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CWA Hails Demand that Bush Administration Enforce Trade Laws, Protect U.S. Jobs and Standards in the
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- "The concept of free trade in a global marketplace becomes a complete sham when one of the world's major markets, China, is founded upon a system of worker repression and virtual slave labor," said Communications Workers of America President Morton Bahr, commenting on the AFL-CIO's petition to the Bush administration to investigate Chinese rights abuses and impose trade remedies.
Bahr, who chairs the AFL-CIO's International Affairs Committee, noted that the cost-advantage of China's artificially low wage system has directly cost the United States hundreds of thousands of jobs and has dragged down labor standards all over the world.
The petition filed today by the AFL-CIO and its Industrial Union Council under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 challenges the president and the U.S. Trade Representative to impose trade remedies and take other actions to pressure China to comply with the worker rights standards of the International Labor Organization.
"Our filing documents truly egregious labor abuses on a massive scale by the Chinese government and the Communist Party," said Bahr. "Workers who try to form independent unions, which are banned, are imprisoned and even tortured. China's export sector exploits millions of migrant workers from the countryside in a system of bonded labor akin to slavery, paying them half or less the supposed minimum wage. Chinese manufacturers ignore the country's own laws governing workplace safety and health and subject workers to the most vile and dangerous conditions.
"In light of such staggering human exploitation, there is small wonder that our trade deficit with China represents one-quarter of the entire $489 billion U.S. trade deficit and is growing at 20 percent every year," Bahr noted. "The fallout from these tragic abuses in China is a decline in jobs, and stagnating wages, for American workers who can't possibly compete with artificially depressed conditions in that country. Both sets of workers are victims of the Chinese government's harsh policies.
"We call on this administration to enforce our trade laws to keep American workers from continuing to sacrifice their jobs to a trading partner that profits from violating civilized standards of worker rights and basic human dignity," Bahr stated.
Bahr, who chairs the AFL-CIO's International Affairs Committee, noted that the cost-advantage of China's artificially low wage system has directly cost the United States hundreds of thousands of jobs and has dragged down labor standards all over the world.
The petition filed today by the AFL-CIO and its Industrial Union Council under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 challenges the president and the U.S. Trade Representative to impose trade remedies and take other actions to pressure China to comply with the worker rights standards of the International Labor Organization.
"Our filing documents truly egregious labor abuses on a massive scale by the Chinese government and the Communist Party," said Bahr. "Workers who try to form independent unions, which are banned, are imprisoned and even tortured. China's export sector exploits millions of migrant workers from the countryside in a system of bonded labor akin to slavery, paying them half or less the supposed minimum wage. Chinese manufacturers ignore the country's own laws governing workplace safety and health and subject workers to the most vile and dangerous conditions.
"In light of such staggering human exploitation, there is small wonder that our trade deficit with China represents one-quarter of the entire $489 billion U.S. trade deficit and is growing at 20 percent every year," Bahr noted. "The fallout from these tragic abuses in China is a decline in jobs, and stagnating wages, for American workers who can't possibly compete with artificially depressed conditions in that country. Both sets of workers are victims of the Chinese government's harsh policies.
"We call on this administration to enforce our trade laws to keep American workers from continuing to sacrifice their jobs to a trading partner that profits from violating civilized standards of worker rights and basic human dignity," Bahr stated.