Katie Quan, November 19, 2004

An edited version of this article appeared in International Union Rights volume 11.4: trade union rights in China

WORKERS NEED RELATIONS WITH CHINESE UNIONS
In the 1980s while I was working in garment factories in New York Chinatown, I attended a union rally against imports from "Red China" where we were told that workers were "stealing our jobs" because they worked for "unconscionably low wages." Though I was thankful that our union was fighting to save our jobs, I was angered that the leadership was demonizing Chinese workers and trying to scare us into thinking that foreign workers were our enemies. I remember writing a complaint to Jay Mazur, then the manager of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union Local 23-25, who took my letter to the union's president Sol Chaiken to show him that the union's Chinese members found such language objectionable.

Since those times, the U.S. labor movement has been more careful to not pit American workers against foreign workers, but there are some areas of international work where we have not moved forward. One example is our policy towards Chinese unions, where the AFL-CIO continues to promote policies of boycott and exclusion rather than seek dialogue and solidarity. Though Chinese labor is central to global labor markets, its huge numbers add tremendous weight to that central position, and any comprehensive global labor strategy needs the solidarity of Chinese workers, we seem unable to rid ourselves of the "red demons" that prevent us from acting in international labor solidarity.

Garment Workers and Globalization
The U.S. apparel industry has outsourced work for more than four decades, but soon there will be a dramatic acceleration of this trend. On January 1, 2005, the the worldwide textile trade agreement known as the Multi-Fiber Agreement (MFA) will terminate, ending 30 years of restriction of imports through quotas. Researchers predict that manufacturers will close factories in dozens of countries in Latin America and Southeast Asia and will shift apparel production to countries where profits can be maximized--especially China. In Los Angeles alone, of the 90,000 Latina immigrants currently employed, upwards of 50,000 will likely lose their jobs within the next few years. Millions of workers in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Mexico have made urgent appeals to address the devastating economic and social consequences of this new free trade environment.

While garment unions and workers advocates will be fighting to retain jobs in many countries, they will also need to seek long-range solutions to worker empowerment. It makes sense that whereas multinational corporations have global sourcing strategies, workers should have countervailing international labor strategies. Just as unions developed coordinated organizing and bargaining activities for different locations within the U.S., so now should they follow the work overseas and unite workers across borders, particularly vis a vis common employers. Only then can they hope to regain the leverage that was lost when corporations outsourced to foreign shores.

A key link in this global labor strategy is China. Today more than 10% of the apparel sold in the U.S. was made in China, and by 2010 after the termination of the MFA, that number is likely to rise to more than 28%. With such a high percentage of the world's apparel labor market concentrated in China, it is both practical and imperative for U.S. workers to build solidarity with Chinese workers.

Anti-China Policy
Unfortunately, current AFL-CIO policy has lagged far behind our organizing need. There is no published official China policy, but the most public activities involving China during the past few years were the racially-charged anti-Permanent Normal Trade Relations campaign and a petition filed with the U.S. Trade Representative to reduce trade rights because of labor and human rights abuses . These actions were aimed at boycotting China rather than building relations with Chinese workers.

To be sure, there are big problems with Chinese unions. The All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) is the official union in China, and is the only organization that can legally give sanction to unions that form at the grassroots level. This means that workers who have concerns about the ACFTU cannot form independent unions, but must work within the existing union structure for change. In practice, this has meant that public dissidence is not tolerated, and worker organizers have been jailed without due process for criticizing government and union officials.

Another problem is that the ACFTU has not been effective in organizing in China's changing economy. Unions had, and continue to have, high density in government-owned manufacturing and services. However as the economy has shifted to private ownership, unions have maintained collective agreements in some large private and foreign-owned enterprises, but these are few. In the vast special economic zones employing millions of migrant workers throughout China where sweatshop exploitation is rampant, unions are virtually non-existent.

Even more troubling is the ACFTU's inability to lead workers struggles. Although Chinese laws make it hard to organize, in fact millions of workers engage in wage disputes every year, in actions ranging from filing lawsuits to claim backwages to waging protracted strikes. According to Dr. Liu Kaiming, director of the Institute for Contemporary Observation in Shenzhen, the first months of 2004 saw a wave of strikes throughout Guangzhou province that was "comparable to the SARS epidemic." In almost every case, the union neither represents the workers in their lawsuits nor their strikes.

