natural or social disasters and of normal civic or communal duty. Those general preconditions for the lawful imposition of such forced or compulsory labor, upon which the legitimacy or illegitmacy of any workfare policy or practice is also to be tested and adjudged, are, as follows:
Except as otherwise provided for in Artice 10 of this Convention, any authority competent to exact forced or compulsory labour shall, before deciding to have recourse to such labour, satisfy itself (a) that the work to be done or the service to be rendered is of important direct interest for the community called upon to do the work or render the service;
(b) that the work or service is of present or imminent necessity;
(c) that it has been impossible to obtain voluntary labour for carrying out the work or rendering the service by the offer of rates of wages and conditions of labour not less favourable than those prevailing in the area concerned for similar work or service; and
(d) that the work or service will not lay too heavy a burden upon the present population, having regard to the labour available and its capacity to undertake the work.70 Disregarding, then, the exception taken in 1930 for transitional recourse to forced or compulsory labor for the performance of public works or services or for the payment of some labor tribute, socio-legal norms respecting the persons whose labor may be lawfully compelled, the permissible length of such required service, and the wage rate and hour conditions of such imposed employment, were instructively established in the Forced Labour Convention of 1930. Although those restrictions in the use of forced or compulsory labor in the Convention of 1930 anticipate application distinctly also in the colonial territories, not only as principles exercised over the domains of the metropolitan countries, the forced or compulsory civilian labor required on the European Continent during WWI, and the horrendous abrogations of those civilised norms during WWII under Fascism, gave rise to globally exigent universality (as is seen on the several other instruments in the international labor and human rights law invoked here). Certain of those basic civil norms governing allowable required labor over subject persons are, more disturbingly therefore, found today to be defiantly violated under workfare on a large scale in the United States of America and doctrinally rationalized politically in open contempt of the developed standards in the obligatory international law. Of signal importance among those binding legal standards being abrogated or imminently threatened under workfare in this country today, we find in the Forced Labour Convention of 1930 (taken without the then-transitional exceptions) principally the following personal, subject-based restrictions on the imposition of forced or compulsory labor generally:
1. Only adult able-bodied males who are of an apparent age of not less than 18 and not more than 45 years may be called upon for forced or compuslory labour...the following limitations and conditions shall apply:...
(b) exemption of school teachers and pupils and of officials of the administration in general....
1. The maximum period for which any person may be taken for forced or compulsory labour of all kinds in any one period of twelve months shall not exceed sixty days, including the time spent in going to and from the place of work....
1. ...the hours worked in excess of the normal working hours shall be remunerated at rates prevailing in the case of overtime for voluntary labour....
1. ...forced or compulsory labour of all kinds shall be remunerated in cash at rates not less than those prevailing for similar kinds of work either in the district in which the labour is employed or in the district from which labour is required, whichever may be the higher...
3. The wages shall be paid to each worker individually and not to...any other authority....
5. ...deductions from wages shall not be made either for the payment of taxes or for special food, clothing or accomodation supplied to a worker...
1. Any laws or regulations relating to workmen's compensation for accidents or sickness arising out of the employment of the worker and any laws or regulations providing for compensation for the dependents of deceased or incapacitated workers which are or shall be in force in the territory concerned shall be equally applicable to persons from whom forced or compulsory labour is exacted and to voluntary workers....
1. To give effect to the provisions of this Convention the competent authority shall issue complete and precise regulations governing the use of forced or compulsory labour.
2. These regulations shall contain, inter alia, rules permitting any person from whom forced or compulsory labour is exacted to forward all complaints relative to the conditions of labour to the authorities and ensuring that such complaints will be examined and taken into consideration.
Adequate measures shall in all cases be taken to ensure that the regulations governing the employment of forced or compulsory labour are strictly applied, either by extending the duties of any existing labour inspectorate which has been established for the inspection of voluntary labour to cover the inspection of forced or compulsory labour or in some other appropriate manner. Measures shall also be taken to ensure that the regulations are brought to the knowldge of persons from whom such labour is exacted.
The illegal exaction of forced or compulsory labour shall be punishable as a penal offense, and it shall be an obligation on any Member ratifying this Convention to ensure that the penalties imposed by law are really adequate and are strictly enforced...74 Clearly, labor other than is freely donated that is not remunerated at prevailing wage rates is also, by necessary implication on the developed standards of the Forced Labour Convention of 1930, a form of forced or compulsory labor, whether required by law within any allowable limits or otherwise imposed against any employee deprived of the means to defend that entitlement secured in the international law. In amenidng the 1930 Convention, the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention of 1957 therefore invoked in its "Preamble" the Protection of Wages Convention of 1949, denouncing "any method of payment which deprives the worker of a genuine possibility of terminating his employment" and connectively "deciding upon the adoption of further proposals with regard to the abolition of forced or compulsory labour constituting a violation of the rights of man referred to in the Charter of the United Nations and enunciated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights". By so invoking the Protection of Wages Convention of 1949, it may be said that the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention of 1957, to that extent, enacts of juridically binding effect the particular provisions in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 which secure a right to "equal pay for equal work" and the "right to a just and favourable remuneration". In this Convention, the term "wages" means remuneration of earnings, however designated or calculated, capable of being expressed in terms of money and fixed by mutual agreement or by national laws or regulations, which are payable in virtue of a written or unwritten contract of employment by an employer to an employed person for work done or to be done or for services rendered or to be rendered.
