SPEAKER: ABUSE OF WORKERS
IN CHINA ‘PART OF A SYSTEM’

WASHINGTON (PAI)--Widespread abuse of workers in China--everything from unpaid wages to child labor to forced labor camps to tens of thousands of deaths on the job--is part of a wider system of problems there, the Asian human rights expert from Amnesty International says.

But T. Kumar, the organization’s Advocacy Director for Asia and the Pacific, also admits the labor problem in China is unique because workers’ problems “are not being addressed” by the state-sponsored All-Chinese Federation of Trade Unions and because of the “assumption that when China opened up” economically, “they would improve conditions on the ground, but that’s not the case.”

“The crux of the problem is that the current trade union is not representing the workers, but they are representing the state,” Kumar said.

Chinese labor standards are important, because the 1.2-billion-person nation has become the world’s leading manufacturing nation in a wide range of vital sectors, and because its working conditions are so abysmal that corporations use them to increase profits, drive down living standards elsewhere, including in the U.S., or both.

Kumar’s analysis, and other descriptions of workers’ problems in China, came at a Jan. 15 panel discussion at the AFL-CIO on China and International Labour Organization Labor Standards, by the Washington chapter of the UN Association of the U.S. The jam-packed meeting learned details of Chinese labor conditions--and of two ways, engagement and confrontation, that have been used so far to tackle the issue.

But the lack of success of engagement--the GOP Bush regime’s preferred way--and Chinese resistance when confronted prompted one participant, former AFL-CIO official Jack Golodner, to suggest a third way: “Shunning,” or a boycott. “We haven’t walked away, saying, ‘Why should we buy your stuff?’” Golodner said.

Prior to that, participants described a range of moves to try to improve Chinese labor standards and workers’ conditions. Many have yet to bear fruit. They include:

• Engagement, emphasizing positive issues, by the ILO. Its Washington Director, Armand Pereira, citing conversations with his colleagues, says the organization “is seeking commitments from governments to move forward” on core international labor standards, including the freedom of association and the right to collectively bargain.
  
  China has refused to ratify ILO conventions, which are non-binding, on either issue, Pereira said. It also refused to ratify other ILO conventions, including one calling for limits on the hours of factory work. Pereira said ILO lacks enforcement power, and that those who expect ILO to use the “bully pulpit” to denounce China are mistaken.
  
  Earl Brown, of the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, pointed out that, conventions or no conventions, he still saw situations in China were “you had an exhausted 18-year-old Chinese woman working 17 hours a day” in a factory “and then hauling water in buckets up 5 flights of stairs to her room” in the company-provided dormitory.
  
  “In that type of case, you (the worker) don’t have time to consider freedom of association,” he said.
  
  
• With the AFL-CIO having to work outside the Chinese system, since it cannot work with the ACFTU, “we’re working with advocates--academics and lawyers--to try to ‘bleed’ the basic standards of international labor law into the Chinese law, on such things as hours of rest,” Brown said.
  
  Brown said the center works with the outside advocates to create a grass-roots Chinese movement “for demand for worker rights”--notably those that firms guarantee the workers in writing. “If they (workers) can haul out a regulation book saying ‘I am due this,’ it fees into a growing revolution of worker consciousness,” he stated.
  
  
• Kumar said Amnesty has concentrated on political openness, but realizes that in China, “job injuries, wages, overtime are all interrelated” with the political environment “and they’re not being addressed by this trade union (ACFTU), either.”
  
  Kumar added that while some U.S. companies are increasing worker rights and labor conditions--a point made by another panelist, Erin Ennis of U.S.-China Business Council--the U.S. firms’ “hands are tied because they have to rely on local standards and local laws” in China, which are weak, unenforced, or both.
  
  “The U.S. government has looked the other way” on Chinese conditions, he said.

One suggestion that came out of the discussion, besides Golodner’s “shunning” idea, is that China, given its history and particularly its resentment at past exploitation by the West, would brush off complaints from one country, such as the U.S., but not comments from a coalition of its major trading partners, non-government organizations and the United Nations. The comments, however, would have to be stated in such a way so the Chinese government could see the benefits of change.

“China is sensitive to world views,” concluded retired AFL-CIO economist Markley Roberts, the session’s moderator.