Labor is Not a Commodity

China's Unemployment Pressures

By Manfred Elfstrom, ILRF Program Officer

As the World Bank is predicting the first contraction in worldwide economic growth since World War II, China is focusing on creating jobs at home. Fast.  As the headline of an article in the English-language China Daily blared yesterday, “Job #1 for NPC: Employment.”  “NPC” stands for the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, which is at this moment holding its annual meeting alongside the advisory CPPCC (Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee) in Bejiing. 

The employment situation in China is grim.  On February 2, 2009, Chen Xiwen of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, a government advisory body, said that as many as 26 million migrant workers “are now coming under pressures for employment.” China Daily quoted Professor Chen Guangjin of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences as putting the unemployment rate for new college graduates at “over 12 percent” on December 16, 2008.  During a January presentation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Pieter Bottelier predicted that in 2009 an estimated 47-53 million non-agricultural workers will compete for 6-7 million jobs in the non-agricultural sector.

Economic Crisis, Buy American, and Sweatfree Organizing

Liana Foxvog, National Organizer, SweatFree Communities

As the financial and employment crisis deepens, it is crucial that we respond by addressing the causal roots of the mess. Multinational corporations have undermined local economies with the help of lax government regulations and trade agreements that favor capital over people. In the search for cheap labor, multinationals have moved millions of jobs that supported U.S. working families overseas and now exploit other workers the world over, moving from country to country, wherever labor is cheapest and workers' movements are weakest. Of the jobs remaining in the U.S., many have been eroded: employment is increasingly part-time, short-term, contracted-out with limited benefits, if any. Solutions to this global problem must be global in nature, involving cross-border union organizing, solidarity activism bringing added people power to back up workers' demands, and cultural change that builds unity for structural change.

Why “Buy America” is Not Going to Start a Global Trade War (And Why Our Tax Dollars Should Not be Spent on Sweatshops)

Bama Athreya, Executive Director, International Labor Rights Forum

President Obama, please don't get drawn into a red herring debate about this much-needed stimulus bill. It's not really about "Buy America." But if the US Chamber of Commerce wants to promote jobs in other countries, we have some better ideas.

ILRF does not, and has never, favored protectionism. However, notwithstanding the media outcry from corporate America, reports of the demise of free trade are a tad premature. "Buy America" is not going to spark a global trade war- and if corporate America really cares about workers in other countries, we have a few suggestions they might put their weight behind.

A stimulus package of $819 billion was approved Wednesday, January 28 by the House of Representatives and, if the White House can keep its eyes on the prize and stop fighting straw men, is likely to win Senate passage this week. This package included "Buy America" procurement provisions. It is unlikely in the extreme, though, that these provisions will, as critics have claimed, spark a global trade war.

The US Chamber of Commerce, spearheading the offensive, has stated that the procurement provisions in the stimulus package would "trigger retaliation from our trading partners." We suspect their objections to the package are not really about "Buy America," but suspicions notwithstanding, let's deal with them.

Working for Scrooge: 5 Worst Companies for the Right to Associate

Tim Newman, Campaigns Assistant, International Labor Rights Forum

Today is International Human Rights Day and human rights advocates around the world are celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).  The UDHR states in Article 23:

1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
2. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
4. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Despite the fact that the UDHR as well as ILO conventions, national laws and other legislation protects the right of workers to join unions, workers around the world continuously see this right ignored.  Many companies use a range of tactics from spreading anti-union propaganda among workers, to firing labor rights advocates and hiring strike-breakers, to shutting down workplaces that try to unionize, to using threats or actual violence to avoid workers realizing their right to join unions.  In fact, the International Trade Union Confederation reports that 91 union members were murdered in 2007.

Today, ILRF released a list of 5 multinational corporations that violate the right of their workers to organize.  Keep reading for details and click here to send a quick e-mail to these companies!

Economic Crisis China Style

Trina Tocco, International Labor Rights Forum

I recently had the opportunity to visit China and Hong Kong.  This was the first time I was able to meet with many of the people that ILRF works with there.  One thing that was so striking in each conversation was intense concern regarding the incredible number of factory closures resulting in tens of thousands of workers returning back to the country side.  China has a migrant "floating population" of 130 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.  Yin Weimin, minister of human resources and social security in China, estimated at a news conference this month that about 300,000 of the 6.8 million migrant workers from one province, Jiangxi, to the south of Anhui province, have returned home. 

