Unions Urge Probe of Worker Rights in China
From REUTERS | The Los Angeles Times
June 09, 2006
WASHINGTON — U.S. labor groups urged the Bush administration Thursday to increase pressure on China to stop widespread labor abuses they said have cost millions of Americans their jobs in addition to harming Chinese workers.
The 9-million-member AFL-CIO labor federation filed a petition, for the second time since 2004, asking the U.S. trade representative's office to launch a one-year probe into whether China's "systematic repression" of worker rights is an unfair trade practice that warrants using U.S. sanctions to stop.
"In China, millions of child workers and forced laborers produce goods and services, many of them for export. Workers who protest or seek to form independent unions are fired, beaten and imprisoned," the AFL-CIO said.
More than 126,000 Chinese workers died from injuries or illnesses they got on the job in 2005, the labor groups said. Many corporations in China reap "huge profits" while paying their workers less than 50 cents an hour, the AFL-CIO said.
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Human Rights
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