Earlier this year Danette Chavez, a janitor in Austin, Texas, decided she wanted to join a union. But her employer called her into a private meeting--as nine out of ten employers do in such situations--and tried to intimidate her into rejecting the union. After receiving a dozen citations for labor law violations, the company fired her, then was ordered to rehire her. Still out of work, Chavez says, "I thought, 'I'm 40, and I've dealt with this all my life. I've got to speak out.' Somehow your worker rights, your human rights, aren't what they used to be when this country was founded."

Chavez is not alone in seeing her rights at work as a human rights issue. Around December 10, International Human Rights Day, in actions organized by the AFL-CIO and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, thousands of workers and their supporters were demanding the right to organize freely at nearly 100 locations in the United States and around the world.

Mainstream human rights groups have only recently argued consistently that forming a union is included in the human rights of freedom of speech and association. "One thing ignored in the human rights movement was the right to assemble," says Jamie Fellner, director of the US program at Human Rights Watch. "Labor rights weren't seen as a human right. It was just two economic powers, and there's a battle. But when workers seek to get together to talk about their work, that's not just an example of economic interest but of fundamental rights." With the growth in power of transnational corporations, there has also been growing recognition that private actors, not only governments, can violate human rights.

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