US Chamber of Commerce opposed to China's attempt at labor reform, belying "free trade" rhetoric

Recently, the Chinese Communist Party has had to change the laissez-faire stance on labor protections because working conditions were so bad that Chinese workers were beginning to protest. Last year, I heard they recorded 70,000 "disturbances" and protests due to angry workers. In the previous year before that, it was around 50,000, and it was lower as one went backward in time.

The result is the Party is worried that if they don't change their path, then one day the Communist Party will fall, ironically, to the very same workers the Party originally claimed to be fighting for.

One of the biggest abuses Chinese workers have had to face is not receiving a paycheck for work they have done, and if they got a paycheck, it was usually only what they are partially owed by the employers. On top of that, rates of injury among workers is unconscionable, and many employers simply won't sign individual labor contracts with employees noting that to do so would require the employer to honor minimal labor protections required by law between anybody signing a labor contract. As a result, many employers illegally deprive labor contracts to employees. The result is when Chinese workers attempt to go to court to seek redress, the courts won't hear the case because workers don't have proof of employment, an individual employee labor contract.

When news spread that the Party was contemplating changes to its anachronistic labor codes, many employers and the US Chamber of Commerce protested saying that it would "...adversely impact the country's economy..." The US Chamber of Commerce is the same group of people who pushed free trade and outsourcing in the first place.

They argued that free trade would lift us all up, and everybody would enjoy better living standards, but we see here that they are opposed even to minor labor reforms to protect poor workers, which gives lie to the argument that what they have done is to lift up workers everywhere by showing they are opposed to even minimal reforms doing so. They oppose these labor reforms saying that they, US employers, generally follow labor laws, a dubious claim in my opinion, and that they would comply but that other employers would not, putting US employers at a competitive disadvantage, but the obvious answer to their objection is to apply labor standards uniformly throughout the whole economy.

China's industrial relations law has to date been a helter-skelter affair, full of inconsistent regulations and more often than not irrelevant, because labor laws, including the laws on employment contracts, are too often simply ignored by the millions of autonomous employers all seeking to drive down the price of labor. Even if an employer wanted to comply with labor laws setting standards, he or she would be immediately placed at a competitive disadvantage as most competitors ignore the law and thus have lesser labor costs. Thus, China appears to be in the grip of a downward "race-to-the bottom" -- which has no effective floor, and seriously threatens social peace.

This is heaven for individual employers hoping to profit by endlessly depressing labor costs. No rights for employees, no restrictions on employers and, best of all, no pesky union. That this non-system has enshrined a complete imbalance in power favoring the employers and has allowed for pervasive abuses should surprise no one. Nor should the ensuing internal impetus for reform. China has now begun to develop a legal framework to redress some elements of the imbalance as the state seeks to deflect worker anger from the streets to the courts, and to address some of the most flagrant abuses in new legislation.

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It is important to rescue China's workers from the "race-to-the-bottom" in labor standards -- important for the quality of life of working families everywhere. China is setting global labor standards. Workers in South East Asia, in Europe and in the US are being drawn into a downward spiral in wages, occupational health and safety and in social protections that is being justified by employers by reference to "more competitive" Chinese labor conditions. Chinese workers and their allies in the trade union, in the labor bar and in academia are beginning to seek to reverse this spiral. Worker rights advocates, and persons concerned with social justice in America, Asia and throughout the globe, should support these changes by urging foreign employers in China to withdraw their opposition.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=103&ItemID=11464

It is clear that in an environment of globalization, a modest long-term solution is a form of international trade unionism to represent all workers across borders and protect them from exploitation. If the power of capital is free to jump borders at will like mulitinational corporate conglomerates, then the power of labor should be equally free to move and defend labor rights anywhere against their greedy tendencies. On top of that, it seems sensible that education of all workers in establishing and running worker co-ops, firms owned and democratically operated by workers themselves, would aid the cause of workers as well because it gives workers a choice away from working for a traditional employer who may or may not care for the well-being of his employees, and it advances the ideals of economic democracy.

before it gets lost in a fast night here on GD Forum. Lots of us would be interested in this...but it takes time to read.

If they had their way, slavery would be brought back again.:mad: