Unions Urge Probe of Worker Rights in China
U.S. labor groups urged the Bush administration Thursday to increase pressure on China to stop widespread labor abuses they said have cost millions of Americans their jobs in addition to harming Chinese workers.
The 9-million-member AFL-CIO labor federation filed a petition, for the second time since 2004, asking the U.S. trade representative’s office to launch a one-year probe into whether China’s “systematic repression” of worker rights is an unfair trade practice that warrants using U.S. sanctions to stop.
“In China, millions of child workers and forced laborers produce goods and services, many of them for export. Workers who protest or seek to form independent unions are fired, beaten and imprisoned,” the AFL-CIO said.
More than 126,000 Chinese workers died from injuries or illnesses they got on the job in 2005, the labor groups said. Many corporations in China reap “huge profits” while paying their workers less than 50 cents an hour, the AFL-CIO said.
U.S. Reps. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) and Ben Cardin (D-Md.) co-signed the petition, which the AFL-CIO said showed bipartisan support for tough action. The trade representative’s office has 45 days to decide whether to accept the request and start the investigation.
The Bush administration rejected a similar “Section 301” petition filed by the AFL-CIO two years ago, saying it would work with China to improve conditions in a country whose vast supply of cheap labor has made it a manufacturing giant.
“The administration said, ‘We will deal with the issue and we will take appropriate action and we will make sure China adheres to international labor standards,’ ” Cardin said at a news conference.
“It’s two years later and ... we’ve made no progress -- in fact we’ve moved in the wrong direction,” Cardin said. The annual U.S. trade deficit with China has skyrocketed to $202 billion as Chinese labor conditions have worsened, he said.
Repressive and often dangerous workplaces reduce Chinese manufacturing costs 10% to 77%, and that “unfair cost advantage ... displaces approximately 1,235,000 jobs in the United States,” the AFL-CIO said.
The labor federation bolstered its petition with stories of harsh Chinese conditions, including those faced by five child laborers who they said were asphyxiated after starting a coal fire in their unheated factory to keep warm. Parents believe that two of the girls were buried alive in the factory owner’s haste to cover up the incident, AFL-CIO officials said.
A spokesman for the U.S. trade representative’s office said the agency would carefully consider the petition.
But in a recent review of U.S. trade relations with China, “the administration made it very clear that we believe a strong and growing relationship with China driven by mutual interest is the best way to encourage economic, social and political reform in China,” U.S. trade spokesman Steve Norton said.