Many of the people I met described that the train stations were like spring festival every day where hordes of workers return back to their rural roots once a year.  With such a massive shift of the population back to their homes, this will have lasting impact in China.  Just image many of the urban centers throughout the U.S. going to areas where only farming is the primary method of work.  Imagine the lives that migrants were exposed to in the cities and knowing that many of them were very young women, its possible they'll not want to go back to farming.  These individuals have many skills and therefore may want to expand what is offered in the country side.

“Save Money, Live Better”: Wal-Mart’s Sourcing Paradox in China

By Cindy Shuck, ILRF intern

This afternoon, Beth Keck, the Senior Director of International Sustainability and Strategy at Wal-Mart, spoke at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies about Wal-Mart’s new sustainability initiatives targeting their retail stores and suppliers, specifically in China. Mrs. Keck recently returned from Wal-Mart’s Sustainability Summit that was held in Beijing on October 21, where she met with Chinese Wal-Mart executives and other government officials to talk about the corporation’s new goals for responsible sourcing and how best to implement them.[1] Though the bulk of her presentation was focused on environmental sustainability efforts, she also mentioned the company’s social sustainability goals, which were quite interesting to hear considering Wal-Mart’s record since their opening in China in 1996.[2]

She started out by presenting Wal-Mart’s new and ambitious goals to use 100% renewable energy, produce zero waste, and sell products that sustain resources. Though Mrs. Keck admitted their loftiness, she contended that these goals are a great place for the company to start. She pointed out that Wal-Mart can make a large difference by making simple changes such as minimizing products’ packaging materials, recycling more efficiently, and reducing the use of plastic bags in retail stores, all initiatives that the company has recently implemented. She emphasized that energy efficiency and water conservation are also main concerns, and the company is working to build prototype sustainable factories that may serve as a model for new retail locations.

Chinese worker's poem captures factory life

Cindy Shuck, Intern, International Labor Rights Forum

The Factory Girl

From the damp, dirty hallway,

From the long lines of the cafeteria,

From the rumble of the machines and the unbearable factory noise,

The daylight drifts by, the starlight drifts by.

Forever crying on the production line,

The factory girls endure exhaustion and hardship.

How to talk about China

Trina Tocco, International Labor Rights Forum

On Monday night, Anita Chan (China Labor News Translations) and Jeff Fiedler (FAST-Research Associates of America) gave a terrific analysis of labor rights in China today as well as specific information about the way in which workers took part in forming a union at Wal-Mart retail stores in China more than two years ago.  As you probably know, forming a union in China is very different than what happens in the US since there is only one union in China and it is controlled by the government.

You can learn more about the ACFTU (All China Federation of Trade Unions) and China labor law by checking out one of Manfred's recent blogs here. 

You can also learn about the recent efforts to organize Wal-Mart workers by checking out a recent blog written by Paul Garver here.

What I thought was most interesting about the discussion were the difficulties the audience had with determining what they could actually do to support strong labor standards and their working brother and sisters across China. 

Let's Go Reverse Trick-Or-Treating!

Tim Newman, Campaigns Assistant, International Labor Rights Forum

This Halloween, kids will be giving treats to adults in a national campaign called Reverse Trick-or-Treating. 

The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) is joining a number of our allies in supporting this fun action which is now in its second year.  This Halloween, hundreds of groups of Trick-or-Treaters in the U.S. and Canada will reverse the Halloween tradition and hand out samples of Fair Trade chocolate and information about child labor and poverty in the cocoa industry to the houses they visit.

The deadlines to register are approaching quickly, so click here to get more information and to register and keep reading, too. 

Implementing Guidelines for China's Labor Contract Law Released

By Manfred Elfstrom, ILRF Program Officer

China has just released its long-awaited implementing guidelines (in Chinese here) for the Labor Contract Law (LCL). 

The guidelines clarify a few rough areas.  For example, in Article 6, they nail down how exactly to calculate the compensation due a worker who has illegally not been given a formal contract: double pay for each month of labor put in after the first month of employment and up until a contract is signed (employers have to sign contracts within the first month, according to the LCL).