[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
INTERNATIONAL WORKER RIGHTS, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY AND THE INTERNATIONAL
ECONOMY
=======================================================================
JOINT HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM, NONPROLIFERATION AND TRADE
AND THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, HUMAN RIGHTS AND OVERSIGHT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 10, 2010
__________
Serial No. 111-89
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
______
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California, Chairman
GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
Samoa DAN BURTON, Indiana
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey ELTON GALLEGLY, California
BRAD SHERMAN, California DANA ROHRABACHER, California
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
BILL DELAHUNT, Massachusetts EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York RON PAUL, Texas
DIANE E. WATSON, California JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri MIKE PENCE, Indiana
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey JOE WILSON, South Carolina
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
MICHAEL E. McMAHON, New York J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina
JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee CONNIE MACK, Florida
GENE GREEN, Texas JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
LYNN WOOLSEY, California MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas TED POE, Texas
BARBARA LEE, California BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada GUS BILIRAKIS, Florida
JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
MIKE ROSS, Arkansas
BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
DAVID SCOTT, Georgia
JIM COSTA, California
KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona
RON KLEIN, Florida
VACANTUntil 5/5/10 deg.
Richard J. Kessler, Staff Director
Yleem Poblete, Republican Staff Director
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade
BRAD SHERMAN, California, Chairman
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
DAVID SCOTT, Georgia TED POE, Texas
DIANE E. WATSON, California DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
MICHAEL E. McMAHON, New York JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina
RON KLEIN, Florida
Don MacDonald, Subcommittee Staff Director
John Brodtke, Subcommittee Professional Staff Member
Tom Sheehy, Republican Professional Staff Member
Isidro Mariscal, Subcommittee Staff Associate
------
Subcommittee on International Organizations,
Human Rights and Oversight
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri, Chairman
BILL DELAHUNT, Massachusetts DANA ROHRABACHER, California
KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota RON PAUL, Texas
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey TED POE, Texas
Jerry Haldeman, Subcommittee Staff Director
Paul Berkowitz, Republican Professional Staff Member
Mariana Maguire, Staff Associate
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
WITNESSES
The Honorable Michael H. Posner, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, U.S. Department of State.... 7
Ms. Sandra Polaski, Deputy Under Secretary for International
Affairs, U.S. Department of Labor.............................. 15
Mr. William Lucy, Chair, Executive Council Committee on
International Affairs, American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)................. 36
Bama Athreya, Ph.D., Executive Director, International Labor
Rights Forum................................................... 50
Mr. John G. Murphy, Vice President of International Affairs, U.S.
Chamber of Commerce............................................ 63
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Michael H. Posner: Prepared statement.............. 10
Ms. Sandra Polaski: Prepared statement........................... 18
Mr. William Lucy: Prepared statement............................. 39
Bama Athreya, Ph.D.: Prepared statement.......................... 53
Mr. John G. Murphy: Prepared statement........................... 65
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 88
Hearing minutes.................................................. 90
The Honorable Russ Carnahan, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Missouri, and Chairman, Subcommittee on
International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight:
Prepared statement............................................. 91
The Honorable the Honorable Brad Sherman, a Representative in
Congress from the State of California, and Chairman,
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade:
Statement by Susan Reichle, Acting Assistant Administrator,
Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance,
U.S. Agency for International Development...................... 93
INTERNATIONAL WORKER RIGHTS, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY AND THE INTERNATIONAL
ECONOMY
----------
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10, 2010
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Terrorism,
Nonproliferation and Trade and
Subcommittee on International Organizations,
Human Rights and Oversight,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittees met, pursuant to notice, at 2:55 p.m. in
room 2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Russ Carnahan,
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Carnahan. I would like to call to order this joint
subcommittee hearing of the Subcommittee on Terrorism,
Nonproliferation and Trade chaired by Brad Sherman of
California, and the Subcommittee on International
Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight chaired by myself. I
see Mr. Royce joining us and just apologize at the onset here.
We had some votes and other hearings that delayed us, so thank
you for your patience in getting started.
First, I think this is an important subject that we are
addressing here today, International Workers Rights, U.S.
Foreign Policy and the International Economy. We have I think
two excellent panels today that can provide us some very good
insight, and we will be looking forward to your remarks and
also being able to ask you questions. First panel, I would like
to welcome Sandra Polaski. She is the deputy under secretary
for international affairs at the Department of Labor.
Ms. Polaski served during the Clinton and Bush
administrations as U.S. Secretary of State's Special
Representative for International Labor Affairs where she was
responsible for incorporating labor and livelihood issues into
U.S. foreign policy. Next, I would also like to welcome Michael
Posner, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Prior to joining the State
Department, Mr. Posner was the executive director and then
president of Humans Rights First, a non-profit, non-partisan
internal human rights organization.
Welcome to you both, and we will begin with some opening
statements, and I will kick this off as we also wait for
Chairman Sherman. I want to thank Chairman Sherman for leading
this hearing today and all the witnesses for donating their
time on this critical issue of international workers rights and
U.S. foreign policy and the international economy. In the wake
of the unprecedented financial and economic crisis,
coordinating a speedy recovery and creating sustainable job
opportunities has been a matter of the utmost concern for
Members of Congress since 2007.
The countless stories of hardworking American citizens
struggling during these difficult times are troubling and
painful, and they deserve our sincere and focused attention.
Additionally, the millions of jobs lost globally threaten to
precipitate a dangerous race to the bottom in labor standards
in which quality employment opportunities have also suffered.
The speed to cycle of declining living standards, diminishing
purchasing power, increasingly shrinking markets and further
economic decline. The administration, Congress and many others
are doing much to turn this around.
As part of this process, we have taken many measures to
address our national economic recovery. We must also look
beyond our borders and increase our efforts to coordinate
significant policy reforms worldwide that will yield concrete
benefits to Americans at home by strengthening U.S. trade
agreements and trade preferences. Despite these favorable trade
relationships, countries still have not consistently adhered to
agreed upon labor provisions, and U.S. agencies have been lax
in enforcing them.
This ultimately undermines the American worker, undermines
potential for economic growth and undermines the respect for
basic human rights. From Toyota vehicles to Chinese drywall and
children's toys, I also remain concerned about the lack of
product safety and enforcement in our trade relationships. This
gives unfair market advantage that may end up harming American
consumers and that is simply unacceptable and unsustainable.
This April, Secretary Solis will host the first G-20
Employment and Labor Ministers' meeting here in Washington in
an effort to pool individual experiences and try to coordinate
a collective policy to restore the global economy. I believe
this is a vital step with potential to further enhance
America's leadership on economic recovery efforts. It is my
hope that the meeting will give serious focus to job creation
in line with more robust labor rights, protection and
transparency.
This year I launched the bipartisan American Engagement
Caucus, and last week hosted a congressional briefing on
America's image abroad. I believe it is also important for
America to continue to be a leader in promoting workers rights,
advancing labor standards to foment healthy economies and
prosperous societies moving forward. It is imperative that we
act now to level the playing field so that everyone can have
access to quality sustainable work opportunities and
participate fully in the global economy helping to strengthen
and expand it.
This will provide tangible, immediate benefits to our
domestic economies as well, ensuring strong markets for our
exports and giving power back to workers and consumers. As we
work to revitalize the American economy and create jobs here,
we must aggressively seek new opportunities for U.S. companies
to gain fair access to foreign markets. A critical component to
that effort is rigorous enforcement of international trade laws
and safety standards and to help level the playing field for
American workers and protect human rights around the world.
Once again, I thank our witnesses, and I want to ask Ranking
Member Royce to provide an opening statement as well.
Mr. Royce. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I chaired the Africa
Subcommittee, and I was part of the bipartisan group that
authored and pressed and finally passed the Africa Trade Bill.
That bill has created desperately needed jobs on that
continent. I have toured apparel factories with other members
of this House in a number of African countries talking to
Africans with new jobs--jobs that are paying women to feed,
clothe, and educate their children--jobs that would not exist
without liberalization of trade.
I am concerned about well-being abroad, but of greater
concern frankly to me is our economy, our own well-being here,
and unfortunately, some use the issue of international labor
rights to stymie attempts to lower the high barriers many U.S.
goods and services face overseas. This makes American workers
less competitive. Consider the trade agreement with Korea,
which the Democrat congressional leadership and a timid
administration has deep freezed.
KORUS promises to increase trade with South Korea by $10
billion a year. As a witness notes today, 40 percent of the
U.S. private sector today exports overseas, so KORUS is an
American job opportunity that is being lost, a stimulus that is
wasting, but it gets worse. While we are frozen, others are
pouncing. We will hear that the United States could lose more
than 380,000 jobs and $40 billion in export sales if the Korea
and Colombian trade deals languish.
Why would that be? Because the EU and Canada are making
deals with these countries. National security gets compromised.
The epicenters of terrorism are Afghanistan and Pakistan. We
have troops in the field. The Islamist terrorism gains if these
economies fail, yet the House so weakened a limited
Afghanistan/Pakistan trade proposal, including the labor
provisions that exceed our own in this country, that it died in
the Senate. So there was no economic boost for this critical
region.
Some working conditions are truly horrible. It wouldn't
bother me if Americans never bought another Chinese made toy.
Labor provisions are important. The Africa Trade Law, which I
co-authored, includes them, so do other preference programs and
trade agreements. In some cases, they need to be wielded
better, but in 2007, a bipartisan agreement paved the way for
approving trade agreements. That was for Peru, and that was it,
and we were done--nothing since. Our competitors are laughing.
Stopping liberalization isn't going to help.
Are Colombian workers better off without the Colombian
trade deal? I don't think so. American workers absolutely
aren't better off without this deal. As much as some would try
to legislate prosperity overseas, there are limits to what we
can achieve--political, practical and economic limits. To those
demanding ever more stringent labor standards, when are they
good enough to trade? The American workers who depend on
exports want to know. Thank you, and I yield back, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, and next I want to recognize Mr.
Scott for an opening statement.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Chairman Carnahan, and it is a
pleasure to be here with you and both of our committees in
joining in on this very timely important issue, and I certainly
want to welcome all of our distinguished panelists. The topic
of today's hearing is of particular importance as the United
States and our trade partners march forward in economic
recovery and growth. The encouragement of economic development
and the job growth that development brings are issues that I am
keenly interested in, and so I thank you once again for
providing a forum for these issues.
Our two subcommittees must approach today's topic with a
recognition of the delicate balance necessary to best promote
American interests abroad, and I think that those are the two
key words as we move forward, delicate balance. We have got to
promote a trade policy that encourages the responsible growth
of American business at home and abroad, but never at the
expense of our national security nor in the face of egregious
and appalling human rights violations abroad, that is the
balance, nor at the cost of the American worker here at home.
As the global markets recover and rebuild, we are presented
with the fortuitous opportunity of recognizing the mistakes of
the past and strengthening America's status as the prime engine
of global economic development. We recognize our past
leadership in the world and global economic development, and we
recognize the future and that we must maintain our status as
the world's leader. We must encourage a rising tide where
economic growth coincides with increased living standards and
greater democratization. We must eliminate technical barriers
to trade and tariffs on U.S. goods.