Although these problems are significant, they are not so different from our experience with other union movements throughout the world. In Mexico, our ally unions are extremely intolerant of independent unions. In Japan, our ally unions have not been interested in organizing hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in the informal sector. Here in the U.S., many grassroots workers struggles are being waged by immigrant workers whom the trade union movement has just begun to embrace.

Therefore, knowing that Chinese unions are not independent from government control, are not organizing, and are not engaging with workers struggles, should we continue to boycott them and hope that they change, or should we begin a process of engagement that leads to cooperation?

The Need for Engagement
For garment workers, the answer is clear. Especially with the end of the MFA, we cannot afford more time with an ineffective boycott strategy. While official union movements may for whatever reason, be it fear of the red menace or anything else, continue to deny the pivotal position of Chinese labor and the need to build solidarity, workers have an urgent practical need to build unity.

Moreover, if we begin to engage with Chinese unions, we are certain to find opportunities to share experiences and be helpful. In researching labor issues in China, I have found that worker organizers and union leaders alike are eager to learn from foreign experience. While interviewing a young man who had participated in a strike in Guangzhou involving 8000 workers at his sheet metal factory, I suggested that the gains he and his co-workers had made as a result of the strike would be more far-reaching if the agreements could be institutionalized in a collective bargaining agreement. This gave him pause for thought, because while his experience with trade unions was not very good, it was indeed a possibility that unions could play a positive role in securing workers rights. I found myself wishing that I could have a week-long training with him and the strike leaders.

The same can be said for ACFTU officials. To be sure, I have talked with some who can only say what they have said for decades. But I have also met others who are struggling with the tremendous gap between what the union is and what the workers need. They recognize that the ACFTU must change in order to be relevant, and they are struggling to find new ways to organize and establish collective bargaining relationships. I found myself thinking that it would be really helpful for these union staffers to have more models to learn from, and consultants from various trade union movements to get advice.

Like the Ping-pong Diplomacy of the 1970s, the first step in engagement is to build people-to-people relations. It is time that garment workers who are losing work due to the MFA meet Chinese garment workers who are gaining work. Autoworkers, machinists, steelworkers, and other workers should also meet. This inevitably breaks down barriers and demystifies the other side through humanizing it, leading to commitment on both sides to work in solidarity.

The next step would be to learn more about each other, through research, media coverage, and other dissemination of public information. So little is known by the non-Chinese world about China, especially about labor. Those who read Chinese have access to a wealth of research, literature, and journalism about labor issues that is not available in other languages. Organizations like universities and media organizations who have the ability to bridge these gaps have an especially important role to play in this regard.

Finally, unions need to begin to talk with each other. The challenge will be to base these relationships upon a firm commitment to democracy and respect for human rights while at the same time respecting and reaffirming the right of national labor movements to have varying models, styles, and practices. A successful strategy will set step-by-step benchmarks that progress towards the agreed upon goal.

Conclusion
In January 2004 in southern China I saw an enormous distribution center at the port of Zhuhai in Guangzhou province. I was told that this was where all WalMart products manufactured in China were received, and then shipped to ports all over the world. "This is the jugular of the global economy", I thought to my organizer self. "If we could only organize this place we could control the global economy."

The fact is that China is pivotal to the global economy, and labor organizers, whether they represent garment workers or other workers, must face this fact. Unfortunately we have been victims of both disinformation about the evils of the red menace and misinformation about the opportunities to link with workers struggles in China.

To repair this relationship, we need to embark on a process of engagement that will initiate dialogue with Chinese labor through worker- to-worker exchanges, accumulate knowledge through research and reporting, and build trust through step-by-step progress towards agreed upon benchmarks and goals.

If we do this, then we will have a chance to formulate global labor strategies that take on multi-national corporations and their institutions such as the WTO. If we don't, then we will continue to impede the development of global labor strategies and thus hold back the American labor movement, the Chinese labor movement, and the interests of the international working class.

Katie Quan is chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. She is a former garment worker, union organizer, manager, and international vice-president of the U.S. garment workers union UNITE, and its predecessor the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. She is a board director of Sweatshop Watch, the Worker Rights Consortium, and the International Labor Rights Fund.