Defending Free Trade: Jobs Would Be Helpful.(ISSUES & INSIGHTS)(VIEWPOINT)

Byline: ROBERT J. SAMUELSON

"The test of a first-class mind is the ability to hold two opposing views . . . at the same time and still retain the ability to function," F. Scott Fitzgerald once said. So it is with China and trade.

On the one hand, expanded trade has lifted millions of Chinese out of poverty. On the other, it's fostered oppressive working conditions.

Which brings us to the AFL-CIO's sweeping trade complaint against China submitted recently to the Bush administration. It's an object lesson in the new politics of trade. The AFL-CIO says repressive labor practices have depressed China's factory wages by 47% to 86%, lowered the prices of Chinese exports and cumulatively cost about 727,000 U.S. jobs. What repressive labor practices?

Well, Chinese workers can't organize independent unions. Wages sometimes aren't paid. Millions of migrant workers -- often young women -- are held in virtual bondage. They move from rural areas and, because they need residency permits that can be revoked, are at the mercy of employers. Sweatshops are common.

Wrote sociologist Anita Chan of the Australian National University, whose research partially informs the AFL-CIO complaint: "According to a survey I conducted in China's footwear industry, the average number of hours came to about 11 each day, often with no days off -- that is, an 80-hour workweek. (There) is a staggering amount of wages owed but not paid to migrant workers: 43% of the 51,000 cases of workers' complaints (in Shenzhen, an industrial city) in 2001 related to unpaid wages."

Trade's Benefits