1. This Convention applies to all persons to whom wages are paid or payable.
2. The competent authority may, after consultation with the organisations of employers and employed persons directly concerned, if such exist, exclude from the application of any of the provisions of this Convention categories of persons whose circumstances and conditions of employment are such that the application to them of all or any of the said provisions would be inappropriate and who are not employed in manual labour or are employed in domestic service or work similar thereto....
1. Wages payable in money shall be paid only in legal tender, and payment in the form of promissory notes, vouchers or coupons, or in any other form alleged to represent legal tender, shall be prohibited....
The laws or regulations giving effect to the provisions of this Convention shall (a) be made available for the information of the persons concerned;...
(c) prescribe adequate penalties or other appropriate remedies for any violation therof....78 If, then, the prevailing wage standard were adhered to for all lawfully unexemptable employments (ibid., Art. 2, Para. 2), workfare in the U.S.A. would again not be workfare but more like a regular job. It would be nearly identical with any regular job if no penalty in law were imposed for any non-compliance with some arbitrary workfare assignment. 2. No restrictions may be placed on the exercise of this right other than those which are prescribed by law and which are necessary in a democratic society in the interest of national security or public safety, public order (ordre public), the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. This article shall not prevent the imposition of lawful restrictions on members of the armed forces and of the police in the exercise of this right.
3. Nothing in this article shall authorize States Parties to the International Labour Organisation Convention of 1948 concerning freedom of association and protection of the right to organize [68 UNTS 17] to take legislative measures which would prejudice, or to apply the law in such a manner as to prejudice, the guarantees provided for in that Convention.81 No legitimate reason nor remotely plausible pretext can possibly be openly stated for denying or for, in any degree, restricting the right of workfare subjects in the United States to form or join labor unions, whether on grounds of "national security", "public safety" or "public order" (though the federal court's sequestered decisions treating workfare subjects as devoid of any Thirteenth Amendment constitutional liberty interest, suggest the contrary), or whether on grounds for the "protection of public health or morals" or for the "protection of the rights and freedoms of others". (Ibid., Art. 22, Para. 2.) Obviously, no possibly arguable burden exists in jurisprudence or in any civil political doctrine to any opposed conclusion: that so enacted right to labor union protection inclusively for workfare subjects, is neither inferential nor interpretative: as a positive right in the international law acceded to by the United States, it is plainly and undeniably the "supreme Law of the Land" under Art. VI, Cl. 2, of the U. S. Constitution, the Supremacy Clause, and so is "binding upon all state court judges" (loc. cit.). Following admission by the competent authorities in this country of the workfare subject's right to labor union protection, other labor rights proclaimed in the Universal Declaration but not necessarily raised of legally binding effect under the one of the two enacting International Covenants to which the United States of America is now party, such as the right to periodic holidays with pay,
We, the here undersigned concerned citizens of these United States, therefore agree with the E A) to compellingly define for domestic publics what universal legal norms of civilised conduct are being abrogated or violated in the United States by the prevailing welfare-rights deprivation and forced or compulsory labor impositions under workfare;
B) to bring the U. S. Administration to the earliest possible acceptance that is has an incumbent duty under the international law, in the devolution of the social security relief program from federal control to state administrative initiative, to instruct the several states of their constitutional obligations to uphold the international law, the "supreme Law of the Land", by providing state social assistance of right to the involuntarily unemployed and their families (without any time limits or other arbitrary conditions) and by refraining from subjecting any person under state workfare to forced or compulsory labor in any of its proscribed forms;
C) to bring the U. S. Congress to the earliest possible recognition and resolve that the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 must be repealed in its entirety, as it provides, through inseparable popular misconception, a bad pretext for the criminal imposition of massive forced or compulsory labor and public-relief deprivation to millions of needy, involuntarily unemployed people and their families, in open and contemptuous violation of the unsuperceded human and labor protective rights secured in the yet unrenounced obligatory international law; and,
D) if it should prove necessary, to raise each and every case of any such transgression of the implicated international labor and human rights law ultimately before the UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION and the INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANISATION, respectively, to bring to the attention of those international authorities and to world publics the realities, abhorrent by all universal legal norms, of the intractable imposition of a massive forced labor order in the United States of America, in previously unthinkable deprivation of the most basic and vitally necessary human and labor protective rights.
Drafted, on behalf of the Emergency Committee to Defend Constitutional Welfare Rights, U. S. A., by MARTIN J. SAWMA.
