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New ILO Report:
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Half of World's Workers
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Denied Fundamental Workers’ Rights
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A new report from the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the UN agency responsible for labour issues, finds that half of the world’s workers lack basic
labor rights The report “Organising for Social Justice’.looked at the
freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, two key fundamental workers’ rights enshrined in ILO Conventions 87 and 98.
Large countries as Brazil, China, India, Mexico and the United States have still not ratified fundamental ILO Conventions on freedom of association. the
level of ratification of the two core Conventions covering the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining means that a startling half of the world’s workers remain
unprotected by the conventions’ provisions.
The report looks at several areas in which this fundamental right is frequently flouted, including in export processing zones. “Workers attempting to
organise are sometimes blacklisted, reprimanded or sacked. The catalogue of abuses in such workplaces is long. One example of this involves a Korean textile worker who was threatened at
gunpoint by his employer to make him resign from his trade union”, said General Secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU),
The ILO report highlights how a trade union-free environment is used to attract foreign investors and to gain commercial advantage over those countries or
regions where workers’ rights are respected. All too often, this is accompanied by exhausting work schedules and extremely poor health and safety conditions. In some cases, workers are
even made to take amphetamines to counter exhaustion and hunger.
ICFTU news release on the report ILO Report: Organizing for Social Justice
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When China Represses Workers’ Rights, U.S. Workers Lose Jobs
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China’s frequent violations of workers’ rights give that nation an unfair trade advantage that has cost
more than 727,000 U.S. jobs, according to a petition filed with the U.S. Trade Representative today by the AFL-CIO and the Industrial Union Council, made up of 14 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.
The 103-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 86
percent lower than they should be, which in turn reduces the price of Chinese manufactured goods by 11 percent to 44 percent. 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.
Wei Jinsheng, a Chinese worker advocate and dissident, says the situation in China may be even more dire
for workers than the AFL-CIO filing indicates. “The lives of the workers are miserable,” he says. “The Chinese government takes the rights of workers and makes them work for minimum
salary just to make money. But they don’t use the money to help the workers, they use the money to purchase weapons.”
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Bush Supports New Tax Breaks for
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Companies that Ship Jobs Overseas
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President George W. Bush continues to support billions in new tax breaks for U.S. corporations’ overseas
operations. Last year, Bush proposed new tax breaks to export jobs in his budget. Now he’s supporting foreign tax breaks in legislation before Congress. As Bush lobbies for the new tax
breaks, a new survey of 182 companies shows nearly 86 percent of U.S. firms that are exporting U.S. jobs plan to outsource more jobs in the near future, according to a March 26 report by
Reuters on a poll by the management consulting firm Diamondcluster International.
Bush is supporting the $37 billion in tax breaks for U.S. firms’ offshore operations as part of Senate
legislation S. 1637 that would also replace a domestic tax break for exporters found to be illegal by the World Trade Organization with a new domestic tax benefit for manufacturing. While
the manufacturing tax benefit standing alone would create an incentive to keep and create jobs in the United States, the new foreign tax breaks in S. 1637 will encourage companies to
export more jobs. Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.) will offer an amendment to strip out the $37 billion in new foreign tax break
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WSU Prof Blames the Victims
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According to Glynn Rimmington, the BOEING professor of Global Learning at WSU, “ It is no accident that jobs in call centers, engineering design, medical diagnosis, accounting, actuarial
assessments, software development and maintenance or in traditional white-collar occupations, not just blue-collar jobs such as in heavy manufacturing are being taken by people, who are
multilingual, culturally sophisticated, globally aware and education to equal or higher standards. Global learning has been happening in other countries, like China and India for a long
time. Raising barriers to free market forces is not a sustainable solution and applying it will only reduce the standing of the United States as a bastion of free trade and enterprise.”
In sociology classes, this would be identified as a classic case of blaming the victim. On the shop floor, more graphic, but no less accurate, descriptions would be applied. Does anyone seriously believe that Raytheon is moving 350 wire harness jobs to Mexico because the workers there are more culturally sophiticated and globally aware than Wichita workers? One hundred years ago, American courts and the propagandists of the robber barrons insisted that legislation to ban child labor was an unacceptable barrier to free trade. Today demands for international trade polices which benefit the majority of Americans are denounced in the same terms. Today, global labor and environmental standards are necessary both for economic justice and a viable global economy.
It is odd that Rimmington cites India and China. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize winning economist , points out that China and India have not followed the “free market” prescriptions of the IMF, but instead have used capital controls and other measures to protect their domestic economies.
Clearly policies which have resulted in the loss of three million manufacturing jobs
and annual trade deficits of $400 billion are not sustainable. Continuing them will only further undermine American living standards.and democracy.
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WICHITA AREA GLOBALIZATION COALITION
