III. On living conditions of US labourers
Although the United States is the world's No 1 developed nation, the US
Government has to date refused to ratify the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights. It is apathetic to the rights and interests of
ordinary workers in economic, social and cultural aspects, leading to serious
problems such as poverty, hunger and homelessness.
The disparity between the rich and the poor keep widening in the United
States. A 2003 report by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under the US
Congress acknowledged that the gap between the rich and the poor in the country
today is wider than any time in nearly 70 years, with the wealth of the
country's richest one per cent population exceeding the overall possessions of
the needy, who account for 40 per cent of the total population. In 2000, the
rich people's wealth made up 15.5 per cent of the country's overall national
income, as against 7.5 per cent in 1979 (according to BBC report on September
25, 2003).
A report by the US Federal Reserve also showed that between 1998 and 2001,
the wealth gap between the country's richest and poorest had widened by 70 per
cent (See Britain's Guardian report on January 24, 2003).
Certain policies of the US Government, instead of helping narrow the
country's wealth gap, have aggravated the rich-poor disparity and led to an
unfair distribution of wealth. According to a report by the US Environmental
Working Group in 2003, the agricultural policy of the US Government has ensured
70 per cent of government subsidies go to ranch owners, resulting in a yawning
income gap between ranch owners and ordinary farmers and pushing many farmers to
the verge of bankruptcy (ABC report on October 9, 2003).
The population living in need and hunger in the United States has been on a
steady rise. According to statistics from the 2003 economic report of the US
Census Bureau, the impoverished population in the United States had been
increasing for two consecutive years, reaching 34.6 million, or 12.1 per cent of
the total population, in 2002, up 1.7 million over the previous year. The
country's poverty ratio in 2002 had risen by 0.4 percentage points over the
previous year. Among the impoverished population, the number of extremely needy
people had risen to 14.1 million from the previous 13.4 million, and the
proportion of children in need had gone up to 16.7 per cent in 2002 from 16.3
per cent in 2001. Since 2001, the number of needy families in the United States
has been growing at 6 per cent a year, and there are now 7.3 million
impoverished families in the country, which means 31 million people are facing
the threat of hunger. In the 25 leading metropolises of the United States, the
number of people who need emergency food aid has increased by 19 per cent on
average, while the number of people who live on charity food coupons, or those
who have to queue up for free food distributions, has surged to 22 million (See
Spain's El Mundo on May 19, 2003).
In October 2003, the US Department of Agriculture released a report, which
showed that in 2002 there were 12 million American families worrying about their
food expenditures and 3.8 million families with members who actually suffered
from hunger. On December 18, 2003, an annual survey report released at the US
Conference of Mayors showed that in the 25 cities surveyed, the number of people
seeking emergency food aid in 2003 had increased by 17 per cent on average over
2002. Moreover, 87 per cent of the surveyed cities believed that the number of
such people would continue to rise in 2004.
The homeless population continues to rise. According to information released
by the US National Law centre on Homelessness and Poverty, more than 3 million
people were homeless in the United States in 2002 (Homeless and Poverty in
America, www.nlchp.org). Washington DC has the highest rate of homelessness of
any city in the United States, with an estimated 20,000 people having
experienced homelessness and nearly 400 families having applied for emergency
shelters in 2002 (A snapshot of Homelessness in the Metropolitan, www.naeh.org).
In April 2002 alone, 38,476 people in New York spent their nights in aid
centres, including 16,685 children. According to a survey released by the US
Conference of Mayors in December 2003, requests for emergency shelter assistance
rose by an average of 13 per cent in the past year; 88 per cent of the cities
surveyed predicted that the situation would be even worse in 2004.
Recently, the US Christian Science Monitor reminded the United States that it
should regard "a home for every American" as the most rudimentary human right.
Chicago Coalition for the Homeless said the government was unable to provide the
basic subsistence guarantee for people, and that the local government had
violated international human rights law by forcibly taking over 8,000 local
residential houses in five years.
There is a lack of work safety. According to US laws, only the accidents of
industrial injuries resulting from "intended" violation of safety rules by the
employers are eligible to be submitted to the judicial authorities. Even when
alarming cases occur, the employers are seldom confirmed as "intended" and
rarely face public prosecution. The New York Times quoted a surveyed report of
the US Occupational Safety & Health Administration as saying that in 20
years from 1982 to 2002, there were 1,242 cases involving the death of workers
caused by the employers' "intended" violation of safety rules, yet 93 per cent
of the cases were not brought to the court. In these two decades, there were a
total of 2,197 accidents caused by employers' violation of safety rules and
resulted in death of the workers in the United States, and the combined prison
terms for employers involved were less than 30 years.
The situation of health insurance worsened. According to a report released by
the US Census Bureau in September 2003, the number of Americans without health
insurance climbed by 5.7 per cent over 2001, to reach 43.6 million in 2002, the
largest single increase in a decade. Overall, 15.2 per cent of the Americans
were uninsured in 2002 (See Washington Post on September 30,2003).
Based on a survey, the ratio of employees uninsured in
big US companies rose from 7 per cent to 11 per cent during the 1987-2001
period (See Wall Street Journal on October 22, 2003). More and more people
cannot afford medical treatment. In Nebraska, 250,000 single mothers lost free medical care they previously
enjoyed, and in Arizona, approximately 60,000 children were no longer covered by free
medical care (See Spain's El Mundo on May 19, 2003).
