(The following story by Albert B. Crenshaw appeared on the Washington Post website on March 17.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The AFL-CIO yesterday petitioned the Bush administration to pressure the Chinese government to increase wages and improve working conditions there, arguing that worker “repression” in China constitutes an unreasonable trade practice that violates U.S. law.
More than 700,000 U.S. workers have lost jobs over 10 years “as a direct result of violations of workers’ rights by the Chinese government,” AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard L. Trumka said at a news conference yesterday. He said the number, based on 2001 data, is conservative, and that China’s “workforce is so large and its labor repression so comprehensive that it is dragging down standards for the entire world economy.”
The petition to U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick is the first brought on behalf of labor under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. AFL-CIO chief economist Thea Lee said corporations have used it to protect intellectual property, and “if this law can be used to protect intellectual property rights, it can be used to protect workers’ rights.”
Zoellick has 45 days to respond to the petition. A spokesman, Richard Mills, declined to comment on it but said, “We are committed to aggressively enforcing our trade laws.”
Zoellick said last week that the United States soon may file its first global trade case against China, involving taxes that Beijing levies on foreign-made semiconductors.
The Bush administration is being criticized by political opponents on the issue of U.S. jobs lost to foreign competitors. The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) issued a statement supporting the petition.
“The Bush administration has completely walked away from using trade policy to raise living standards and improve the rights of workers at home and abroad,” Kerry’s statement said. “This case marks an important challenge on behalf of American workers and raises real concerns about China’s treatment of its workers.”
Trade experts noted that Section 301 was once a powerful weapon in the U.S. trade arsenal, especially in opening markets to U.S. products. It was amended in 1988 specifically to cover labor, but has largely been superseded by the World Trade Organization, which was set up in 1995.
While U.S. law covers labor standards, WTO rules do not, making it unclear what mechanism can be used to address the issue. If challenged, one expert said, China could say it is living up to its obligations under the WTO.
Columbia University professor Mark Barenberg, who drafted the labor federation’s petition, said the WTO has said only that the United States cannot use Section 301 to violate WTO rules. “This doesn’t violate any WTO rules,” he said.
The petition asks the U.S. trade representative to investigate the AFL-CIO’s complaints and “impose remedies commensurate with the cost advantage” that Chinese products enjoy as a result of the “denial of workers’ rights.” The AFL-CIO said the cost advantage ranges from 12 to 77 percent, and that Chinese manufacturing costs would be 44 percent higher “if they had enforced all their laws.”
The petition also asks the trade representative to negotiate an agreement with China allowing reduction of any remedies “only if China meets specific and verifiable benchmarks.” And it wants no new WTO-related trade agreements until the WTO requires its members to comply with labor-rights rules of the International Labor Organization.
“Our petition presents overwhelming evidence — much of it from administration sources — that our charges against the Chinese government are indisputable,” said AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney.
Exiled Chinese labor activist Wei Jinsheng, speaking through an interpreter, said, “The reason Chinese products are so cheap is that workers have no rights.” He said low-ranking Chinese workers often have to handle harmful chemicals that are forbidden here and even in China, “and workers die from that all the time.”
The Chinese Ministry of Commerce, reached by the Associated Press in Beijing, declined to comment.
AFL-CIO economist Lee said the federation is working with U.S. manufacturers and consumer groups on another Section 301 petition, which would deal with what she called China’s efforts to “manipulate” its currency to give its products an advantage in world markets.
The Bush administration has pressed China to stop pegging its currency to the dollar, a practice that American manufacturers say undervalues the yuan and makes Chinese products even cheaper here.