In responsibility wherefore, I do hereunto affix my signature:
AFFIRMATIVELY BY, MARTIN J. SAWMA
Exec. Dir. & Int. Rep. Executed in the signature of Martin J. Sawma at the witness of the notary on April 21st, 1998, in the City of Niagara Falls, in the County of Niagara, of the State of New York. Notary Public Karen Doll, qualified in Niagara County, Commission then expiring March 20th, 1999. Copy available on request.
rights which are part of the yet unsuperceded "supreme Law of the Land" in this country. And, we further agree and urge that all such actions also be brought, with the same advocacy objectives, applicably under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or under the prohibition against involuntary servitude in the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, or both.
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security...in accordance with the organization and resources of each State....Everyone has the right...to protection against unemployment....Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and 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.16
Further, as raised of legally binding force in equal protection of law inclusively for the United States by the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights, the so enacted Universal Declaration with particularity entitles mothers and all children to exceptional social services protections, "to special care and assistance", in keeping with the available ways and means in each respective country, without discrimination over the marital status of the mother or over "whether [a child] is born in or out of wedlock".17 from executives, administrators and professionals, to agricultural laborers, workers in fish canneries and employees in maple or beet sugar processing, to certain occupations in various small-scale enterprises, and to newspaper deliverers, babysitters and companions for the elderly or the disabled.
Each Member of the International Labour Organisation which ratifies this Convention undertakes to suppress and not to make use of any form of forced or compulsory labour
a right which we have found is plainly and indisputably secured in the yet unsuperceded obligatory international law for the United States as the "supreme Law of the Land".54 No abrogation of the pre-existing individual right to relief assistance for the involuntarily unemployed and their dependents, nor any federal time limitation on the provision by any of the several states of relief assistance to the statutorily needy, is imposed under the Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act of 1996.55 Rather, that Act creates a system of welfare block grants to the states and does not relieve the competent national authority from its obligations under the principles of the international labor and human rights law to inform its constituent states as to their responsibilities to uphold the international agreements to which the United States is a party a duty also imposed upon the states under Art. VI, Cl. 2, of the United States Constitution.56
viz., "all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily". Article 8. 1. No one shall be held to slavery; slavery and the slave-trade in all their forms shall be prohibited.
Where recourse was then still allowably had to forced or compulsory labor for discharge of a contributory labor burden or for "execution of public works", the Forced Labour Convention of 1930 had not required (under Art. 10) that it be first found impossible to obtain voluntary labor at prevailing labor conditions and wage rates in the area for similar work or service. Otherwise, however, the preconditions for the lawful imposition of such forced or compulsory labor are the same under Art. 10 as they are under Art. 9.71 While the application of these preconditions would, upon any construction of the terms, absolutely preclude the imposition of workfare as it is known in practice in the United States today, the amending Abolition of Forced Labour Convention of 1957 went further, finally proscribing any recourse to forced or compulsory labor "as a method of mobilising and using labour for the purposes of economic development",72 as was contemplated in 1930 for the progressive abolition of forced or compulsory labor for the "execution of public works" or for the discharge of some contributory labor burden.73
If only the period limitations established in the Forced Labour Convention of 1930 for any legally required labor were observed, workfare today in the United States would not furnish any extra advantage over labor for either the public or private employer. But the wage issue brings us again closer to the evolved sense of what "illegal exaction" is in the international law.
1. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
1 United States, 104th Congress, 2nd Session; H.R. 3734; S. 1956; Passed July 31st August 1st, 1996; Approved by President W. J. Clinton August 22nd, 1996; 110 U.S. Stat. 2105 et seq.; U.S. Public Law 104-193 August 22nd, 1996.
2 United Nations, General Assembly, Resolution 217A (III), Adopted December 10th, 1948; Official Records of the Third Session of the General Assembly, Part I: Resolutions (A/810)(Palais De Chaillot, Paris: U. N. Dec. 1948), pp. 71-77.
3 United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 999, p. 171 et seq.; UNTS Treaty No. 14668; Adopted December 16th, 1966; Entered into Force March 23rd, 1976; Acceded to by the United States June 8th, 1992; Entered into Force for the U.S.A. September 8th, 1992. U.S. Congress, Senate, Congressional Record, April 2nd, 1992, pp. S 4781 S 4784; United States Department of State, Treaties in Force: A List of Treaties & Other International Agreements of the United States in Force on January 1st, 1997 (Washington, D.C., Released August 1997), p. 375; United Nations, Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General: Status as at 31 December 1996 (New York, 1997), pp. 120-121 & 130; and see, United Nations, Human Rights: International Instruments: Chart of Ratifications as at 30 June 1996 (New York & Geneva, 1996), pp. 10-11.
4 U.S. Public Law 104-4, Sec. 4 (1) & (5), March 22nd, 1995; 109 U.S. Stat. 49; 2 USC Sec. 1503 (1) & (5).
5 Ante, 999 UNTS 171, at 185.
6 United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 15, p. 35, at pp. 40, 68 & 76-81; UNTS Treaty No. 229, Charles I. Bevans, comp., Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of State, Released June 1970), vol. 4, p. 188, at pp. 204 & 207-209. Originally signed at Versailles June 28th, 1991; Amended principally at Montreal October 9th, 1946 Twenty-Ninth Session, ILO General Conference; Entered into Force April 20th, 1948; Accepted by the U.S.A. August 2nd, 1948;...Re-entered into force for the U.S.A. February 15th-18th, 1980.
