Page 2 of 2 Chinese heat is on US
sweatshop lobby By Brendan Smith, Tim Costello, and
Jeremy Brecher
disinvest in China
but, under pressure from labor and human-rights
groups, it has now issued a stunning
"clarification" welcoming the law.
The
opposition of US corporations to expanded rights
for Chinese workers is becoming a significant
issue in the US Congress. Concern about the impact
of globalization, and opposition to the trade
policies that have prevailed during the Bush era,
were major
themes
for many Democratic candidates who now control
important positions in Congress.
On
December 8, shortly after last year's elections,
Democrats Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee, George
Miller, Barney Frank and 28 other members of the
House of Representatives introduced legislation
calling on Bush to express public support for the
workers' rights and protection provisions in
China's draft labor law and repudiate efforts by
some US corporations and their representatives in
China to limit new rights for workers.
This legislation properly places the focus
on the actual role of US corporations in China.
Their action is part of the broader effort by a
Democratic-controlled Congress to take the
policymaking initiative away from the Bush
administration.
The exposure of corporate
opposition to expanded labor rights for Chinese
workers has also generated outrage among labor
organizations and their allies around the world.
Inside China, leaders of the ACFTU have been
fighting efforts by companies to restrict unions'
role in setting new employer policies.
Xie
Liangmin, vice director of the ACFTU's law
department, publicly criticized US and European
Union chambers of commerce for issuing threats as
the draft law moves through the legislative
process. He told the South China Morning Post, "It
is excessive to intervene in a country's lawmaking
process by threatening to withdraw investment."
Outside China, individual unions and
national and international labor federations
around the world have not only condemned corporate
lobbying against labor rights, but are pressuring
corporations to reverse their stand. This is
opening the way for trade unions not simply to
oppose Chinese trade, but to fight what one
international labor federation has called the
"global sweatshop lobby".
Workers,
communities and countries throughout the world are
confronting the challenges posed by the emergence
of China as a global economic powerhouse. About
25% of the global workforce is now Chinese.
Indeed, China has become the focal point for many
Americans' feelings of insecurities in the global
economy.
China increasingly sets the
global norm for wages and working standards as it
attracts jobs at both the high and low ends of the
production chain. As a result, the hard-won gains
of workers in the global North are being rapidly
undermined while the aspirations of workers in the
developing world are being dashed as China becomes
the wage-setting country in many industries.
Some in the labor movement and the US
Congress have begun to recognize that simply
criticizing the Chinese state fails to address the
dominate role of global corporations in the global
economy. Roughly 66% of the increase in Chinese
exports in the past 12 years can be attributed to
non-Chinese-owned global companies and their joint
ventures. Foreign-owned global corporations
account for 60% of Chinese exports to the US.
Indeed, if the US retail giant Wal-Mart
were a country, it would be China's eighth-largest
trading partner. The "Chinese threat" is less
about trade with China than it is about trade with
Wal-Mart and GE. Global corporations move to China
to lower labor costs - and they use those lower
labor costs as a lever to drive down wages and
working conditions for workers in other countries,
and even within China itself.
Labor
organizations around the world have become
involved not only to defend the principle of
universal labor rights, but because reform of
China's labor law is important to workers
everywhere. Chinese wages and conditions set those
around the world not only in low-wage industries
but increasingly in those with the highest of
modern technology. Low wages and poor working
conditions in China drive down those in the rest
of the world in a "race to the bottom". Failure to
raise standards in China will have a devastating
effect on workers around the world.
"China
bashing" does not provide a solution for either
workers or governments that are trying to come to
terms with the impact of China in the global
economy. In contrast, trying to reverse the role
of US corporations and their "sweatshop lobby" in
perpetuating poverty and poor working conditions
in China is providing a straightforward, concrete
way that workers and their union and political
representatives in the US and around the world can
help improve the conditions of workers in China.
For that reason it is emerging as a central issue
in both the labor and the political arenas.
Brendan Smith, Tim Costello and
Jeremy Brecher are the co-founders of
Global Labor Strategies, a resource center
providing research and analysis on globalization,
trade and labor issues. GLS has offices in New
York, Boston, and Montevideo, Uruguay. For more on
GLS, visit www.laborstrategies.blogs.com or
e-mail info@laborstrategies.org.
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