We must protect intellectual property rights as well as the
rights of labor. Quite frankly, nowhere is there a greater
example of this delicate balance that we must maintain that in
the situation facing us in Colombia. There are so many right
reasons that we really need to strengthen our trade
partnerships with Colombia, but there is a problem of human
rights in Colombia and especially the violation of labor rights
and relationships with labor unions where there has been over
the past several years a very serious pattern of violence and
assassination of labor leaders.
Mr. Chairman, with that, I will yield back the balance of
my time, and I hope that we can arrive at a very good
discussion of how we move forward while at the same time
understanding this delicate balance that our leadership must
envelope.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Scott, and next I want to go
to the gentleman from California, Mr. Rohrabacher.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and let
me just identify myself with the remarks of my colleague about
his concerns about Colombia. However, let me add to that that
the human rights problems of Colombia are minuscule as compared
to those in Vietnam where we are rushing forward to try to help
them develop their manufacturing base or in China, China. My
gosh, the world's worst human rights abuser, and yet a country
whose policies we have permitted to be in place even while we
gave them most favored nation status.
Let me note that we are now at home in a horrible situation
where our people can't find work, where our people are being
put out of their jobs, and I trace this right back to many
different policies, but one of the most significant policies is
that we have had a one-way free trade policy with the world's
worst human rights abuser, and let me note that Nancy Pelosi,
Barney Frank, Jesse Helms, Dana Rohrabacher, yours truly, Chris
Cox, Chris Smith, Ben Gillman, Gerry Solomon all are people who
fought most favored nation status and said it was going to lead
to serious economic consequences for the United States and for
working people here, and that is exactly what has happened.
Of course, we were told well, if we just had most favored
nation status, and we put all our investment there, and we let
them use our technology that pretty soon there is going to be a
liberalization, and China will no longer be a dictatorship as
it is. I call that the hug-a-Nazi-make-a-liberal theory, and it
didn't work. China is just as dictatorial today. Actually, it
is more dictatorial today than it was 25 years ago, and yet we
have built up their economy, and what we have done is created a
Frankenstein monster, and to the subject at hand today, how do
they treat their labor force?
I mean, the fact is that people over there who work over
there have no more rights in terms of their economic rights as
they do political rights. They live in a society controlled by
a dictatorial clique, and if you get in their way, you
disappear. People have tried organize unions, et cetera and try
to uplift at least the working conditions of their people, find
themselves what? With none of the freedoms that we say are so
important here, so why are we granting that country most
favored nation status, or as happened during the Clinton
administration, permanent most favored nation status, and we
are trying to push for the whole WTO thing.
Well, with that said, Mr. Chairman, we need some serious
talk about our China policy. I believe it is contributing
basically to the downfall of the standard of living of the
American people, and here is where again freedom and our
commitment to freedom and liberty and justice has very serious
consequences to the well-being of our country, and our people
as I say are being put out of work. You go to the store, and
you can't buy anything that is not made in China, and you
realize that the people in China, if somebody sticks their head
up to complain, it is chopped off.
We need to make sure that we look at this in a serious way.
I want to congratulate Brad Sherman, who I know is paying close
attention to this issue in his own subcommittee, and I look
forward to working together with you, Mr. Chairman, and with
Chairman Sherman, and maybe hopefully having a positive impact
on this intolerable situation with Communist China. Thank you.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher, and now I want to
turn it over to Chairman Sherman for his opening remarks.
Mr. Sherman. Thank you. In quick response to the gentleman
from California, you asked why did we provide most favored
nation status on a permanent basis to China. It is in the
interest of Wall Street. It is in the interest of Wal-Mart.
That is why we did it. Good to see Mike Posner again, and I
want to apologize to both witnesses for me being late. Our
caucus had a suddenly-called meeting on an issue very important
to me and my district, and I thought I had to be there for at
least part of it.
Now turning to the hearing, the United States has a long
history of supporting and strengthening labor rights. What I
find troubling is that the U.S., in too many cases, has fallen
short of its responsibility to be a global leader in protecting
these fundamental human rights. For example, the International
Labor Organization has adopted eight core conventions
enshrining the most fundamental labor rights. These embody
universally shared beliefs including eliminating the worst
forms of child labor, granting freedom of association and
protecting the right to organize.
Unfortunately, America is one of only six nations that has
ratified two or fewer of these core conventions. The U.S.
position is particularly confusing given that these conventions
were ratified by virtually every nation in the world.
Currently, Convention 111 eliminating employment discrimination
sits before the Senate awaiting ratification. This convention
has passed review by the Bush administration and
representatives from Labor and Business, and I would hope the
Senate would move forward.
Of particular trouble to me is our right-to-work laws in
roughly half of our states. This is an abomination in a country
that claims to support internationally the right to organize
and core labor standards. We should take significant steps to
improve our own labor laws. These right-to-work laws are, in
effect, a prohibition on effective organizing. They are
harmful. They are harmful to the states involved. They are also
harmful to states like my own, which allow labor unions to
organize, because now we have to compete with the race to the
bottom as our companies have to compete with those where the
workers would like better wages, working conditions and
benefits but are unable to organize to get them.
According to the American Enterprise Institute, the reason
that many key ILO conventions have not been ratified is the
fear that some U.S. labor laws, particularly the right-to-work
laws, would be found to violate international labor standards
that have been accepted by the civilized world for close to 100
years.
Now turning to Latin America. When we are looking at
countries that are seeking trade privileges or seeking foreign
aid, we can do more to assure reasonable conditions for labor.
One example is the Dominican Republic and the Central
American Free Trade Agreement, which went into law in 2005.
Then President Bush said the agreement would promote democratic
governance, human rights and economic liberty for everyone.
However, in June 2009, the Washington Office on Latin America
published a report which revealed that labor conditions in
CAFTA countries have not improved and violations have not
diminished regardless of promises made by member countries to
improve labor rights and millions of dollars invested by the
United States to meet this objective.
I am particularly concerned with one example of this lack
of progress, and that is the murder of trade unionists in
Guatemala. Unions report the murder of 40 unionists between
2007 and 2009. One such case is that of Pedro Zamora. In 2007,
Mr. Zamora was ambushed and shot 20 times in the midst of
contentious negotiations with the company. This man, his family
and the workers he died representing have yet to receive
justice.
Indeed, the authorities have apprehended and tried only one
person linked to the crime. However, that person was acquitted
for still unknown reasons last year. It is unclear whether the
government will appeal that acquittal and whether they will
continue to search for others responsible for the murder or
whether it is all a white-wash. The situation in Colombia is
worse. Over 500 union members have been brutally murdered
during Mr. Uribe's presidency, and many more have received
death threats against them or their family. This violence has a
profound chilling effect on the ability of workers to exercise
their rights. Far too few have been arrested and convicted for
these crimes. In 2009, the rate of impunity remained well over
90 percent.
Turning to Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Labor rights
violations are not limited to one particular country in the
world. They are just a handful of trading partners. Looking at
Southeast Asia and Thailand alone, Human Rights Watch recently
reported widespread and severe human rights abuses faced by
workers including killing, torture in detention, sexual abuse
and labor rights abuses such as trafficking, forced labor and
restrictions on organizing.
Some of the most glaring examples come from the Middle
East. For example, the State Department Annual Trafficking and
Persons Report found that many immigrants from South Asia who
moved to Oman to work as domestic servants or low-skilled
workers find themselves in conditions indicative of involuntary
servitude, such as withholding of passports and other
restrictions on movement, nonpayment of wages, long hours
without rest or food, threats, physical and sexual abuse.
These are conditions that no one finds acceptable. I want
to work with my colleagues and with the administration in
focusing on these abuses. The State Department will release its
annual country reports on human rights. I believe that is
tomorrow, and I know Mr. Posner's staff has been working, if
not around the clock, at least long hours on that report, so I
am particularly interested to learn whether, and how, our
foreign assistance programs, including the Millennium Challenge
Corporation, are working in the best interests of workers at
home and abroad.
This is an opportunity to see what steps can be taken to
improve labor rights standards tied to our trade policy,
including the standards in the free trade agreements or the
Generalized System of Preferences which provide preferential,
duty-free entry for thousands of products from over 100
beneficiary countries and territories. Given the troubling
labor rights abuses that persist around the globe, I look
forward to the opportunity to hear from the witnesses and would
also like their comment on the degree to which American laws,
particularly right-to-work laws, violate internationally-
accepted labor standards. Thank you for the time. I yield back.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, Chairman Sherman. Now I want to
turn to our first panel starting with Michael Posner, assistant
secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE MICHAEL H. POSNER, ASSISTANT
SECRETARY, BUREAU OF DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS AND LABOR, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Mr. Posner. Thank you, Chairman Carnahan, Chairman Sherman,
other members of the subcommittees. Thanks for holding this
hearing and for inviting me to testify. I am going to ask that
my written comments be submitted to the record.
Mr. Carnahan. Without objection.
Mr. Posner. As Chairman Sherman mentioned, tomorrow we are
releasing our annual country reports on human rights practices.
In each of the 194 country chapters, there is sections on
workers rights providing a detailed look at these issues in the
countries you have talked about, China and Vietnam and
Colombia, Guatemala and others. While there are some positive
trends we see, there also are far too many countries where
workers are suffering abuses in various of forms of
discrimination.
I list a number in my testimony, but to give an example, in
Uzbekistan, authorities continue to compel children to harvest
cotton for export. In countries like China and Iran and Cuba
and other places, labor activists continue to risk being fired
or blacklisted even in prison, and as several of you have
mentioned in places like Colombia and Guatemala, labor
activists continue to be targeted for violence and even death.
Throughout the world, dangerous working conditions remain
all too common. There was a fire last month in an apparel
factory in Bangladesh that took the lives of 26 workers, mostly
women. The global economic downturn has thrown millions of
people out of work, destroyed savings and forced millions to
migrate. The burden of this global downturn has fallen most
heavily on the world's most vulnerable workers. That is what we
are doing here today to describe ways in which we can address
their plight.
Women comprise the majority of victims of forced labor and
abuse in sweat shops. Domestic workers are particularly
vulnerable, and although we have seen some progress on child
labor in places like Brazil, the worst forms of child labor
continue to darken the future of tens of millions of children
around the world. I want to just take the few minutes I have
here to talk about a few things that we are trying to do in
this administration. Our efforts to address these challenges
fall into three broad categories.
The first is labor diplomacy, which I think is a key. Every
day we work to advance labor rights by talking directly and
frankly with other governments. We raise our concerns on a
broad range of issues, and we do so through our diplomats but
also through 40 labor-designated positions in the foreign
service. We are focused now on reviewing their role and their
responsibilities. We are also working with the foreign service
institute to provide enhanced training and guidance.
We have increased our training options, and we are working
very closely with the Department of Labor and my terrific
colleague Sandra Polaski on this. The second thing that we do
is to provide technical assistance. Beginning in the 1990s
under the partnership to eliminate sweat shops, we have been
spending a growing percentage of our time and money in the
Bureau of Democracy, Rights and Labor to address these issues
through programs where we provide training. We provide legal
representation.
We improve multi-stakeholder engagements, and we work to
protect vulnerable workers. We now have about $26 million a
year in various programs around the world, and again in my
testimony, I list some of those. In recent years, the trade
agenda also has created opportunities. I am sure we are going
to get into that in some of the questions, but in the CAFTA
countries, places like Jordan, Bangladesh, there are
opportunities to push within the context of trade agreements
for greater protection of rights.
The third area, a broad area where we are working and
continue to work and expand our work is in building
partnerships and broader engagement. We can't do this alone in
the State Department or the Labor Department. It is critical
that we involve other Federal agencies and that we work with
others outside of government. The ILO, for example, is a
terrific partner, and we are pushing for strong action with
them on the worst abusers of workers rights including child
labor and forced labor.
We are working to strengthen American participation in the
OECD guidelines and multinational enterprises, and we are
working with John Ruggie, who is the U.N. Special
Representative on Human Rights and Transnational Corporations.
It is important that the government also seek to push notions
of corporate social responsibility. Let me close by saying that
we are committed to working with Congress. We are committed to
making these priorities for this administration, and we eagerly
await your questions. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Posner
follows:]Michael Posner deg.
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Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Posner, and next I want to go
to Deputy Under Secretary Polaski.
STATEMENT OF MS. SANDRA POLASKI, DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY FOR
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
Ms. Polaski. Good afternoon, Mr. Carnahan and Mr. Scott. On
behalf of the Department of Labor and Secretary Hilda Solis, I
thank you for this opportunity to discuss the role of labor
issues in the Obama administration's global agenda. I have also
submitted more extensive written comments, and I ask that they
be submitted to the record.
Mr. Carnahan. Without objection.
Ms. Polaski. Thank you, and I am also pleased to share this
panel with Assistant Secretary Posner. As he said, we work
closely together, and I think his vision for the State
Department and mine for the Labor Department in the
international labor realm strongly compliment each other.
Secretary Solis' vision is that we work to provide ``Good Jobs
for Everyone.'' When she launched this slogan and this mission
for the Department of Labor, one can think very quickly about
its impact in terms of the domestic U.S. economy, but this is
also a very important part of our agenda internationally as
well as domestically.
To provide prosperity and jobs here at home, we need a
sound and balanced global economy, one in which workers
everywhere are able to share in the benefits of economic
growth. If workers in developing countries don't earn
sustainable wages, if they don't earn enough to buy the goods
that they produce, they won't earn enough to buy the goods that
we produce, and we will see a repeat of the imbalances in the
global economy that were partially the cause for the current
economic crisis.
The crisis has also made it more urgent that we attend to
labor rights internationally because I think as Chairman
Carnahan indicated in his opening remarks, when there is large
unemployment, the bargaining power of labor goes down, and
workers become more vulnerable to the most extreme forms of
exploitation, including some of those that Mike Posner just
spoke about including servitude and trafficking. Today, I would
like to talk very briefly in my oral remarks about what the
Department of Labor is doing in order to try to raise these
living standards and working conditions globally.
We work through three main channels: First of all through
trade agreements and trade preference programs; second through
technical assistance--projects on the ground in developing
countries; and third through policy dialogue with foreign
governments. First, the trade framework, something which has
been referred to by all of the members who spoke. Our trade
preference programs benefit approximately 140 developing
countries, and our free trade agreements with labor provisions
cover 16 trading partner countries. All of these agreements and
trade preference programs include protections for labor rights.
Protecting these labor rights in our trading partners is a
reflection of our values as a society, and it also promotes our
own economic prosperity in the ways I have already mentioned.
By raising living standards, we hope to build the middle
classes of our trading partner countries and trade recipient
countries and allow them to buy the things that they produce,
that we produce and that other countries produce.
To ensure that our trading partners meet the labor
obligations in these preference programs, including AGOA that
Ranking Member Rohrabacher mentioned and the other preference
programs, ILAB has increased is monitoring and analysis of what
is happening on the ground in these countries that enjoy the
preference programs and trade agreements, and we are doing this
in part by adding significant additional staff this year with
additional funds that Congress so kindly provided for us in the
Fiscal Year 2010 budget.
In fact, we expect to increase our staff by about 15
percent this year, and we are increasing the intensity and the
level of analysis of our monitoring and reporting on these
conditions. We are also increasing the level of our engagement
with foreign governments. As Mike mentioned, the State
Department is in dialogue with foreign governments every day on
these issues of human rights and labor rights, and we are as
well. We follow up on our analysis by talking to governments,
pointing out what the problems are, what is wrong and offering
them assistance to deal with these problems and to improve the
conditions for their workers.
Second, we also work to bolster worker rights through
innovative technical assistance programs on the ground. We
particularly look for opportunities to find foreign governments
who demonstrate the political will to improve their own
workers' living conditions and rights at work. One example of
the kind of technical assistance that we are providing is a
very innovative program called Better Work, which is a factory
monitoring program that we originally launched during the
Clinton administration starting in Cambodia.
It is a factory-monitoring program where the ILO goes into
the factories in the export processing zones, monitors the
conditions and reports what they find completely transparently
on the internet for all to see, so consumers know the
conditions, workers know the conditions, the international
buyers know the conditions, and all governments know them. This
has the effect of aligning the incentives facing the buyers,
the sellers, the consumers and the workers along with the
governments because we provide information that otherwise would
not be available.
We launched this program 10 years ago in Cambodia. It has
proven to be a dramatic success. Studies have shown that it is
the most significant factor in alleviating poverty in that low-
income country, and we are now launching Better Work programs
in other countries as well. Ranking Member Rohrabacher will be
interested to know that Lesotho has asked us for such a
program, and we indeed used funds from our last year's budget
to launch that program.
We have now hired an executive director for the program,
and we expect the monitoring to be up and running in months,
and the government of Lesotho and the industry feels that this
will be a needed advantage to keep the industry healthy and to
allow it to grow and to create jobs in that African country. We
have also launched such a program in Haiti, and despite the
earthquake, we are hoping that program can nevertheless proceed
and again attract investors and jobs to Haiti where they are so
desperately needed.
We are currently exploring the possibility of launching a
program like this in Central America, and I know that Chairman
Sherman was particularly interested in what has happened under
the CAFTA-DR, and we feel that more robust approaches, such as
this example, will be needed in order to improve the outcomes
for workers under that trade agreement.
We are also working to devise innovative programs to
address child labor. Congress has been very generous in
appropriating money for DOL to address international child
labor issues for the last 15 years, and we are ready to launch
a new generation of child labor projects that try to address
the root causes of child labor, including the poverty of their
families, and we hope to be able to launch the first of these
programs very shortly in El Salvador again addressing the
concerns that have been raised by members of this committee.
The third channel through which ILAB works is policy
dialogue with other countries. Our goal here is to improve
labor rights through bilateral engagement and also through
multilateral and global engagement. An excellent example of
this kind of policy dialogue is the meeting that you referred
to, Chairman Carnahan, the meeting of G-20 Labor and Employment
Ministers, which Secretary Hilda Solis will host here in
Washington April 20 and 21 of this year.
When President Obama met with the leaders of the G-20
countries in Pittsburgh last September at their summit meeting,
he suggested that it was important for the heads of state of
the G-20 to increase their focus on jobs because this is the
most serious challenge facing many of our countries, and he
offered to them that Secretary Solis would host their Labor and
Employment Ministers to examine what has happened in our labor
markets, the policies that we have implemented, to look at the
results that we have had from those policies, share experiences
and then try to improve global policy so that we can indeed
have this raising of living standards and incomes around the
world.
On the basis of that meeting, we will make a set of
recommendations to the heads of state when they meet in June in
Canada. Let me conclude by just noting that I am certain that
the administration and the members of this committee all
clearly recognize the need for more jobs and for good jobs here
in the United States, and I think from the international
perspective that you all expressed in your opening remarks, I
don't need to say once again that we will not be able to
guarantee those good jobs here at home unless we can raise
conditions for workers around the world, so I thank you again
for this opportunity, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Polaski
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Mr. Carnahan. Thank you very much, and we want to start
with questions with Chairman Sherman.
Mr. Sherman. Thank you. These hearings are very important,
but when it rains, it pours. I represent Northridge. They are
having hearings right now on natural disaster insurance, so I
will leave the room for a bit. I will be fully briefed on what
you say. I will be back in touch by phone, and I thank Chairman
Carnahan for letting me go first with my questions here.
Mr. Posner, let us say a particular country simply had a
law prohibiting labor organizing. Would that fact alone cause
some negative comment in the Human Rights reports?
Mr. Posner. Yes. In the course of preparing the Human
Rights reports, we look at a range of the fundamental rights
that you have identified that the ILO has identified, and
countries like China and Vietnam that prohibit people from
organizing.
Mr. Sherman. Thank you. What about for the Millennium
Challenge Account? If a country just prohibited labor
organizing, would that count against it in its total effort to
qualify for the Millennium Challenge Account?
Mr. Posner. I think the Millennium Challenge Account looks
at a range of indicators or factors of which political civil
rights broadly are one. I don't think they have a particular
standard that looks precisely at labor, but it is in broader
context, yes.
Mr. Sherman. So it would almost be up to a State Department
decision whether the right to organize is a human right. Do you
have a position on that? I know that Millennium Challenge
Account requires respect for human rights. Does that include
the right to organize?
Mr. Posner. Yes. I think there is now in fact, and I have
had some discussions with people at the Millennium Challenge
Account, there is I think a review of the various indicators
that they are using, and one of the things we are discussing is
broadening the human rights indicators beyond the democracy
indicators from I think Freedom House that they use, but that
is very much part of our discussion.
Mr. Sherman. Democracy and slavery can co-exist. We proved
that in this country unfortunately 150 years ago, and a country
that has slavery and democracy should not qualify. Returning
though to your standards of the human rights reports, let us
say a country didn't officially ban all labor unions, but had
some ruse or some provision in effect to accomplish the same
thing. Would you then adversely comment on that law in the
human rights reports?
Mr. Posner. Yes, and we do routinely look at both legal
prohibitions but also practical impediments to people being
allowed to organize and to represent their interests as
workers.
Mr. Sherman. I know you can't do it, but I want you to
issue a human rights report chapter on the 20 some states that
have right-to-work laws. By the standards you have told these
subcommittees here today, the United States should be adversely
commented upon in any human rights report issued by any country
that follows the same standards as the United States State
Department. There are two Generalized System of Preferences
petitions pending. One is against Sri Lanka. I believe that has
been pending for 2 years.
The unions only want a hearing on their case, and for the
U.S. Government to engage with the Government of Sri Lanka to
adopt a work plan to enact needed legal reforms and to address
persistent problems in enforcement. As far as I know, no agency
has challenged the facts or merits of that Sri Lankan petition.
Why, nearly 2 years later, can the United States not decide to
accept the petition and develop a plan with the Government of
Sri Lanka to address the issues in that petition, and I will
address that to whichever witness. I believe it is more of a
State Department question.
Ms. Polaski. Chairman Sherman, you are right. That petition
has been outstanding for a while. It is a live petition. It has
not been dismissed, which means that it has the potential to be
utilized to produce improvements. We in the new administration
have stepped up our efforts to look at that situation and to
engage, and I am afraid I don't have any real progress to
report to you now, but I can assure that we are in a discussion
in the interagency process about the need to address the
allegations that are in that petition.
Mr. Sherman. Will it take another 2 years or another 2
months?
Ms. Polaski. I hope it will not be 2 years. I hope it will
be closer to 2 months.
Mr. Sherman. I believe my time has expired.