7 A/RES/217A (III), op. cit., Art. 22, Art. 23 (Para's. 1 & 3), Art. 25 (Para's. 1 & 2), at pp. 75 & 76.
8 United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 993, p. 3 et seq.; UNTS Treaty No. 14531; Adopted December 16th, 1966; Entered into Force January 3rd, 1976.
9 Ante, "ICCPR", 999 UNTS 171, resp., at 172-173, 173, 179 & 185.
10 999 UNTS 302-305; "ICCPR", supra.
11 A/RES/217A (III), op. cit., resp. at pp. 75 & 76.
12 Art. VI, Cl. 2, "Supremacy Clause", United States Constitution: United States v. Schooner Peggy, 1 Cranch 103, 5 U.S. 103, at 109-110, (Writ of Error to U.S. Cir. Ct., Conn. Dist., October 2nd, 1800, December Term, 1801); Copyright Convention with Great Britain, VI Op.Atty.Gen. 291, at 292-293 & 295-299, (Hon. Caleb Cushing, U.S. Atty. Gen., Opinion of February 16th, 1854); Caparell et al. v. Goodbody, 29 A.2d 563, at 568, (N.J. Ct. Chanc., December 29th, 1942); State v. Arthur, 261 P.2d 135, at 137-138, (Sup. Ct. of Idaho, August 21st, 1953, rehearing denied October 6th, 1953). See further 87 Corpus Juris Secundum "Treaties" Secs. 2 & 19-21 (1954; cum. supp. 1997).
13 Ante, "ICCPR", Art. 2 (Para. 1) & Art. 50; 999 UNTS 171, at 173-174 & 185.
14 Idem, "ICCPR", Art. 2, Para. 1; 999 UNTS 171, at 173-174.
15 Ante, "ICESCR", Art. 2 (Para. 1), Art. 6 (Para's. 1 & 2) and Art. 9; 993 UNTS 3, at 5, 6 & 7. This distinguished difference is consistent with the General Assembly's original intent. See here n. 31, infra.
16 Ante, Universal Declaration, Art. 22, Art. 23 (Para. 1) & Art. 25 (Para. 1); A/RES/217A (III), op. cit., pp. 75-76.
17 Idem, Universal Declaration, Art. 25, Para. 2; A/RES/217A (III), p. 76.
18 "ICESCR", supra, 993 UNTS 3, at 5 & 6; Art. 2 (Para. 1) & Art. 6 (Para's. 1 & 2); and, Copyright Convention with Great Britain, VI Op.Atty.Gen. 291, at 292-293, (Cushing, 1854).
19 Ante, "ICCPR", Art. 47; 999 UNTS 171, at 185. Ante, "ICESCR", Art. 25; 993 UNTS 3, at 10. Note: By not elevating abstract property rights, the Covenants reach universality not impeded by property relations in differing social systems.
20 James Foster & Pleasant Elam v. David Neilson, 2 Pet. (U.S. Reports) 253, at 314, (January Term, 1829); Sei Fujii v. State, 242 P.2d 617, at 619-622, (Sup. Ct. of Calif., en banc, April 17th, 1952); Jose Comacho v. William T. Rogers, 199 F.Supp. 155, at 158, (USDC/SDNY, October 19th, 1961); Student Government Association of Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College v. The Board of Supervisors of Louisiana State University, Etc., et al., 264 So.2d 916, at 919-920, (Sup. Ct. of La., June 29th, 1972); United States of America v. Morris Postal, et al., 589 F.2d 862, at 876-877, (U.S. Ct. of App., 5th Cir., February 15th, 1979); United States of America v. Manuel Antonio Noriega, 808 F.Supp. 791, at 798-799, (USDC/SDFla., December 8th, 1992); Melissa Knowlton v. Harry Ward, 889 S.W.2d 721, at 726, (Sup. Ct. of Ark., December 5th, 1994). See further 87 Corpus Juris Secundum "Treaties" Secs. 2, 15 & 19 (1954; cum. supp. 1997).
21 Sec. II, Para. 5, of the U.S. Senate's advice & consent resolution, supra, ratifying the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights, Congressional Record Senate, April 2nd, 1992, Executive Session, pp. S 4783 S 4784; and the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights, supra, Art. 2 (Para's. 1 & 2) and Art. 50, 999 UNTS 171, at 173-174 & 185.
22 Idem, Sec. 1 of the U.S. Senate's advice & consent resolution ratifying the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights, Congressional Record Senate, April 2nd, 1992, Executive Session, p. S 4783.
