Just to reignite an older argument about why labor and other activists should support sanctions and demands for human rights in China before allowing open trade, the following article is symptomatic to the systematic crushing of trade union activity in China. For all some people talk about Chinese official "trade union", they are either nonexistent or just a tool of the government. And I know folks will say the same of US unions, but when you can point to a recent example of a dissident labor leader being jailed as insane - rather than winning office as recently happened in the New York Transit Workers Union, I will be able to take the moral equivalence argument more seriously.
Opposing the absolute fascist labor policies of China does not mean endorsing the merely repressive US anti-union policies. I would be all for Sweden calling for sanctions against the US for its antiunion policies. Human rights is all about hierarchies of less free countries being condemned by slightly less repressive countries, with the end product being mutual pressure all around the world for improvements across the board.
So here's the story- Nathan Newman
NY TIMES December 16, 2000 China Seizes Worker Seeking Independent Union By ERIK ECKHOLM
BEIJING, Saturday, Dec. 16 - A leader of workers at a silk factory in eastern China who tried to form an independent labor union was detained by the police on Friday and involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital, his co-workers said.
The detention came one day after he spoke with Western reporters about the workers' grievances.
The leader, Cao Maobin, a 47-year- old electrician at the Funing County Silk Mill in Jiangsu Province, was forced to enter the No. 4 Psychiatric Hospital in the city of Yancheng, according to Li Qiang, a labor advocate in New Jersey who has kept in close touch with the factory workers.
Mr. Cao, an eloquent spokesman for the bitter workers, had previously been warned by authorities that he would be arrested and committed to the medical center if he continued his advocacy.
In a statement faxed to Mr. Li, some of Mr. Cao's co-workers protested what they called his "political persecution," and they called for international pressure to secure his release.
"Chinese workers have not shared equally the fruits of economic development, and some have found it hard to survive," the workers said in the statement. "The official trade union of China has not spoken for the workers."
Mr. Cao was one of hundreds of workers who protested corruption at the ailing factory and its failure to pay pensions and living allowances to laid-off workers.
Charging that the official union had done nothing, the workers formed their own group and applied for its approval.
Articles about the yearlong dispute and the workers' action appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post on Friday.
In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Cao was firm in insisting on the workers' rights but said they hoped to avoid a confrontion with the Communist Party, which permits only one union under its control.
Whether the new union if formally independent or not "is not important," Mr. Cao said. "What is important is that it is elected by the workers themselves, and it acts on their behalf."
"I'm afraid that if the workers' real problems aren't dealt with, the situation will explode," Mr. Cao added. "That's why we need a union to speak for the workers."