June 8, 2006—China’s frequent violations of workers’ rights give that nation an unfair trade advantage that has cost more than 1 million U.S. jobs, according to a petition filed with the U.S. Trade Representative by the AFL-CIO and the Industrial Union Council (IUC), made up of nine industrial unions. The petition calls 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.
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| USW Local 1191 member Teresa Luna and Wei Jinsheng, a Chinese worker advocate and dissident, discussed the connection between workers' rights in China and U.S. jobs in 2004, when the AFL-CIO first filed a petition on workers' rights in China. |
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Chinese Workers’ Low Wages Reduce Cost of Chinese Exports
The 179-page petition extensively documents that China prevents workers from joining unions and bargaining collectively, denies its citizens safe working conditions, provides no minimum wage and uses forced labor. As a result, Chinese workers’ wages are between 47 percent and 85 percent lower than they should be, which in turn reduces the price of Chinese manufactured goods. If China did not violate workers’ rights, the price of Chinese manufactured goods would increase by 12 percent to 77 percent, according to the petition.
Jing-Hua Lu, a former factory worker in China and a forceful advocate for international workers’ rights, told reporters that it’s imperative the U.S. government take action against China now. “The U.S. administration should take this petition seriously,” Lu said. “Chinese workers need to be able to exercise their right of freedom of association. It is a basic right, and a basic answer to the dilemma of Chinese workers and the flight of jobs to China to exploit low wages.”
The U.S. trade deficit with China is the largest in U.S. history with one country—$201 billion. The trade deficit affects the nation’s jobs: cheaper foreign imports of products formerly made in the United States mean America’s workers lose jobs as companies move overseas. In fact, the Economic Policy Institute estimates the trade deficit cost the United States 410,000 manufacturing jobs between 2001 and 2005.
“I look around my town and think about the people who stood next to me on the plant floor,” says Teresa Luna, a member of USW International Union Local 1191, who lost her job when the Magnequench missile technology plant in Valparaiso, Ind., closed and relocated to China. “I hear how every time there is any type of job opening, hundreds of applicants show up to fill one spot. The jobs are just gone.”
Trade Law Previously Used Only to Aid Corporations
Mark Barenberg, a Columbia University law professor, prepared the petition, which was filed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. The petition was filed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. The act allows the government to take action against countries that engage in unfair trade practices against the United States. Although the regulation has been used extensively to protect corporate interests, the first time Section 301 was invoked to protest a nation’s labor practices was when the AFL-CIO filed its first petition on China's workers' rights violations, in 2004.
That petition was rejected by the Bush administration. The Bush administration's refusal to comply with the Trade Act allowed workers' rights violations in China to get worse and contributed to the loss of hundreds of thousands of additional American jobs.
Under the law, the Bush administration has 45 days to decide whether to accept the petition. If it accepts the petition, it has 60 days to hold a hearing and one year to decide what actions to take. The AFL-CIO is seeking immediate action by the Bush administration to impose trade remedies against China, such as sanctions or tariffs, and to negotiate an agreement that connects China’s progress in enforcing workers’ rights with trade sanction relief. If the White House rejects the petition, Barenberg says, it must find that China either does not repress workers’ rights or that the repression does not adversely affect the U.S. economy.
"Exploitation of human beings through repression of fundamental rights for economic gain is both morally repugnant and economically dangerous," AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka says. "The fact is that China is violating international trade law, and our nation is doing nothing about it."
“I wonder: Do these corporations realize that they are trading away our lives?” Luna asks. “We must stop these corporations from making their own rules. This is not what our country is about.”
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