23 Ante, "ICCPR", Preamble & Art. 1 through Art. 27; 999 UNTS 171, at 172-179.
24 Sec. III of the U.S. Senate's advice & consent resolution, supra, ratifying the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights, Congressional Record Senate, April 2nd, 1992, Executive Session, p. S 4784.
25 Copyright Convention with Great Britain, supra, VI Op.Atty.Gen. 291, at 292-293 & 295-299.
26 Loc. cit., Sec. II, Para. 5, U.S. Senate's advice & consent resolution ratifying the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights, Congressional Record Senate, April 2nd, 1992, Executive Session; and "ICCPR", ante, Art. 2 (Para. 2) & Art. 50; 999 UNTS 171, at 173-174 & 185. That is also the general standard observed under Art. 19, Para. 7, of the I.L.O. Constitution: l.c., 15 UNTS 35, at 40, 68 & 76-81; 4 Bevans 188, at 204, 207-209.
27 "ICCPR", supra, Preamble & Art. 1 through Art. 27; 999 UNTS 171, at 172-179.
28 See further the uncontested comments on consideration of the consent resolution separately made by Senators Pell and Moynihan in the Congressional Record of April 2nd, 1992, respectively at pp. S 4781 and S 4783.
29 Student Government Assoc., supra, 264 So.2d 916, at 919.
30 Ante, 999 UNTS 171; see the specific provisions cited in n. 9 here.
31 One instrumental convention was to give the Universal Declaration "legally binding effect", the other "the measures for its implementation". United Nations, General Assembly, Official Records of the Third Session of the General Assembly, Part I: Annexes to the Summary Records of Meetings 1948, Document A/777E (Paris: U.N., [May 1949]), p. 542; and, Official Records of the Third Session of the General Assembly, Part I: Plenary Meetings of the General Assembly, Summary Records of Meetings: 21 September 12 December 1948 (Paris: U.N., [Jan. 1949]), p. 935 & pp. 852-935, passim.
32 Ante, "ICESCR", Articles 2-4, 6-9, 11 (Para. 1) & 13; 993 UNTS 3, at 5, 6-7, 7 & 8.
33 29 USC Sec. 201 et seq. (1978; cum. supp. 1997).
34 29 USC Sec. 202.(a) (1978).
35 29 USC Sec. 202.(b) (1978).
36 29 USC Secs. 213 & 214 (1978; cum. supp. 1997).
37 The Equal Protection Clause (Sec. 1., Amend. XIV) prohibits any state from "deny[ing] to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". Only in the franchise does U.S. federal constitutional equality directly obtain.
38 League of Nations, Treaty Series, vol. LX, p. 253, at p. 265; LNTS Treaty No. 1414; Art. 5, Para. 2; United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 212, p. 17, at p. 20. Signed at Geneva September 25th, 1926; Entered into Force March 9th, 1927.
39 Idem, Slavery Convention of 1926, Art. 5, Para's. 1 & 2; LX LNTS 253, at 265; 212 UNTS 17, at 20-23.
40 Accession of the U.S.A. to the Slavery Convention of 1926, accorded March 21st, 1929, LXXXIII LNTS 417.
Note: The United States renewed its participation in the Slavery Convention of 1926 firstly be acceding on March 7th, 1956, to the Protocol Amending the Slavery Convention Signed at Geneva on 25 September 1926, which was adopted by the General Assembly on October 23rd, 1953, A/Res/794 (VIII), and entered into force on December 7th, 1953; secondly by participating in the Final Act of the United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on a Supplemental Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery, which was done at Geneva on September 7th, 1956; and finally by acceding on December 6th, 1967, to the Supplemental Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery, which was done at Geneva on September 7th, 1956, and registered April 30th, 1957 266 UNTS 3, at 4 & 40. See the Protocol of December 7th, 1953, and the amendments to the Slavery Convention in its annex, 182 UNTS 51, UNTS Treaty No. 2422. And see the Slavery Convention Signed at Geneva on 25 September 1926 And [As] Amended by the Protocol, 212 UNTS 17, UNTS Treaty No. 2861; accession of U.S.A. on March 7th, 1956, to the amending Protocol & to the Amended Convention, 230 UNTS 439 & 446, UNTS Treaty No. 2422. Human Rights: International Instruments: Chart of Ratifications as at 30 June 1996, op. cit., pp. 10-11.
41 Human Rights: International Instruments: Chart of Ratifications as at 30 June 1996, op. cit., pp. 10-11; and see the principal text, United Nations, Centre for Human Rights, Human Rights Status of International Instruments (New York & Geneva, 1987), pp. 205-206 & 213-216; Treaties in Force...on January 1st, 1997, op. cit., pp. 437-438. And Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General as at 31 December 1996, op. cit., pp. 719-725.
42 Slavery Convention of 1926, supra, preface to Art. 5; LX LNTS 253, at 256; 212 UNTS 17, at 20.
43 United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 39, p. 55, at pp. 56 & 58; UNTS Treaty No. 612; Forced Labour Convention, 1930, Art. 2, Para's. 1 & 2; ILO C. 29; Adopted at the Fourteenth Session of the International Labour Conference, Geneva, June 10th-28th, 1930; Entered into Force May 1st, 1932. International Labour Organisation, Conventions and Recommendations: 1919-1966 (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1966), pp. 155-163, Art. 2 at pp. 155-156.