Mr. Carnahan. I want to recognize Ranking Member Royce.
Mr. Royce. Thank you. Let me ask this question. The World
Bank has estimated that developed world agricultural subsidies
cost poor economies about $60 billion a year. These subsidies
seriously harm the livelihood of workers abroad. What is the
administration's position on U.S. agricultural subsidies,
specifically their impact on workers in the developing world?
Ms. Polaski. Ranking Member, I don't fully understand the
question. Would you mind repeating it, please?
Mr. Royce. Well, we have agricultural subsidies in the
United States to the tune of $60 billion a year.
Ms. Polaski. Subsidies?
Mr. Royce. Subsidies, yes. Taxpayer subsidies, and that
clearly affects the well-being of farmers that are competing in
the rest of the world with a situation where rather than rely
on markets, we have produced a taxpayer subsidy here in the
U.S. It is one of the reasons we have difficulty liberalizing
trade with other countries around the world because of these
subsidies that we run here. I am asking for the position of the
administration or their thoughts on reducing these subsidies in
exchange for reducing other impediments so that we can
liberalize trade around the world. It would be beneficial to
populations, especially in Africa where so many people rely on
this as a livelihood.
Mr. Posner. Congressman Royce, these are issues that I am
sure representatives of the Department of Agriculture deal with
all the time. I am glad to take the question and then have them
respond.
Mr. Royce. Well, let me put it this way. This is a worker
issue because West African cotton workers are getting hammered
by our cotton subsidies, which cost American taxpayers very
dearly to the tune of $60 billion for all subsidies. Meanwhile,
the President's trade plan reports on all the aid that we are
providing to West Africa's agricultural sector, which also
costs our taxpayers dearly, so we fund efforts to build
capacity with one hand, and we decimate Mali's and Niger's
competitiveness with the other. I hope this is an issue that
can be seriously looked at. I would hope that you would think
that through in terms of what kind of sense that would make.
Under the GSP Program, Colombia enjoys duty-free access to
the U.S. market for the vast majority of its goods. That access
continues regardless of the status of the pending Colombia
trade agreement, and that agreement primarily lowers Colombian
barriers to U.S. goods and services, so by not approving this
agreement, we are maintaining a very unbalanced commercial
relationship with Colombia, essentially giving it a free ride.
How does this serve President Obama's goals of doubling
U.S. exports? Let me ask how many U.S. sales do you estimate
are being lost because of high Colombian trade barriers, which
would be reduced if this were to pass, and why isn't the
administration aggressively backing the Colombian FTA?
Ms. Polaski. If you don't mind, Ranking Member, I would
like to go back a moment to your previous question, which for
some reason it took me a moment to understand about the
agricultural subsidies. I did want to point out that in
President Obama's proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2010 he did
suggest a number of serious modifications to the subsidies
programs that I think went some distance to addressing the
concerns that you have expressed. However, they were not
enacted in the final analysis, and I do not know if they are in
the new budget, but my guess is that there would be such
measures in the budget proposal for this year.
Mr. Royce. I would hope to see more leadership by the
administration on this issue, and also on the issue of
Colombia, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS)
reports violence against trade unionists has declined
dramatically since President Uribe took office. That was in
2002. We are 8 years past that. In 2008, the Washington Post
noted that the number of murdered trade union members, now that
is members, not leaders, was less than .2 percent of the 17,000
murdered Colombians, and it concluded this hardly suggests a
campaign on anti-union terrorism in Colombia. Do you agree with
that conclusion?
Ms. Polaski. We have been relieved I think is the right
word to see that there has been a decline in the rate of
murders against trade unionists in Colombia, and that decline
has persisted over a number of years. Unfortunately, there was
a slight increase over the last few years, although not to the
levels that we had seen earlier. What we are doing there is a
couple of things. We are working together with USTR together
with the State Department and other agencies to try to develop
a list of the measures that we think would effectively address
the existing problems including the violence that does exist.
It is down, but it is certainly not eliminated.
Specifically, the impunity, the problem that most of those
murders that have occurred over the years have not been
resolved, the vast majority have not been resolved, and we feel
that to have any deterrent effect, you have to address the
murders that have happened in the past and the problems with
labor law. We are working actually to produce a set of very
concrete benchmarks that the Colombian Government can implement
in order to progress to the point that this legislation would
be acceptable to Congress.
Mr. Royce. And the impact, the barrier are on U.S. goods
going into Colombia by failure to pass this legislation because
Colombia goods come into our market.
Ms. Polaski. Understood. Understood, and I would go to Mr.
Scott's comment that there is a delicate balance between the
economic opportunity and the basic human rights and labor
rights that we have to keep in mind as part of the overall
picture.
Mr. Royce. Well, your untenable position that Uribe is
standing in the way of labor rights, which I don't believe, the
Post doesn't believe, I don't think you really believe it, as
opposed to discussing a government like China's is to me
phenomenal, but I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Posner. Can I just add a word on it? I think what
Sandra Polaski said is that we are very mindful of the fact and
share your assessment that the level of violence against trade
unionists has gone down. It is still at a very high and
unacceptable level. That doesn't mean that it is the sole
responsibility of President Uribe. It is a condition in the
country. It is a violent place. There is still between 25 and
40 labor leaders killed every year.
Those levels are highly unacceptable for any society, and
they are threats. There is a range of other issues beyond the
murders that we are determined to look at. That is a piece of
the puzzle. It does not determine entirely how we set a trade
policy with Colombia, but it is an important piece. That is
all.
Mr. Royce. No, no. I am just looking at Vietnam versus this
and the absolute antithesis, and frankly, a lot of those labor
unions' labor leaders are people that I would agree with. My
grandfather was a labor union organizer. I am just saying the
fact that Vietnam gets one standard given the appalling,
unbelievable conditions and repressions that goes on in that
country, and you have an elected democrat here, Uribe, where
because of what happened 10 years ago, you can't get past
figuring out how to address that, it just seems rather odd to
me. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you. I want to recognize Mr. Scott.
Mr. Scott. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me pick
up on what my good friend, Congressman Royce, has opened here
and the situation with Colombia and see if we can't get a
little more light on this. I went down to Colombia myself with
then Secretary Rice about 2 years ago and visited with Uribe,
the entire administration. The sad fact of the matter is that
what we have here is not just a casual situation regarding
labor leaders.
It is a targeted effort, and it is manifested within an
arena of a lot of violence. There is drug trafficking. There is
the FARC down there. Here is the issue. The issue is that to
what extent is the government involved in this, and there have
been some indication that that is true. When I was down there,
I put that question directly to President Uribe and the
administration. There have been eye-witness accounts where the
soldiers themselves have shot and killed trade unionists.
It has been in the news there, and since 1988, there have
been 2,756 labor trade unionists killed. That doesn't count
others that have been wounded and all of the other things that
are happening. Secondly, it is not just that, but it is when
the culprits get caught. There is no trial. There is impunity.
The question is how can we have a trade policy as we want to, I
want to? To what degree do we bring down our standards if we
engage in a trade pack with a country with this kind of record?
The question becomes what can the United States do, what
can we do, to help workers in Colombia who are fighting for
their rights? What more can we do to get the government itself
to take a more active, aggressive role in bringing fair justice
to these trade unionists because if you have impunity, and they
are allowed to get away with it, and there is some complicity
within the government itself, those are things that we can
correct, so the question is what are we doing to correct and
give the actual help down to Colombia that we need.
Mr. Posner. It is a good question, Congressman. I am glad
you are continuing this line. There is I think an opportunity.
As you know, President Uribe is not going to seek a third term,
and we are in a transition, which is going to provide on a
range of issues an opportunity to renew and open up discussions
on human rights and a range of other issues. One of the
challenges, which you have identified so well, is that it is
not just that there is a high level of violence, but there has
been a history of impunity, and it is weak judicial system by
Colombia, who I have met with, have acknowledges as much.
We can and should be doing more to strengthen it. We can
and should be doing more to work with labor leaders and
organizations concerned about these issues in Colombia. We are
doing some of that. I think we could do more. I think there
really are opportunities here to break the cycle of violence,
but it is longstanding. It has been at a very high level, and
it is something that is going to require more than a few months
of effort, but we are determined to do it.
We are interested. We are committed to it, and I think you
are right to keep pressing us. This is an area where there is a
serious issue, one that needs to be addressed and one where we
can and should be doing more.
Mr. Scott. Yes, and just want to emphasize for the record
so we really know how serious this is, that of those more than
2,700 killings, more than 95 percent of them have had no
convictions. That is astounding that over this period of time
out of all of those killings, 95 percent of them, in other
words less than 5 percent of them have been resolved. Ninety-
five percent of the killers have gone free, and so I think that
is the fundamental question we have got to ask.
I wanted to ask this other question. In June 2009, the
Washington office on Latin America published a report that
revealed that the labor conditions in the DR CAFTA countries
have not improved and violations have not diminished regardless
of promises made by member countries to improve labor rights
and the millions of dollars invested by the United States to
meet that objective, and moreover they found that the labor
situation in Central America was deteriorating further due to
the global economic crisis.
My question is would you recommend that the United States
support efforts to strengthen labor rights and combat impunity
in the DR CAFTA countries by negotiating the agreement and
increasing the weight of penalties for labor violations?
Mr. Carnahan. If the witnesses would yield, I am going to
ask you to answer that as briefly as you can because we do need
to get on to some of the other members.
Ms. Polaski. Yes. I would just say, Congressman, that you
are absolutely right that we can do more in CAFTA-DR. Of
course, the crisis has hit those countries and the workers in
those countries as it has hit us and a number of other
countries, and so a part of that is addressing the overall
economic recovery, but we think that there is much more we can
do in the region, and I mention specifically that we are
looking at launching the type of factory monitoring program
that was so successful in Cambodia, and we have had a good
reception in at least one Central American country, which would
put a spotlight on conditions in the factories there.
We think that it could be very successful. We have had
other countries come forward and ask for very innovative child
labor programs, so we think that if we look separately at each
of those countries, and where is the political will and what
are the opportunities, we can probably make some very, very
good progress in some countries, and if we can't make progress,
then of course we have to think about utilizing the various
enforcement mechanisms that we have in that agreement.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you. Mr. Rohrabacher?
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and if
we are focusing on Colombia, let me just note the statistics we
have been talking about here are from 1988. Frankly, I don't
know what is relevant from something 22 years ago when the
country was in the middle of a revolution. I mean, there was a
lot of people being killed there absent of the labor union
movement, but is it my understanding from the witnesses today
that yes, Colombia has had problems, and they still have
problems, but the trend line is something that is positive, is
that correct?
Ms. Polaski. Congressman, I think that the number of
murders is down. I would agree with my colleague, Mike Posner,
that 40 murders a year of trade unionists is 40 too many, so
even though the trend line is down, it still is extremely high.
It is still the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade
unionist, and the progress on impunity, the progress on
prosecuting the perpetrators of those crimes has not really
improved, so that is one point.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes, but let me just note that when you
are talking about Colombia, when you have the revolutionary and
violent revolutionary situation that they had, quite often that
spills over into other areas of social life where you have
people who are organizing unions who now you have got armed
groups of people who are for hire there, and quite often there
is ``us versus them'' mindset that creates this, and again it
should not be tolerated. I am not tolerating. I am just
suggesting that if we are going to take a look at countries of
concern, I think Colombia is improving its situation.
