July 27—At a plant in southern China that supplies clothing for Wal-Mart, the primarily female workforce, ages 15 to 25, routinely is forced to work 12–14 hours a day while making the equivalent of $60 a month, said Jenni Chan, speaking before 2,000 union delegates and guests at the 25th AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention in Chicago.
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| Jenni Chan, organizer, Students Against Corporate Misbehavior |
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Chan, who organizes production workers in southern China for Students Against Corporate Misbehavior, a Hong Kong-based group of students who monitors corporate abuse in China, says the unsafe working conditions mean workers frequently are injured on the job, their fingers often crushed in the machinery.
Chan was among key international speakers addressing the third day of the Convention, where delegates debated and approved a series of Convention actions enabling the union movement to meet the challenges of the global economy, including Resolution 23, “Wake Up Wal-Mart.” Wake Up Wal-Mart calls for massive union movement-wide effort to help Wal-Mart workers win a voice at work and ensure the Wal-Mart’s business model does not spread to other countries.
Many of the new generation of workers are fighting back, Chan said, seeking a voice at work and presenting demands to their employers. “Chinese workers are so young, they do not deserve to suffer. Let us work together to build a better future.”
‘Corporate Greed Is Out of Control’
“Corporate greed is out of control,” Sharan Burrow, president of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), told delegates. The ICFTU is a global labor federation that represents 145 million workers in 233 affiliated organizations in 154 countries.
“Not content to raid the tax base necessary for services by demanding both lower taxes and more corporate subsidies, CEO salaries are so obscene that they have reached a level of moral depravity, which all but silences the critics,” said Burrow.
When Wal-Mart bought the heavily unionized Astor grocery chain in Britain, it began pushing the stores’ working standards to new lows, Giovanna Holt, a former shop steward at Astor, told delegates. The company is working nonstop to break the union, she said. But the workers are determined to keep decent wages. “In the face of hostile employers, unions come together.”
Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labor Congress, described Canadian trade unionists’ nationwide protest against Wal-Mart. “We sent a clear message that Wal-Mart is a rogue corporation, that Wal-Mart is bad for communities, bad for local businesses. And our message was heard. Local governments in a number of provinces are now denying Wal-Mart zoning and construction approval.”
Ajita Talwalker, president of the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), and Allie Robbins, USAS national organizer for development, reported on numerous campaigns in which college students fought successfully to get their campuses and some companies to stop using products made in sweatshops.
“We look forward to training and developing more students to be effective foot soldiers in the struggle for workers’ rights,” Talwalker said.
Other speakers included Jeannie Drake, president of the British Trades Union Congress, Communications Workers of America Executive Vice President Larry Cohen and Mexican trade union official Francisco Hernandez Juarez.
A Strong Economic Agenda for Working Families
During today’s morning session, delegates also passed Resolution 6, “Democratizing the Global Economy,” and yesterday they approved Resolution 5, “An Economic Agenda for Working Families.”
The two Convention actions together call for the union movement to lead a coordinated effort to enact a new economic agenda, which strengthens the nation’s economy, defends the living standards of America’s working families and builds global strategic campaigns to confront and challenge corporate globalization, including a global campaign targeting Wal-Mart and its anti-worker, anti-union business model.
Some of the key aspects of the Convention actions include:
- Developing a national industrial strategy to respond to the crisis in manufacturing and rebuild the nation’s industrial base.
- Enacting immigration laws and policies that protect the rights of immigrant workers in the United States.
- Gaining effective workers’ rights to freedom of association and effective collective bargaining.
- Passing a higher minimum wage indexed to keep pace with increases in average earnings.
- Challenging the corporate trade agenda and insisting the federal government negotiate enforceable provisions to ensure workers’ fundamental human rights and environmental safeguards are included in the core of all new trade and investment agreements.
- Defeating flawed trade agreements based on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) model, including agreements with Central America, Thailand, the Andean countries, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and others and such regional agreements as the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
- Demanding renegotiation of NAFTA, which continues to promote destructive competition in North America that increases downward pressure on wages for workers.
- Implementing global strategic campaigns through comprehensive research, effective communication networks, mutually agreed objectives and internationally coordinated strategies with a broad range of partners.
The Convention also passed Resolution 32, “Uniting Workers’ Strength Across Borders.”
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