Comment: While the United States had not ratified the Forced Labour Convention, 1930, at any time following its adoption and through its Final Articles of Revision done in 1946 (see the Certified Statement of August 10th, 1949, in 39 UNTS 55, at 82), subsequently the United States implicitly has subscribed formally to the Forced Labour Convention, 1930, through its accession to the Supplemental Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (266 UNTS 40, the Preamble at 40) and through its accession to the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957, Entered into Force for the U.S. from September 25th, 1992 Id., Treaties in Force on January 1st, 1997, p. 388; 320 UNTS 291, infra, the Preamble at 292-293; UNTS Treaty No. 4648; ILO C. No. 105; Adopted at the Fourtieth Session of the International Labour Conference, Geneva, June 5th-27th, 1957; Entered into Force January 17th, 1959 Id., Conventions and Recommendations: 1919-1966, pp. 891-893, the Preamble at 891.
44 Idem, Forced Labour Convention, 1930, Art. 1, Sec. 1; 39 UNTS 55, at 56; idem, Conventions and Recommendations: 1919-1966, at p. 155.
45 Forced Labour Convention, 1930, id., Art. 1, Sec. 2; 39 UNTS 55, at 56; Conventions and Recommendations 1919-1966, id., at p. 155.
46 Idem, Forced Labour Convention, 1930, Art. 1, Para. 3; 39 UNTS 55, at 58. Idem, Conventions and Recommendations: 1919-1966, at p. 155.
Comment: While formally seeking from 1926 "to find the means of giving practical effect throughout the world to such intentions" "of securing the complete suppression of slavery in all its forms and of the slave trade" (LX LNTS 255), as were cited and previously proclaimed in the General Act of Berlin of 1885, in the General Act & Declaration of the Brussels Conference of 1889-90 and in the Convention of Saint-Germain-en-Laye of 1919, the signatories to the Slavery Convention of 1926 had not prescribed a definite transition period for abolishing all compulsory or forced labour for any private benefit in the territories or protectorates of the imperial powers, but (in Art. 5, LX LNTS 266) they had only expressed the pious objective that "the High Contracting Parties shall endeavor progressively and as soon as possible to put an end to the practice." Evidently, by 1930 time appeared to be running out in international assessment for the voluntary abolition by the several state parties of the practice of compulsory or forced labour for private benefit within the framework of existing law and employment relations, so that a firm time limit was set for the Governing Body to "consider the possibility of the suppression of forced or compulsory labour in all its forms without a further transitional period" (id., Art. 1, Para. 3).
47 Idem, 39 UNTS 55, at 58; idem, Conventions & Recommendations: 1919-1966, pp. 155-156.
48 United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 138, p. 225 et seq.; UNTS Treaty No. 1871; ILO C. No. 95; Adopted at the Thirty-Second Session of the International Labour Conference, Geneva, July 1st, 1949; Entered into Force September 24th, 1952. Conventions & Recommendations: 1919-1966, op. cit., at pp. 729-734. (See here under n. 49, infra.)
49 Idem, Protection of Wages Convention, 1949, Art. 1, Art. 2 (Para's. 1& 2), Art. 3 (Para. 1) and Art. 4 Art. 6; 138 UNTS 225, at 226-231. Comment: The United States is indirectly a party to the Protection of Wages Convention, 1949, implicitly by reason of its accession finally in 1992 to the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957, infra: See here n. 50, immediately below. (See also under n. 42, supra.)
50 United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 320, p. 291, the Preamble at 292-293; UNTS Treaty No. 4648; ILO C. No. 105; Adopted at the Fourtieth Session of the International Labour Conference, Geneva, June 5th-27th, 1957; Entered into Force January 17th, 1959; Entered into Force for the United States September 25th, 1992 Treaties in Force on January 1st, 1997, op. cit., p. 388; Conventions & Recommendations: 1919-1966, op. cit., pp. 891-893, the Preamble at 891.
51 Idem, 320 UNTS 291, at 294-296; idem, Conventions & Recommendations: 1919-1966, at pp. 891-892.
52 Ante, 110 U.S. Stat. 2105 (1996); U.S. Public Law 104-193 August 22nd, 1996.
53 U.S. Accession to the Slavery Convention of 1926, accorded March 21st, 1929, supra, LXXXIII LNTS 417.
54 See under headings II-III of this text.
55 See under heading I of this text.
56 See the preface and under headings I-III of this text.
57 Forced Labour Convention, 1930, supra; Art. 2, Para. 1; 39 UNTS 55, at 58; Conventions & Recommendations: 1919-1966, op. cit., at p. 155.