I see no improvement in Vietnam. I see no improvement in
China. Let me ask about China. I remember when I was younger I
spent the summer of 1968 in Czechoslovakia, which was quite a
volatile situation then as well, but I remember that the trade
unions were upset because they could not form a union because
they were told well, we have one big union in communist
countries. This is the workers' union, and all it was was a
front for the communist party, which of course suppressed
anybody who was making any demands at the workplace. Is that
the situation in China as well that nobody is permitted to have
a union except the big communist party-controlled union?
Mr. Posner. Yes. This is not a trivial detail in the way
the Chinese Government operates. Central party control of all
institutions, including labor, there is a central union, which
is really a part of the party government apparatus, and no
unions are allowed to form.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right. Well, that happened in Cuba, too.
We know that when Castro took over, forgetting all these kids
who are wearing these Che Guevara shirts don't understand the
Che Guevara personally took trade union leaders out and shot
them, murdered them by the hundreds, trade union leaders
because they were starting their communist party All Workers
Union. What is significant today however is the fact that our
people here are being put out of work because we permitted a
respectable trade status with a country that does not permit
unions other than the one that is controlled by the government.
Let me just note that I do disagree with my good friend,
Brad, on right-to-work laws. There is a jump here. I happen to
believe that people have a right to join a union, and I think
that they don't have that right in places like China. Well, it
is one thing to say that. It is another thing to say well,
everyone has to join the union. I don't believe that you should
be able to force people to join the union.
I think in our country that the fact that you have been
able to force people to join unions rather than depend on
people joining up and being solid and having solidarity
together voluntarily has led to corruption within our own union
system where some union bosses have known that people have to
join anyway, and that does not work to the benefit of a very
effective union system in our own country, so I just wanted to
make sure I got that on the record because I certainly don't
believe that right-to-work laws are a violation of anyone's
right who wants to join a union voluntarily.
I might add I joined a union voluntarily. I was a member of
the Communication Workers of America, and I helped unionize my
shop when I was working as a young journalist, and my boss got
what he deserved, et cetera, but the fact is that I had a right
to do that, and I made sure that as we did that, that everybody
in that shop knew well, don't worry. I mean, officially you
have to join, but that is not what this is all about, and by
the way, everybody in my shop joined that union. It was a
perfect voluntary situation, so as we move forward, I hope in
this discussion, Mr. Chairman, that we realize the implications
are over there, and the implications are here.
Yes, we are concerned about the human rights in China, in
Vietnam, Colombia and other countries. We are also concerned in
countries that violate human rights of their working people
whether or not that means that our people here end up out of
work, and the wages here get bid down because we are permitting
a free trade status with countries that are fundamentally not
free. I would suggest free trade between free people is a good
thing, a win-win.
One-way free trade or free trade with a dictatorship
undermines the well-being of our own people except it does
enrich our corporate elite, who end up giving themselves big
bonuses for short-term profit as their own companies go under
because they have invested their money over in China where
eventually it becomes the property of the Chinese. Thank you
very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher. Now I would like
to recognize Congresswoman Jackson Lee for 5 minutes.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Chairman, let me thank you and the
ranking member for an instructive and important hearing, and I
ask the witnesses to accept my apologies. We are on the floor
debating the resolution regarding Afghanistan. I would like to
track the line of reasoning of my colleague from Georgia and
also say to my distinguished colleague from California we don't
have an atmosphere in America where people are forced to join a
union.
It may be that in the energy of organizing, it is a
vigorous campaign, but in the current 21st century and 20th
century, union organizing has been open and transparent and up
for acceptance or rejection, but more importantly, I don't know
the last time when a governmental entity killed a union leader
because of their organizing here in the United States. There is
certainly history in any movement where loss of life occurs,
and I think what we are talking about today is a completely
different set of circumstances which has to do with the
oppressive, appointed and directed killing of individuals who
are seeking worker and human rights.
I associate those two forces together, human rights and
worker rights, and I would like to try to probe what is the
sense of the administration's position. I have seen the
President put a whole new face on American foreign policy, and
I, for one, am celebrating. I think it has been invigorating. I
think it has been positive, and I think we get things done, so
my question is does the administration view workers' rights as
consistent and equal to human rights?
In that instance where we are conflicted, where we are in
conflicts such as the continuing conflict now waning in Iraq,
the rising conflict in Afghanistan that many of us are asking
for an assessment and reconsideration, but my colleague spoke
eloquently about Colombia and the right to justice for those
who lost their lives, my question is that if we send our troops
in harms way, shouldn't one of the elements of the purpose of
us being there, certainly not to dominate by an exact, if I
will, copy of America's Government and policies and
Constitution, we can do that, but the basic simplicity of
worker rights and human rights, so would you give an assessment
of what you think human rights and worker rights are in Iraq
and Afghanistan?
Would you also assess what you think human rights and
worker rights are in the Mid East, in particular places like
Oman where they are just symbolic of those who come to work in
domestic positions and lose their passports and are held in
involuntary servitude, and the other point that I would make if
you would comment on because we in Congress need to be your
friend, what is the legislative fix that we need in order for
worker rights and human rights to be in the forefront of any
conflict that we engage in?
We are putting American treasure on the ground. We are
losing American treasure, and we leave these countries in the
same condition that we found them, abusing human rights and
abusing worker rights, and might I add to that as to whether or
not you have seen any progress in China, who we worked with
since the PNTR was passed under the Clinton administration? The
concept of that was to open opportunities so there could be
some role-modeling so that China could see how things flowed in
the Western world, not to take them out of completely out of
their governmental structure, but look at the issues of
religious freedom, worker rights and human rights.
Mr. Posner. At least three different subject that are
connected, and let me try to take them one at a time. In
December, Secretary Clinton gave a speech at Georgetown where
she outlined the intersection and the indivisibility of human
rights, democracy and development, and when we talk about these
concepts, and when she talks about these concepts, and the
President does, we have a broad notion of democracy and human
rights, which includes the right of civil society to function,
rule of law, the right of trade unions to operate, free press,
transparency and the lack of corruption, the right to vote.
There is a broad spectrum of things that are brought under
that concept, which I think certainly includes notions of the
rights of workers, and so I think we have a good framework and
a good foundation to work on these issues within that context.
When you talk about Iraq and Afghanistan, I think realistically
the reports will show that conditions for workers are poor, but
we are in war situations. We are in I think in moment in Iraq
with an election just having occurred where we need to be and
should be spending more time trying to nail down some of the
commitments the government has made and make them real.
We are going to be in the next months, as we withdraw our
own presence there, trying to build up these democratic
institutions, and I think if our efforts there are to be
validated over time and history, one of the things we need to
be holding ourselves accountable to is that we live our values
and that we try to impart standards like the rights of workers
there, so that will be I think an important piece of what we
need to be doing.
Ms. Jackson Lee. If I may? Those areas will always be
conflicted, and if we don't make the point forcefully or firmly
that shedding our blood equals to certain values such as human
rights and workers rights, we will still leave them in the same
condition that we found them in.
Mr. Posner. Yes, I very much agree. You mentioned the Gulf
states, Oman and others. The problem you identify is
particularly severe that of domestic workers, a lot of them
brought in from other countries and living in and working in
situations that are just totally deplorable and unacceptable.
It is part of what we are trying to do. It is part of a broader
human rights effort. There is an office in the States
Department looking just at trafficking that is very focused on
these issues, but these are places, and these are issues we
need to put a lot of attention. They are critical problems.
The last bit on China, there are some interesting
developments, but it is still a very restrictive environment.
What I said before is the principal piece, the government
tightly controls the ability of workers to organize. It doesn't
allow people to organize freely outside of the state-run,
party-run central union. There are a range of other problems,
health and safety, forced labor, re-education through labor
camps, lots and lots of problems with people working long
hours, usually young women. It is a very serious set of issues,
and I think we owe it to ourselves and again as part of a
broader human rights policy to make these issues front and
center.
Mr. Carnahan. The gentlewoman's time has expired.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Chairman, may I just yield to you just
for one moment, and I will be very quick?
Mr. Carnahan. Proceed.
Ms. Jackson Lee. This looks like a framework for
legislation. We have all spoken eloquently over the years. We
are members of human rights caucuses, and when I hear this, and
I know there is a report coming out, it just looks like it is
begging for some sort of emphasis in our trade negotiations.
The city of Houston has become a repository for human
trafficking. We have task forces and local authorities looking
at people coming in from South and Central America.
I would just say that if we can work together with the
administration, it is heart in the right place and maybe need
some extra resources or regulatory scheme, we have a problem on
the condition of workers and the condition of human rights
around the world as evidenced by the testimony of the
Secretary, so I yield back and hope we can work together on
some framework that is a little stronger that what apparently
we have presently now.
Mr. Carnahan. I do as well, and I thank the gentlewoman,
and I want to recognize gentlewoman from California, Ms.
Watson.
Ms. Watson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I think this is a
very relevant hearing. I would like to thank the witnesses, as
well make a comment and then raise a question. At a rubber
plantation in Harbel, Liberia, U.S. corporation Firestone
National Rubber Company has had a long history of poor working
conditions, child labor abuses and requiring workers to meet
exceptionally high daily production quotas. After years of
neglecting workers' concerns, Firestone in the year 2008 made a
positive step forward by addressing these issues and signed a
new collective bargaining agreement.
The agreement included a number of improvements including
lowering production quotas, higher wages, greater safety
productions. However, the agreement has not been fully
implemented, and employees report still being told to produce
at the old quota levels. As a result, because a single
individual cannot produce at such unrealistic levels, workers
are forced to bring wives and children to work to help them
meet the demand. Children are once again forced to work against
their will, so what has the United States done to try to end
child labor practices or otherwise improve working conditions
on this plantation? Both of you, could you give us a response?
Ms. Polaski. I can just say, Congresswoman, I am not aware
of that particular situation, but I can promise you that we
will look into it, and we will see what possible ways we may
intervene in order to try to improve that situation. We have
done a lot of work on child labor issues in West Africa
generally, but perhaps not as much in Liberia, and so we will
look into that, and we will get back to your office with our
results.
Ms. Watson. All right. In this particular issue with
Firestone, you might not have the details on that. Mr. Posner,
would you? Okay. Well, what do you suggest that we should do to
end other instances of unfair child labor practices or to
improve the working conditions where U.S. companies are not
addressing this issue. Do you have any ideas what we can do in
that regard?
Mr. Posner. Yes. Just a couple of things. I think one of
the most interesting and to me innovative and exciting
opportunities we have is work we are doing with the Government
of Brazil and the International Labor Organization on this
issue of child labor. The Government of Brazil has begun to
work with some of its neighboring countries, and is now looking
also to work with some of the Portuguese-speaking countries in
Africa. We are helping to fund that.
We are working in a tripartite arrangement with the
International Labor Organization, which is really expert in
this area, but it is the kind of innovative approach that I
think really has the potential to bear results. With regard to
companies in particular, I think this administration, and I am
particularly interested in trying to push harder for companies
to accept their individual and collective responsibility.
