--really? ask chinese employers about how easy it is to hold onto their 'slave' laborers. they change jobs at the drop of a dime. and strikes do occur in China, quite frequently actually, though not at the behest of an independent union usually, but wildcats do certainly occur. ------------------------------------------- Rights in Honduras are pretty bad, but I think China's conditions in relation to the right to organize are near the bottom possible.
--that's empirically utterly out of touch with reality. ----------------------------------------------- Yes, the mass layoffs obviously play a role, maybe a large role, but the fact that many Chinese workers have tried to engage in job actions, only to be crushed by the government, shows that the reserve army of the unemployed is not by itself enough to cow all labor resistance.
--well, sure, but you make it sound awfully black and white. the situation on the ground is a lot more complex than workers experiencing low wages because their level of labor rights is significantly lower than a worker in Indonesia or Honduras. I mean one can advocate the right to unionise for Chinese workers and still see this. Your rhetoric doesn't sound that much different from Harry Wu, which is why liberal/left critics of Chinese labor conditions are often just laughed at by Chinese who are likewise critical of the same. ------------------------------------------------ But all labor activists demand is that China stop violating the ILO as a condition of trade-- no one argues that unemployment by itself is an unfair trade advantage for a country.
--pretty shortsighted actually, WTO conditions on the state sector in China are much more a problem for American and Chinese workers. ------------------------------
Why? As if rhetoric is in short supply among many folks-- the issue is whether 90 million Chinese workers producing for the US market without basic labor rights is a threat to labor standards in the United States. If it is, then that statement is not rhetoric but description of reality.
--well, sure there are real problems, really awful ones for Chinese workers actually. But simplistic formulations about 'slave' labor as though a 'slave' laborer's condition in China is really all that different from one in Indonesia or Honduras is really off the mark. Furthermore, ask Chinese labor activists if they want US companies to withdraw investments in China now. Or if they think of investment in China as a 'threat' to American workers. They don't. I don't see much ground for solidarity building with such rhetoric.
----------------------------------------- China is a socialist nightmare-- a fascist regime running a nation on behalf of wealthy capitalists, breaking any attempt by workers to organize to raise their wages, leaving tens of millions unemployed with the most threadbare welfare state imaginable.
--and Mexico isn't? Indonesia isn't? I don't see the point really...nor can I imagine many labor activists or sympathisers in China for that matter. Not the ones I know at least...