58 Unity of the fundamental parts of the international labor-protective rights law with the international human rights law was first promoted in the Preamble to the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957, supra, 320 UNTS 291, at 292, where it is held that "certain forms of forced or compulsory labour constitu[te] a violation of the rights of man referred to in the Charter of the United Nations and enunciated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" (Id.). While this I.L.O. Convention (No. 105) thus purposed to implement the Universal Declaration pro tanto, positive integration could only be established by the Covenant that was originally reserved to implement the Universal Declaration as such.
59 Ante, LXXXIII LNTS 417, accession of the U.S.A. to the Slavery Convention of 1926. See here n. 40, supra.
60 Ante, "ICCPR", 999 UNTS 171, at 175.
61 Idem, "ICCPR", Art. 2 (Para. 1) & Art. 26; 999 UNTS 171, at 173 & 179. And, Art. VI, Cl. 2, U.S. Constitution.
62 Forced Labour Convention, 1930, supra. Art. 2, Para's. 1 & 2; 39 UNTS 55, at 58; or, Conventions & Recommendations: 1919-1966, op. cit., at p. 155.
63 Forced Labour Convention, 1957, supra, 320 UNTS 291, at 292-294; Conventions & Recommendations: 1919-1966, op. cit., at pp. 891-892. See related matter under heading V of this text. Note: The internationally proscribed purpose of inculcating "labour discipline" by required labor under penalty is actually the principal "legitimating" rationale advanced for workfare in the United States. Under that doctrine, any job without a suitability test may be compulsorily imposed upon the workfare subject.
64 Accession of the U.S.A. to the Slavery Convention of 1926, supra, LXXXIII LNTS 417; Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General as at 31 December 1996, op. cit., p. 721. Note: This internationally declared reservation of the United States against even some transitional imposition of forced or compulsory labor only for public (and not private) benefit, on the grounds that its constitutional policy prohibits any form of involuntary servitude, "except as punishment for crime of which the person concerned has been duly convicted", remains a basic socio-legal norm by which the imposition of workfare is ultimately to be judged. While any legally compelled deference to private persons or labor exacted for the benefit of private persons is abhorrent in the social consciousness of domestic publics most generally, and, as such, is part of the progressive historical legacy of the United States, extension of that Thirteenth Amendment apprehension to required public service has been modified by the modern provision of national works employments in acceptable forms during the New Deal years in particular.
65 Obviously, the large-scale presence of workfare assignees in public and private employments, whose labor is being taken advantage of at sub-minimum wage-rates (if only because of the subsidies being paid out of welfare budgets for their employment at minimum wages) and without any fringe benefits such as sick leave, vacation time, social security contribution, etc., would over time exert a strong downward pressure on wages generally and a sharp financial preference for expanding the sphere of cycled workfare employment. While guarantees for workfare participants against any arbitrary labor assignments were therefore naturally conjoined with protections for currently employed workers and for existing positions from any displacement by workfare assignees under the prior and since repealed federal welfare-workfare statutory law, that repeal (inclusively of those statutory labor-rights provisions) was in principle not one allowing for new and unrestrained labor policies in the several states, but was simply in favor of replacing a system of federal administrative oversight and review by a system of block grants to the states and increased state administrative flexibility. (See again under the preface and under heading I of this text above.)
Title 1, Sec. 108 (e), of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, supra, repealed Part F of Title IV, the federal "Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training Program", 42 USC Secs. 681-687, inclusively and indifferently. Former 42 USC Sec. 684 had, in critical part, provided that:
(a) Assignment of participants; assurance by State agencyIn assigning participants in the program under this part to any program activity, the State agency shall assure that
(1) each assignment takes into account the physical capacity, skills, experience, health and safety, family responsibilities, and place or residence of the participant;...
(4) the conditions of participation are reasonable, taking into account in each case the proficiency of the participant and the child care and other supportive services needs of the participant; and
(5) each assignment is based on available resources, the participant's circumstances, and local employment opportunities.
(b) Workers' compensation; tort claims protection, availablity of benefits to participants on the same basis as other similarly employed individuals in State
Appropriate workers' compensation and tort claims protection must be provided to participants on the same basis as they are provided to other individuals in the State in similar employment...
(c) Displacement of workers or positions; impairments of contracts for services or collective bargaining agreements; reduction of work-force; infringement of promotional opportunities; union organizing; unfilled vacancies
No work assignment under the program shall result in
(1) the displacement of any currently employed worker or position (including partial displacement such as reduction in the hours of nonovertime work, wages, or employment benefits), or result in the impairment of existing contracts for services or collective bargaining agreements;
(2) the employment or assignment of a participant or the filling of a position when (A) any other individual is on layoff from the same or any equivalent position, or (B) the employer has terminated the employment of any regular employee or otherwise reduced its workforce with the effect of filling the vacancy so created with a participant subsidized under the program; or
(3) any infringement of the promotional opportunities of any currently employed individual.
Under former 42 USC Sec. 682 (f)(1)(A), "work experience" was "limited to projects which serve a useful public purpose".