The government can do so much. The ILO can do more, but we
need also to have partners in the corporate community who take
their responsibilities seriously. Some of the issues in West
Africa, for example, involve cocoa production and cocoa farming
in the candy industry. We have got all kinds of issues with
apparel and toys and low-wage labor-intensive industries
throughout the world, in Asia, Latin America. There need to be
greater efforts by more companies to take these things
seriously, and I think we in the government need to be pushing
for that so that they take their responsibility in this new
global economy.
Ms. Watson. When I came into the committee, I think you
were discussing Colombia, and that issue has come to our
attention on the floor of the House. We have hesitated in
dealing with Colombia because we feel they have not complied
with the wishes for change in their child labor laws, so this
tends to be a concern not only in Central America but in some
of the poorer countries in Africa, so I would like to see us
take a position to discourage companies from doing business
where they violate the child labor laws or don't have any laws
concerning children or even women.
I would hope that as you look these issues that we will set
up some standards, and maybe the program you just described,
Mr. Posner, we could use that as a standard for Colombia and
some of the others. Thank you so very much, and I yield back,
Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you. I wanted to ask a couple of quick
questions. Then, I am going to yield for an additional question
to Mr. Sherman. Then, we are going to move on to our second
panel. Let me ask you both quickly. We have seen stories and
heard over and over again about problems with vehicles from
overseas, harmful drywall, toys, baby formula, you name it,
lack of product safety provisions and enforcement in our trade
provisions, certainly its impact on American consumers but also
in terms of leveling the playing field for American businesses
and workers. To what extent is the administration incorporating
these product safety considerations with our trading
relationships? Let me start with Ms. Polaski.
Ms. Polaski. Thank you. The administration is very
concerned obviously about the quality of the products that we
import, the products that we produce domestically and that we
import in terms of their product safety and the potential
effect on consumers, and we have had, as you mentioned, a
number of very frightening experiences including with imports.
We have not yet incorporated product safety requirements into
our trade agreements.
That is the threshold, a new frontier, if you will, that
one could consider, Members of Congress, members of the
administration could consider going forward. I do know that the
Food and Drug Administration is paying a lot of attention to
the products that are coming and looking for ways for them to
try to, if you will, use the borders as an extra line of
defense against harmful products not penetrating the country
and getting to our consumers, but in terms of it being a
condition of our trade agreements, that does not exist at this
time, Congressman.
Mr. Carnahan. And, Mr. Posner?
Mr. Posner. Yes. The only thing I would add is that I think
it is often the case that countries that have weak regulatory
protective systems for workers are also countries that are
falling behind in terms of product safety and these other
issues you are describing. It is part of a package. Our
ultimate goal, our long-term goal is to encourage the creation
and help create strong democratic institutions in countries
that domestically deal with these issues in a fair way. Labor
rights, workers rights, product safety, they go together. It is
part of infrastructure of government.
Mr. Carnahan. I just want to close my questioning by saying
I think this is a relatively new area. It is something I think
that has gotten consumers' attention, and it should be part of
our overall strategy really focusing on that product safety.
Again, I think it is smart for how we approach our trade
agreements. I think it can make a big difference for our
workers and our businesses here at home in leveling that
playing field and addressing some of these problems we have
seen in terms of this race to the bottom in standards across
the board whether it be labor, environment or safety standards.
Thank you, and I am going turn next to Chairman Sherman.
Mr. Sherman. Thank you. One question. The United States has
ratified two of the ILO conventions, Convention 105 on the
prohibition of forced labor and Convention 182 on the
prohibition of the worst forms of child labor, and that is only
two out of eight fundamental, or core, ILO conventions. The
ones we have not ratified concern such issues as freedom of
association, collective bargaining and prohibitions on forced
labor discrimination in employment.
The U.S. is among the company of China and Iran in having
failed to ratify Convention 87 on freedom of association. Do
you think that such a record affects the credibility of our
nation with regard to advocating for respect for international
labor standards and human rights, and is there any reason why
the U.S. Government should not move forward to ratify
Conventions 100 and 111 with regard to equal pay and
nondiscrimination in employment? Mr. Posner?
Mr. Posner. Let me start with the good news. The
administration has identified as a priority the ratification of
Convention 111. It is before the Senate. We are going to be
working with the Senate on the President's committee on the ILO
as a tripartite Federal advisory committee from State, Labor
and Commerce. It is on their agenda. There is going to be more
activity on this going forward, so this is the place to start.
I think as you know in general, there is a long history of
the United States being very reluctant to ratify a whole range
of treaties on a whole range of subjects. We take the view that
we ought to be in full compliance before we consider ratifying.
Lots of other governments say let us ratify the treaty and then
bring ourselves up to the standard. That is almost a
theological difference, but it is also tied with a whole range
of other things. I don't view these in isolation. I think they
are part of a broader pattern, and it is something that over
time hopefully one at a time beginning with Convention 111 we
can begin to chip away at.
Mr. Sherman. I would say those countries that ratify and
then bring themselves into compliance at least have brought
themselves into compliance, and our theological approach of not
bringing ourselves into compliance and then not ratifying is
embarrassing at least to me.
Mr. Posner. If I could just add one thing. It is I think
important also to say that the spirit and intent of a lot of
the ILO Conventions we are very much supportive of. We are
supportive of the ILO as an institution, and the fundamental
rights that are identified in that declaration are things that
we very much embrace as a society, and we embrace them by and
large domestically and certainly in our international dealings
as well.
Mr. Sherman. I get to have just the last word and say we
only embrace the right to organize in half of our states, and I
yield back.
Mr. Carnahan. Thanks, gentlemen, and I thank the panel. We
will excuse you and turn now to our second panel. I want to
welcome our next panel through a brief introduction, then turn
to your testimony followed by questions, and we expect we may
have some votes somewhere not long after 5:00, so we will try
to move this along and appreciate you being here and for your
patience today.
First I want to welcome Mr. William Lucy. He is chair of
the AFL-CIO, Executive Council Committee on International
Affairs. Mr. Lucy is the international secretary and treasurer
of AFSCME and founder and president of the Coalition of Black
Trade Unionists. Also, we have with us Dr. Bama Athreya,
executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum. Dr.
Athreya has worked on labor rights issues for two decades
focusing on Latin America and Asia.
Finally, we have Mr. John Murphy, vice president of
International Affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Mr.
Murphy previously served as executive vice president of the
Association of American Chambers of Commerce in Latin America.
Welcome all of you, and we will start this panel with Mr. Lucy.
STATEMENT OF MR. WILLIAM LUCY, CHAIR, EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF
LABOR AND CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS (AFL-CIO)
Mr. Lucy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Carnahan----
Mr. Carnahan. Mr. Lucy, be sure you check your mic there. I
am not sure we have it on yet.
Mr. Lucy. Thank you. I want to thank you for this
opportunity to testify today on behalf of the 11.5 million
members, working men and women of the AFL-CIO. The subject of
this hearing promoting international worker rights is one of
which many of us have spent half a lifetime working on. This
hearing could not be timelier. We remain mired in the middle of
a global economic crisis, the worst in over 80 years. The human
toll of rising unemployment, poverty and inequality is truly
staggering.
The ILO has reported that worldwide unemployment increased
by roughly 34 million workers in the year 2009 and that an
estimated 100 million women and men fell into absolute poverty
that same year. Many of those fortunate enough to be employed
are vulnerable, facing reduced hours, wages and benefits and a
highly uncertain future. Even before the recession however,
workers worldwide and especially as Secretary Posner pointed
out migrant workers were in serious trouble.
The inability of workers to organize and bargain
collectively due to labor flexiblization fierce and often
illegal employer opposition and the lack of effective
enforcement by governments has led to perilously union density
in many parts of the world as existing unions were broken or
busted and new unions were unable to form. The results have
been the absence of workplace democracy accompanied by poor
working conditions and wages insufficient to support a decent
livelihood.
Massive unemployment creation now needs to be a macro-
economic policy priority at the national and global level.
Millions of people around the world simply need jobs. The AFL-
CIO has recommendations for re-balancing the global economy and
creating millions of new jobs in the short and long term. I
will not address those here, but however we know integral to a
balanced economic recovery is the creation of not just any jobs
but quality jobs. This will not be possible in the absence of
full respect for fundamental labor rights.
It is on this issue that I will direct the balance of my
comments. We urge Congress and the Obama administration to
consider recommended reforms in the following three areas,
which we view as vital to effectively promoting international
worker rights. The details of these recommendations are set
forth in our written testimony, which is before the committee.
First, we need to make certain that the U.S. agencies charged
with promoting international labor rights have the mandate,
resources and personnel necessary to carry out their respective
missions.
This includes substantial funding increases in the
International Labor Affairs Bureau, or ILAB, the Department of
States' Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, the
National Endowment for Democracy and Labor Programming at
USAID. These core agencies have responsibility for the
promotion of international workers rights through research,
reporting, in-country programs and the enforcement of the labor
provisions of preference programs, trade agreement and other
instruments.
A strong commitment to labor diplomacy should include
placing more foreign service officers trained and committed to
labor affairs in our embassies around the world. These labor
offices promote workers rights and serve as an important
contact point for working people across the globe. Foreign
assistance funding must also be directed at programs that build
sustainable worker-led institutions and strengthen the capacity
of these organizations to defend fundamental democratic and
worker rights.
Second, the administration has at its disposal a number of
trade and investment tools that can be employed to create the
political space for legal reforms and for workers to exercise
their fundamental labor rights without fear of reprisal. It is
important that we strengthen these tools to better promote
international labor standards abroad. We urge the Congress to
work this year to pass trade preference reform, which must
include stronger labor eligibility criteria and establish a
regular, transparent process for the acceptance and review of
complaints.
It is also essential that the model bilateral investment
treaty be strengthened substantially beyond the weak non-
derogation language that currently exists. Additionally, any
new free trade agreements must make progress beyond the May 10,
2007, agreement. While May 10 marked a substantial step
forward, there remains some room for improvement. Enforcement
of labor provisions of trade agreements is also critical.
Right now, the Mexican Government is engaged in a formal
assault on independent democratic unions and core labor rights
exemplified by the recent attacks on the Miners and Electrical
Workers Unions. The U.S. must act now to hold the Mexican
Government accountable. We also remain steadfastly opposed to
the pending trade agreement with Colombia until we see
substantial progress with regard to violence against trade
union leaders and high levels of impunity for those crimes as
well as comprehensive labor law reform and a sustained
demonstration of the will to enforce those laws.
The discussion just a while ago sort of left out the fact
that these are targeted activities, and we think that the
country should be called to task by the discussions between
ourselves and then with regard to the agreement. Third, the
Obama administration needs to work globally to create and
enforce fair rules for the global economy, to foster
sustainable growth and broadly shared increases in the living
standards and purchasing power of working people around the
world.
This will require constructive engagements with a number of
international institutions. In April 2010, G-20 labor ministers
will meet in Washington, DC, to lay out a roadmap for
addressing the job crisis globally. This is a critically
important meeting that deserves serious attention by U.S.
policymakers. Internationally, trade unions are calling on the
G-20 to address external account, financial and social
imbalances with particular emphasis on adopting strong social
protection measures.
Unions are also calling for a regular and meaningful
consultations as the G-20 continues its work on adopting and
promoting policy responses to the jobs crisis. We also urge the
inclusion of the ILO as an essential institution in formulating
and coordinating global policy responses. Finally, but not
least, the U.S. must give serious consideration to the
ratification of core ILO conventions. To date, as was pointed
out earlier, the U.S. has only ratified two of the eight that
are considered core conventions.
