U.S. Corporate Mafia Fighting Chinese Efforts to Help Workers

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_joel_s___061019_u_s__corporate_mafia.htm

U.S. Corporate Mafia Fighting Chinese Efforts to Help Workers

by Joel S. Hirschhorn

http://www.opednews.com

Greedy and powerful American companies not content with using economic inequality to devastate working- and middle-class Americans are now using their clout to fight efforts in China to combat economic inequality there. They want to keep wages low there so they can drive wages down here and everywhere else.

The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party that values a "harmonious society" has awakened to the need to combat economic inequality. Workplace exploitation to keep wages very low creates high profits for the new Chinese ownership class. The latest annual China Rich List revealed 500 Chinese nationals worth at least $100 million. The first China Rich List, published just eight years ago, counted only 50 Chinese worth over $6 million.

As to working-class Chinese, in 2005 there were 87,000 "mass protests" inside China involving over four million workers, up from just 10,000 protests in 1994. As Robert J. Rosoff noted in The Chinese Business Review: "The rights of Chinese workers are routinely violated. Workers are often required to work far more than 40 hours a week, have few days off, are paid below the minimum wage, and are not paid required overtime. Improper deductions from wages are common. Some Chinese workers must pay a large sum of money as a 'deposit' to their employer, and they may have to pay a 'recruitment fee' in order to be hired. These payments can prevent workers from leaving jobs where their rights are violated. Physical abuse of workers, and dangerous working conditions, are also common."

A workers "revolt" has Chinese officials deeply worried. A generation ago, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party abandoned the "class struggle," embraced the market, and declared that "to get rich is glorious." Now the communist leadership sees widening inequality as chief among the "contradictions and problems that impair social harmony." An analyst with the China Foundation for International and Strategic Studies said recently, "Know well that it is dangerous when the disparities and differences become too wide to be bridged, and threaten to disrupt the social fabric."

Too bad U.S. political leaders don't seem to feel the same way about growing American economic inequality.

Big-time American corporations are threatening to shut down their extensive Chinese operations should China's top officials adopt a draft new law that increases labor rights for Chinese workers. Get it? We are now exporting the worst aspects of our capitalist system. Amazingly, Wal-Mart, Nike, and other major U.S. companies currently generate two-thirds of the products China exports to the rest of the world.

The draft new law emerged this past spring, in a surprising move to start narrowing the widening "disparities and differences" now quite visible in China. Chinese officials unveiled a "Draft Labor Contract Law" and openly asked for public comment on it. It offers Chinese workers what the international union rights group Global Labor Strategies calls a "modest" package of workplace job protections. It would give workers more of a right to negotiate over workplace policies and procedures. But the proposal does not "provide Chinese workers with the right to independent trade unions with leaders of their own choosing and the right to strike," said the group. Though it would apply to all companies in China, its focus is on foreign-owned companies and the suppliers to those companies.

FULL story at link.

[ellenfl]

1. wow!

i'm just thoroughly amazed at american coporate response. :sarcasm:

ellen fl

[Union Thug]

2. An old Longshoreman sent me some of this the other day...

Needless to say, it reaffirms everything we've ever known about the values of corporations and the values of conservatism in general.

It is for this reason, imo, that we need to drop the guild system of organization and look to the One Big Union model of the IWW. Workers should be able to bring the entire world's economy to a close to fight the unimitigate power of the corporations.

[Vincardog]

3. You got that right. WE have to organize and resist the FASCISTs NOW