66 Re the indirect effect for the U.S.A. of the Forced Labour Convention, 1930, ante, 39 UNTS 55, see the comment under n. 43 above; and re the indirect effect for the U.S.A. of the Protection of Wages Convention, 1949, ante, 138 UNTS 225, see the comment under n. 49 above.
67 United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 68, p. 17 et seq.; UNTS Treaty No. 881; ILO C. No. 87; Adopted at the Thirty-First Session of the International Labour Conference, San Franscico, July 9th, 1948; Entered into Force July 4th, 1950; Cited in "ICCPR", ante, Art. 22, Para. 3, as of no lessened force; 999 UNTS 171, at 178.
68 Ante, 39 UNTS 55, at 58-60; Forced Labour Convention, 1930, as follows:
Article 4 1. The competent authority [the highest central authority of the country or territory] shall not impose or permit the imposition of forced or compulsory labor for the benefit of private individuals, companies or associations.
2. Where such forced or compulsory labour for the benefit of private individuals, companies or associations exists...the Member shall completely suppress such forced or compulsory labour from the date on which this Convention comes into force for that Member.
Article 5 1. No concession granted to private individuals, companies or associations shall involve any form of forced or compulsory labour for the production or collection of products which such private individuals, companies or associations utilise or in which they trade....
Article 6 Officials of the administration, even when they have the duty of encouraging the populations under their charge to engage in some form of labour, shall not put constraint upon the said populations or upon any individual members thereof to work for private individuals, companies or associations.
69 Idem, 39 UNTS 55, at 62; Art. 10, Para. 1: "Forced or compulsory labour exacted as a tax and forced or compulsory labour to which recourse is had for the execution of public works [i.e., of work or service]...shall be progressively abolished".
70 Idem, 39 UNTS 55, at 62.
71 Idem, 39 UNTS 55, at 62-64.
72 Ante, 320 UNTS 291, at 296. See n. 51, supra.
73 See again n. 69 here, supra.
74 Ante, 39 UNTS 55, at 64, 66-68 & 74.
Comment: Something of an historical tragedy facially, but in farcical garb, is therefore taking place with the repeal of the labor-protective provisions in 42 USC Sec. 684 by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 see n. 65 above. At the threshold of the 21st century, involuntarily unemployed relief dependent adults, in this wealthiest society history has ever known, are being reduced to the status of abject colonial laborers in the pre-independence territorial mandates of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, or to the status of compulsory civilian laborers in all the belligerent countries during WWI. Since repeal of the prior welfare-workfare law in the United States has not, however, resulted in any supercession or nullification of either the direct or indirect obligatory international labor and human rights law, that anti-constitutional malignancy is, in principle, excisable, either by judicial or political action compelling compliance with those long internationally agreed, objective socio-legal labor-policy limitations (and apart from any claim to fiscal necessity for that, at this time in U.S. history, quite extraordinary, and always legally exceptional, labor-imposition). The private economic advantage sought over labor through workfare would be reduced to nought if those standards were observed. See the comment here under n. 43 above.
75 Ante, 320 UNTS 291, at 292.
76 See again under the comment to n. 43, supra.
77 A/RES/217A (III), op. cit., Art. 23, Para's. 2 & 3, at p. 75. Art. 23, Para, 2, of the Universal Declaration, more fully reads: "Everyone, without discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work"; and Art. 23, Para. 3, of the Universal Declaration, more fully reads: "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".
78 Ante, 138 UNTS 225, at 226-228, 228, 230 & 234.
Comment: Art. 2, Para. 2, of the Protection of Wages Convention, 1949, allows for such employment category exceptions only for work in the nature of domestic service, not for any manual employment (or, implicitly) for any professional labor. Similar exemptions are but more broadly made in the U.S.A. under its Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 29 USC Secs. 213 & 214 (1978; cum supp. 1997), including exemptions for some manual occupations. See the discussion here under heading IV ("Deprivation of labor rights under workfare assignment is strictly unconstitutional"), in the text above.
79 A/RES/217 (III), op. cit., Art. 23, Para. 1, at p. 75. See again the particular discussion under heading V of this text.
80 Art. 23, Para. 4, of the Universal Declaration, A/RES/217A (III), op. cit., proclaims, at p. 75, that: "Everyone has the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests".
81 Ante, "ICCPR", Art. 22; 999 UNTS 171, at 178. Though the U.S.A. is not a party to the Freedom of Association & Right to Organize Convention, 1948, comparison is nonetheless instructed. See 68 UNTS 17, ante, Parts I & II, at 20-22.
82 See the prior discussion in this text of these subjects; and, see the case law cited in n. 12 and in n. 20, supra.
83 Art. 24, A/RES/217A (III), op. cit., reads, at p. 75: "Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay".
I (WE)_____________________________________________
endorse the "Basic Position Statement" of the Emergency Committee to Defend Constitutional Welfare Rights, U.S.A., in urging that administrative and judicial issue be brought from the outset under the Supremacy Clause in all state and federal fora over any welfare deprivation or workfare imposition not meeting the norms of the obligatory international human rights & labor law.
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