By doing so, the U.S. will posses a far greater authority
on the world stage, particularly on matters of labor and trade.
An important first step would be the ratification of Convention
111 of 1958, a discrimination employment and occupation
convention, and Convention 100 of 1951, the equal remuneration
convention. As a nation, workers have struggled long and hard
to combat discrimination in all of its forms, including
discrimination in hiring, employment and conditions of work.
This is a step that is long overdue. We must join the great
majority of nations in expressing our unqualified condemnation
of such practices and committing ourselves to ensure that no
U.S. worker suffers discrimination in any form on the job.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lucy
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Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Lucy, and now I want to turn
to Dr. Athreya.
STATEMENT OF BAMA ATHREYA, PH.D., EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
INTERNATIONAL LABOR RIGHTS FORUM
Ms. Athreya. Thank you very much, Mr. Carnahan, Mr.
Sherman, and members of the committee for the opportunity to
present our testimony today. I would like with your permission
to summarize the written statement and to submit the full
written statement for the record.
Mr. Carnahan. Without objection, proceed.
Ms. Athreya. Okay. I would like to start then this
testimony by acknowledging and calling attention to the 21
garment factory workers in Bangladesh who perished tragically
in a factory fire just 2 weeks ago. They were locked in, unable
to escape from the factory when it caught on fire. That factory
was producing garments for export to the U.S. and world
markets, and this was the second time that factory had caught
fire within 6 months.
I note that Bangladesh received $74 million in U.S. foreign
direct assistance just last year and received nearly $1 billion
in foreign direct assistance since 2001. It raises fundamental
questions for us as do other cases we describe as to whether
U.S. trade and development policies as currently implemented
really serve the development goals for which they were
designed. What I would like to do in this testimony is touch on
two programs.
One is a trade preference program, the Generalized System
of Preferences. The other is a development program, the
Millennium Challenge Corporation and ask in both cases whether
the congressional intent in the legislative language that
designed these programs is really being fulfilled by the
agencies that are tasked with their implementation. I think as
you will see from our cases, very often that intent is not
fulfilled.
In the case of GSP and trade preferences, Congress was
fairly clear in stating that it envisioned these programs to
promote trade as an effective way of promoting broad-based,
sustainable and equitable economic development. We understand
that language to mean that it is providing decent jobs for
people around the world, and that is the intent of the program.
That does not however seem to be in practice the way the
programs have played out in countries like Bangladesh.
We do believe, and again it is just a fundamental statement
on development and the need for trade and development to be
linked that growth of our markets, U.S. markets, must now be
fueled by rising incomes in the developing world, the enormous
numbers of workers in China, India, Mexico, Brazil and sub-
Saharan Africa. In these workers can obtain decent wages and
have some disposable income, this will increase global demand
and create jobs for workers everywhere, including in the United
States.
Where in rare instances we have seen clear linkage between
labor rights and trade preference programs, trade access, such
as in Cambodia, we have in fact seen the prospect of workers
reaching a livable wage. I find it very interesting that in all
my reading of literature on export-lead development as an
instrument of promoting better livelihoods and truly fostering
development in different countries, Cambodia is so often cited
as a case.
Economists cite the fact that Cambodian workers now make
$70 to $90 a month in the garment sector, but usually fail to
note the existence in that country of a program that precisely
tries to link carefully the need to increase labor rights
protections with trade access. More often in the Generalized
Systems of Preferences programs was amended in 1984 to include
labor standards, but those labor provisions and their
application has been very poor and wrought with political
considerations.
That was in 1984 as I said. As early as 1990, over 20 human
rights organizations and labor unions had submitted labor
rights petitions to USTR under that trade preference program
showing in case after the case that the worker provisions were
not being upheld and that the U.S. agencies tasked with their
implementation were failing to act. In 1990, those groups
collectively sued the U.S. Government for the systematic
failure to enforce the mandatory, congressionally mandated
language of worker rights in the GSP.
The organization sought a preliminary injunction requiring
the GSP committee to conduct an immediate review at that time
of Malaysia alleging that the then U.S. trade representative,
Carla Hills, was continuing to extend Malaysia's trade benefits
even after finding clearly that Malaysia was in fact violating
worker rights. As similar case moving now into the 1990s, and
one which I had occasion to witness firsthand was filed by
Human Rights Watch and the International Labor Rights Forum
against Indonesia again for violations of freedom of
association.
I happened to be a State Department officer at the time
working in U.S. Embassy Jakarta, and I witnessed firsthand the
careful calculation of our Government in deciding how to weigh
the labor rights considerations vis-a-vis overall economic
considerations in Indonesia. To cut a long story short, there
was no dispute that Indonesia was in serious violation of
worker rights and particularly the right to organize. However,
the Indonesia petition was suspended in 1994 despite that year
the arrest and detention of a major labor leader, Muchtar
Pakpahan, in Indonesia on the eve of a visit by President
Clinton to Indonesia as part of the APEC, Asia Pacific Economic
Cooperation, meetings.
Fast forward now to this decade, and I have to say we at
ILRF have not seen any significant change in the extent to
which worker rights criteria are the deciding factor in these
cases. Most recently, we have a pending petition against the
country of Uzbekistan, and I personally have visited
Uzbekistan, traveled to the cotton fields during the cotton
harvest season and seen fields full of schoolchildren, 12- and
13-year-olds being pulled from their classrooms with their
teachers and compelled, forced to harvest cotton.
Again, there has been no dispute and indeed not even any
response from the Government of Uzbekistan to deny the worker
rights claims in this petition. Why then 3 years later is this
petition still pending. I would like to actually cite from a
recent letter from several members of the House Ways and Means
Committee,
``Despite the fact that the Government of Uzbekistan
has never responded to the allegations in the ILRF
petition, and that information indicating the
persistence of labor exploitation was filed in 2008 and
2009, the USTR has yet to issue a decision on this
petition.
``The merits of the petition are clear, well
documented and have never been challenged by the
Government of Uzbekistan or any other respondent. The
failure of the USTR to act on the merits of this
petition by revoking Uzbekistan's trade privileges
raises troubling questions about the integrity and
effectiveness of the review process.''
Let me move now to the Millennium Challenge Corporation. Now,
spotty is this history I have described on GSP has been, it
actually has been better than the work of the Millennium
Challenge Corporation again to enforce congressionally mandated
language on worker rights.
When Congress in 2004 created the Millennium Challenge
Corporation, it required any country that wanted to qualify for
those taxpayer funded development funds to demonstrate
commitment to 12 core criteria, and one of the criteria
Congress identified is whether a country is promoting economic
freedom, and it particularly states, the language states, and I
am quoting, ``including a demonstrated commitment to economic
policies that respect worker rights, including the right to
form labor unions.''
Mr. Carnahan. Doctor, if you could yield 1 second? I am
going to ask you just to wrap up because we are close on time.
Ms. Athreya. Sure. So as our written testimony details, the
MCC does not effectively evaluate whether of its grantees or
any of the countries declared eligible for this assistance are
in fact violating worker rights. To cite just two cases
briefly, the Philippines, which is still the subject of a GSP
review for endemic impunity for violence against trade
unionists and Colombia, a country which has already been
identified in comments by this committee as a place where there
is long-standing impunity for violence against trade unionists,
were both declared MCC eligible in 2008 and 2009.
The fact that such countries can be declared eligible even
in the face of clear and persistent violations of worker rights
is an indication that this language is simply not being
implemented by the MCC. To summarize and conclude, we believe
that reforms are needed to both the GSP and the MCC. We detail
specific recommendations for those reforms in our written
testimony, and I thank this committee for its time and
attention to this very much needed topic.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Athreya
follows:]Bama Athreya deg.
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Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, Doctor, and next I am going to
turn to Mr. John Murphy with the U.S. Chamber.
STATEMENT OF MR. JOHN G. MURPHY, VICE PRESIDENT OF
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
Mr. Murphy. Chairman Carnahan, Chairman Sherman, Ranking
Member Royce, I greatly appreciate the opportunity to appear
before this committee to discuss the important topics here
today. No priority facing our nation is more important than
putting Americans back to work. Nearly 10 percent of the
workforce is unemployed. When President Obama delivered his
State of the Union address in January, the U.S. Chamber hailed
his call for a national goal to double exports within 5 years.
Doing so will create at least a million new jobs the President
said.
Today's discussion of international economic policy and
workers rights should be viewed in part through the prism of
this practical and achievable goal. Already, more than 50
million American workers are employed by companies that benefit
from exports according to the Department of the Treasury. One
in five manufacturing jobs depends on exports and one in every
three acres on American farms is planted for export markets.
Whether businesses are large or small, studies show that
firms that export tend to grow faster, hire more and pay better
wages than those that don't. At the same time, the IMF
forecasts that 87 percent of world growth over the next 5 years
will take place outside the United States. In short, we cannot
reach our full potential for generating jobs without selling
more goods and services in these global markets. The historical
record suggests we can reach President Obama's goal of doubling
U.S. exports within 5 years, but it won't be easy.
Standing in our way is a complex array of foreign barriers
to American exports. According to the World Economic Forum's
annual Global Enabling Trade Report, U.S. exporters face some
of the highest tariffs and non-tariff barriers in the world.
Last year, America ranked a disastrous 114th out of 121
economies in terms of tariffs faced by our exports overseas. In
other words, American exporters faced tariffs that are higher
than nearly all our trade competitors.
The only way the U.S. Government has ever enticed a foreign
government to open its market to American goods and services is
by negotiating agreements for their elimination on a reciprocal
basis as in a free trade agreement. Fundamentally, these
agreements are about making trade fair. The U.S. market is
largely open, but other countries continue to slap tariffs on
U.S. exports that are often 10 times higher.
Now, the business community does not suggest that we
abandon our values including respect for the rights of workers
when we negotiate trade accords, but we don't have to. USFTAs
have evolved over the years to address labor concerns in
increasingly sophisticated way. This reached a new stage when
congressional leaders on May 10, 2007, reached a bipartisan
accord on a new approach to labor and environmental issues in
trade agreements.
This accord led to changes in the text of pending trade
accords with Peru, Colombia, Panama and South Korea. It paved
the way for congressional approval of the US Peru FTA in late
2007 with very broad bipartisan support. Under the agreement,
the United States and Peru agreed to uphold the internationally
accepted labor rights articulated in the 1998 ILO declaration
on fundamental principals and rights of work. These obligations
are subject to the same dispute settlement and enforcement
provisions as the agreements' purely commercial provisions.
Now, while it is not appropriate for unilateral preference
programs or for bilateral investment treaties, the May 10 trade
deal represents an elegant compromise for addressing labor
considerations and FTAs, and it has attracted bipartisan
support on that basis. The 1998 ILO declaration is a
convenience reference point because it represents a consensus
that has been embraced by governments, organized labor and
employers alike. By contrast, the United States as has been
noted here today is a party to only two of the eight ILO core
conventions.
