| WASHINGTON
- April 12 - Today
15,000 working women and men from dozens of unions rallied on Capitol
Hill to tell their members of Congress "No Blank Check for China" at
a rally organized by the national AFL-CIO. Throughout the day, union
members, national and state officers from the AFL-CIO, and presidents
of national unions lobbied members to urge them not to scrap the current
system of annual reviews of China's human rights and trade record.
Speakers at the rally included Wei Jingsheng; Representatives David
Bonior, Nancy Pelosi, and Christopher Smith; AFL-CIO President John
Sweeney, Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka and Executive Vice President
Linda Chavez-Thompson; American Federation of Teachers President Sandra
Feldman; Steelworkers President George Becker; Teamsters President James
Hoffa; AFSCME President Gerald McEntee; and UAW President Steve Yokich.
Also featured at the rally were Roona Gopa, a student at the University
of Pennsylvania and a leader of Students Against Sweatshops; Brent Blackwelder,
President, Friends of the Earth; and Reverend Seamus Finn, Director
of Justice and Peace, Mary Immaculate.
"Until there are no more broken treaties, until there are no more
dissidents in prison, until there is no more environmental destruction,
and no more torture, and no more executions, there will be no blank
check for China," said AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney.
"China has repeatedly violated all of its trade agreements with the
U.S. over the past ten years, and Chinese leaders already say they have
no intention of honoring the deal they cut with President Clinton last
year. Our workers are forced to compete with prison labor and sweatshop
workers making as little as 13 cents an hour. And while we are losing
hundreds of thousands of jobs, China is setting new records for violations
of human rights and polluting the environment," he continued.
"While 61 percent of voters — including union members
— say they support foreign trade, 65 percent say that permanent
trade access for China should be contingent on China engaging in fair
trade and meeting real standards for human and workers' rights," said
AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson, citing a national
survey of registered voters conducted by Peter Hart Research and Associates.
"And the voters who were surveyed sent a clear message to the elected
representatives we are visiting this afternoon — by a four-to-one
margin, they say they would be less likely to vote for a member of Congress
who supported free trade with China."
The survey also found that 63 percent of Democrats, 57 percent of
Independents, and 75 percent of Republicans oppose permanent normal
trade relations with China.
Rally and Lobby Day highlights:
- More than 4,400 UAW members, 4,000 Teamsters, 2,000 Steelworkers
and 1,100 AFSCME workers joined in the rally.
- Over 100 Chinese-American textile workers from UNITE local 2325
were among the 1,500 members from UNITE.
- Events in support of the rally and lobby day on Capitol Hill took
place in cities across the country. In Knoxville,
Tenn., 100 working men and women will form a human billboard at the
city's busiest intersection during the evening rush hour. In Albuquerque,
N.M., union members held a rally outside the Honeywell Corporation,
one of the leading proponents of permanent free trade status for China.
And in Cambridge, Mass., on April 13, working families
are planning to demonstrate at Harvard University, where U.S. Trade
Representative Charlene Barshefsky is meeting with business leaders
who support giving China a blank check.
"This isn't a fight between American workers and Chinese workers,
this is a fight on behalf of all workers in both our countries, a fight
for free speech, free assembly, the right to join a union — it's
a fight about international economic justice," said AFL-CIO Secretary
Rich Trumka. "And this isn't a debate about who should and shouldn't
be our trading partners — how can we call ourselves 'partners'
with a totalitarian government that puts people in prison for union
organizing, that beats and tortures members of religious groups, a country
that condones mass kidnaping of women for sale into prostitution or
marriage?"
The AFL-CIO's campaign against permanent normal trade relations for
China is the first front of a major new multi-year campaign to make
the global economy respect people, not just profits. The campaign consists
of four key components: educating union members and the general public
about the global economy, fighting for workers' rights in the global
economy, building global solidarity among working families and holding
multinational corporations accountable for their role in speeding up
the race to the bottom.
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