The American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), which represents 13 million American workers, will file an unusual trade complaint on Tuesday to press US President George W. Bush to punish China, which it asserts has gained a commercial advantage through a systematic violation of workers' rights by suppressing strikes, banning independent trade unions and not enforcing minimum wage laws.
Timed to maximize pressure on Bush as the presidential campaign heats up, the complaint asserts that the US has lost as many as 727,000 factory jobs because the labor violations it cites artificially lowered China's production costs and unfairly undercut US companies. The AFL-CIO argues that this illegal repression of workers' rights translates into a 43 percent cost advantage on average for China.
"This will put the onus on the Bush administration to explain that China is not repressing workers' rights, and to me that is an extraordinarily difficult case to make," said James Mann, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The record going back for decades is that China has intensely resisted independent trade unions, and I don't see how the administration can pretend otherwise."
This is the first case ever brought under the Trade Act of 1974 that seeks penalties because of violations of workers' rights. Some trade experts said the complaint could be vulnerable to challenge at the WTO because global trade rules do not protect labor rights.
Concerned about the loss of nearly 3 million factory jobs in the US since January 2001, the AFL-CIO is asking Bush to impose punitive taxes of up to 77 percent on China or to persuade China to pledge to halt all such violations against workers' rights. Union leaders warned that if Bush rejected the complaint, it would anger millions of American workers, especially in Midwestern battleground states where factory workers have been hit especially hard.
"American workers are suffering, they're losing their jobs, they're losing hope," said Barbara Shailor, the AFL-CIO's director of international affairs. "At the same time, Chinese workers are suffering under repressive conditions and are denied their most fundamental rights. Unless some action is taken to remedy this, we will see a continued hemorrhaging of jobs in the United States."
The complaint comes as the Bush administration prepares for next month's visit to Washington by Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi (
The AFL-CIO, which rep-resents 13 million American workers, plans to file the complaint under Section 301 of the trade act, which makes it an unfair trade practice for countries to violate internationally recognized worker rights.
Bush will have 45 days to decide whether to let the complaint proceed, and if he lets it go forward, the International Trade Commission will have a year to rule on it.
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