Earlier today, I posted the following at
AFL-CIO Now. Since then, the drum beats and rally cries of protestors against China's President Hu have sounded throughout the day across the street in Lafayette Park.
When China's President Hu Jintao arrived in Seattle, the mainstream media brushed off what they called a handful of protestors greeting his arrival, emphasizing instead the crowd of well-wishers. Here in Washington, D.C., hundreds of protestors of Hu's regime marched yesterday at noon with banners down K Street, protesting China's ban of the spiritual group the Falun Gong and China's systematic use of torture of political prisoners. Later, these witnesses to brutality stood along 15th Street, their banners stretched from hand to hand as Hu's motorcade traveled to the White House.
The press might do well to look closer at the images on those banners: Burned, mutilated and battered bodies of Chinese citizens who dared express their views or seek to form free labor unions.
Testifying before Congress yesterday, AFL-CIO Policy Director Thea Lee cited the just-released U.S. Department of State's 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices in China, which found China denies basic workers' rights, including freedom of association, workplace health and safety, payment of wages, rights against forced labor and rights against trafficking children.
Quoting from the report, Lee said:
Peaceful labor protestors are subject to police violence, imprisonment, and torture. This report by the administration itself concedes that these fundamental facts have not changed since the President's assertion in 2004 that he would undertake measures to remedy China's noncompliance. According to the State Department, regulations aimed at suppressing autonomous labor organizations grew harsher in 2005.
For many here, what happens in China doesn't seem pertinent to their daily lives. But think again. In 2004, the AFL-CIO found China's frequent violations of workers' rights gave that nation an unfair trade advantage that cost more than 727,000 U.S. jobs.
Listening now? Here's more from Lee:
Child labor is becoming more common, as labor shortages increase turnover in some regions. Forced labor remains a significant, if difficult to measure, problem. Wage arrearages are becoming increasingly problematic, with some researchers estimating that the national average of unpaid wages is three months for each worker.
And the big beneficiaries are the corporations that depend upon abusive working conditions for the everyday low prices.
These abuses allow producers in China, including many multinational and U.S. corporations, to operate in an environment free of independent unions, to pay illegally low wages, and to profit from the widespread violation of workers' basic human rights. For example, Chinese mines are the most dangerous in the world, with more than 10,000 Chinese miners dying in industrial accidents each year (about 80 percent of the worldwide total). Unlike American mineworkers, Chinese mineworkers are denied the right to organize and bargain collectively--a crucial element in the development of effective mine safety regulations in this country.
In 2004, the AFL-CIO filed a petition calling on the Bush administration to take immediate action to impose trade remedies against China and negotiate a binding agreement to reduce the trade remedies if China enforces workers' rights. The administration rejected the petition, but the AFL-CIO union movement is set to demand the Bush administration take concrete and immediate steps to press for workers' rights in China and to value its currently overvalued currency at a more accurate rate, a move that could go a long way toward reducing the $202 billion U.S. trade deficit with China.
Stay tuned.