Many Members of Congress and representatives of the
business community would view including those ILO core
conventions in future FTAs as an effort to rewrite U.S. labor
law through a trade agreement. The business community is
dismayed that the May 10 trade agreement has failed to advance
a bipartisan trade agenda. Just weeks after they applauded the
agreement for realizing long-sought goals relating to labor
rights, the Democratic leadership of the House of
Representatives announced that they would oppose the ``flawed''
trade agreements with South Korea and Colombia, and last May
they did the same with Panama.
The Obama administration has indicated repeatedly that it
hopes to secure congressional approval of the three pending
agreements, but we are still waiting for action. The cost of
this delay may be high. The U.S. Chamber recently issued a
study which found that the United States could suffer a loss of
more than 380,000 jobs if it fails to implement its pending
trade agreements with Colombia and Korea while the European
Union and Canada move ahead with their own agreements with the
two countries. Those agreements are expected to be in force
within a year.
The WTO reports that there are more than 100 FTAs currently
under negotiation among our trading partners. The United States
is participating in just one of these. If we are to reach
President Obama's goal of doubling exports, the administration
and Congress need to shift the U.S. trade agenda from defense
to offense. On trade, if we stand still, we fall behind. We
urge Congress and the Obama administration to seek a more
pragmatic trade policy that opens foreign markets, boosts
exports and creates jobs.
In doing so, we need not abandon our values, a bipartisan
approach for addressing labor principals in trade agreements
was achieved on May, 10, 2007, and it should be seized with
both hands. Only by doing so can we take advantage of the
opportunities trade presents for job creation. Thank you very
much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Murphy
follows:]John Murphy deg.
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Mr. Sherman [presiding]. Thank you. The definition of
insanity is to keep doing the same thing that failed and expect
it to succeed. We signed all these free trade agreements, and
you say markets are open to us. Maybe tariffs are reduced, but
tariffs are only what is published. You mention non-tariff
barriers. You weren't here for the hearing we had this morning
where we saw the non-tariff barriers. The United States is a
country with the rule of law, so if we want to prevent American
consumers and business from buying foreign products, we pass a
published law. When countries get us to sign treaties that
repeal those laws, they have access to our markets.
Say you are in China. You are thinking of importing
American products. You get a call from a commandant who says
Mr. Wong, you don't want to import those American products. We
know you are well educated, hate to think you need re-
education. That is not a provable violation of any free trade
agreement because you can't know about it, so you continue on
behalf of the Chamber to argue for agreements where the
enforcement against the United States is absolute since the
only thing that matters in the United States is law, and the
enforcement in China and so many other countries is illusory
since we get them to change their written laws, and they are
not countries that follow written laws.
You tell us that we are going to get more jobs by opening
markets, and your only suggestion for opening markets is to
sign the same free trade agreements that have opened our
markets and not opened theirs. Then, you tell us that it would
be a shame to, by treaty, change our labor laws when the
Chamber has again and again demanded that we use treaties to
change our environmental laws, our banking laws and our
consumer protection laws. Apparently, the only laws we
shouldn't change are those that benefit Wall Street and Wal-
Mart.
Now, the Chamber took a phenomenally different view when it
came to H.R. 1318. That bill called for duty-free treatment for
goods coming from parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the
reason the Chamber opposed that is because it entitled the
Department of Labor to contract with others for firm-level
inspections. In other words, you are for open markets and even
labor standards as long as there is no enforcement of the labor
standards with firm-level inspections, and in your statements
on the bill you said that ``business representatives,'' also
known as sweatshop operators, ``found the provisions
unworkable,'' which is to say effective.
On what basis did the Chamber make the decision to oppose
H.R. 1318, and will you oppose any agreement that provides for
effective firm-level inspections with regard to consumer, labor
and environmental standards?
Mr. Murphy. The Chamber strongly believes that creating new
trade opportunities in Afghanistan and in northwestern Pakistan
is part of the solution for what ails that part of the world.
However, we think that the bills that have been under
discussion are flawed in different ways. As you mentioned, H.R.
1318 would create an enterprise-specific audit process that
many in the business community that have worked in that part of
the world regard as unworkable.
There was an initial version of the bill that counted on
ILO inspectors to do that, but when the ILO informed them that
yes, this is one of the most dangerous and lawless parts of the
world, and they didn't want to do it, the proposal was amended
to move to this enterprise-specific audit process involving
possibly NGOs. I think the business----
Mr. Sherman. So you are opposed to firm-level inspections
carried out by people with the courage to do it in a difficult
part of the world because you are only in favor of lower
tariffs when there aren't firm-level inspections?
Mr. Murphy. I think that we need to recognize that there
isn't a one-size-fits-all solution here. The program in
Cambodia and in Haiti, these have potential because most of the
apparel manufacturing facilities are located in a very
geographically compact area.
Mr. Sherman. Sir, these NGOs have the courage to do the
inspections. Why are you against the inspections?
Mr. Murphy. We strongly question the ability that they
would have to carry out inspections. We actually opposed the
bill on other grounds as well.
Mr. Sherman. Wait, wait. Wait a minute. Okay. You are
opposed to the inspections because it might be difficult to do
the inspections. Why would you do that? Either you get in the
inspections or you get what you say you want, which is a bill
with no inspections. You don't even want the possibility that
somebody could do the inspections, and your theory is well,
maybe they can't, so let us make sure they don't.
Mr. Murphy. Mr. Chairman, we are not in support of
legislation that we believe will not do what it is intended to
do, namely to create real-world trade opportunities. The
legislation as drafted excludes all of the products in which
Pakistan and Afghanistan have a particular competitive
advantage. It limits the benefits to very----
Mr. Sherman. Sir, your stated opposition is because you
oppose the inspections. You have not said that you will support
the bill if the number of products covered by the bill is
expanded. Support for labor standards only when they are
definitely not enforced is an interesting approach, and my time
has expired. I recognize Mr. Royce.
Mr. Royce. I remember the argument over the way that bill
was crafted, and frankly, Mr. Murphy, if I recall, the
legislation by protectionist interest was to make certain that
we did not have the types of cotton pants that are manufactured
in Pakistan coming into the United States. That is the debate I
remember here, and that is the opposition to it I remember, but
basically these individuals who produce these products are in a
war zone. You are talking about the northwest frontier.
I go out there every year to Pakistan, and I am familiar
with just how difficult it is to get around in that area, but
the question is, or to me it was, whether or not we were going
to offer some kind of employment and allow those goods to come
into the U.S. market or whether we are going to block it, and
the blocking I saw from the provision as it originally was
advanced, which was to allow these cotton trousers and other
things that are actually made in Pakistan to come into our
market, they effectively removed that from the bill, so at that
point, no. There isn't a lot of support for the legislation.
Let me ask a couple of other questions, and one of them
goes to, Mr. Murphy, you testified that the U.S. is running a
trade surplus in manufactured goods, agricultural products and
services will all 17 countries with which we have an FTA, so
are these FTA agreements necessarily bad for American workers?
Mr. Murphy. Congressman Royce, I think you have touched
upon one of the greatest secrets in U.S. trade policy that in
fact U.S. free trade agreements have this remarkable record for
boosting U.S. exports. As you say, in manufactured goods, in
services, in agricultural products, when we look at our 17 FTA
partners as a group, we are running a significant surplus with
them. The one exception with those 17 countries is in oil and
gas where we import large amounts of oil, particularly from
Canada. That is not a result of trade policy though. That is a
result of geology.
I would further add that with regard to our bilateral
investment treaties, those 40 countries we also have
approximately a $10 billion trade surplus with them. It stands
to reason though in a world where on average foreign barriers
are high and ours are low, when we enter into a trade agreement
and brush those barriers aside, imperfectly as it may be,
American workers are able to get their goods in there and
compete and win, and that is why we have seen these remarkable
results.
Just one last point, the FTA partners that we have, those
17 countries represent just 7 percent of world GDP outside the
U.S., but they buy 40 percent of our exports. FTAs make big
markets even out of small economies.
Mr. Royce. You also testified that U.S. companies face
among the highest tariffs of the world. That disadvantage is
only worsening as the U.S. sits on the sidelines while other
nations negotiate trade agreements, so just how bad is it for
U.S. businesses, and I would ask if you could discuss specific
examples of U.S. companies losing sales?
Mr. Murphy. Absolutely. It is a serious problem. In fact,
about 1 hour ago, the Canada Colombia Free Trade Agreement was
introduced in the House of Commons in Ottawa. If that agreement
goes into effect, if their recently concluded just a week ago
EU Colombia Free Trade Agreement goes into effect, if the EU
Korea FTA agreement goes into effect, we are going to see our
European and Canadian competitors with something like a 10
percentage point cost advantage.
Companies like Caterpillar, which Colombia for them is the
10th largest export market in the world, and the signal that
sends is that they are going to be at a disadvantage, but it
isn't just large companies. It is also small companies. The
Chamber on behalf of our hundreds of thousands of small
business members, we profile small companies that have
benefitted from exports through a series of what we call Faces
of Trade publications. This is a collection of profiles of
companies that have benefitted from exporting to Colombia.
I look at companies like Quality Float Works of Illinois,
where the CEO tells us that they are absolutely losing out in
markets like Colombia and Brazil to foreign competitors due to
tariff differences.
Mr. Royce. And lastly, the bipartisan labor agreement of
May 2007 was worked into the trade agreements with Peru and
Panama and Colombia, South Korea, and this action proved the
way for approval, this is what advanced the approval of the
Peru trade agreement, and it was expect that the others would
be approved too, yet they are stalled. Could you tell me
quickly what happened?
Mr. Murphy. Well, we are still trying to figure that out,
and it is particularly frustrating with regard to Colombia, and
I welcome an opportunity to comment on that briefly here today.
Many of the statistics we have been hearing today I believe
approximately 10 years out of date. Last year, the homicide
rate in the United States was nearly three times higher than
the homicide rate among Colombian trade unionists. A resident
of the District of Columbia, where I live, is seven----
Mr. Sherman. Excuse me. The gentleman's time has expired.
Let me also correct the record. You can reach the conclusions
that Mr. Murphy reaches only if you feel that our MFN agreement
with China is not a trade agreement, only if you ignore
increases in imports that go along with increases in exports.
You have to really bend it to get where you are going. In any
case, it is now time to recognize the vice chair of our
subcommittee, Mr. Scott.
Mr. Scott. Thank you very much, Chairman. I would like to
get each of your comments on this, Mr. Murphy, Ms. Athreya and
Mr. Lucy. An overwhelming majority of Americans favor the
United States requiring compliance with international labor
standards as part of international trade agreements. A survey
by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the World Public
Opinion Organization found that nine in 10 Americans support
requirements for countries that sign trade agreements to meet
minimum labor and environmental standards. What do each of you
think of this, which is the opinion of the American people? Mr.
Murphy, then Dr. Athreya and then Mr. Lucy.
Mr. Murphy. I will be brief. I think that underscores the
vitality of the compromise that was reached on May 10, 2007, in
which a practical basis was found as a reference in the 1998
ILO declaration, and Congress has a fantastic opportunity to
move forward on trade on that basis.
Mr. Scott. Okay. But you do agree with these, accept these?
Do you know feel that this represents the true thinking of the
American people?
Mr. Murphy. Well, speaking for the Chamber on May 10, 2007,
we jumped up and down and cheered.
Mr. Scott. All right. Okay. Dr. Athreya?
Ms. Athreya. We believe these rights are fundamental human
rights, and it is consistent with all of the conversations I
have ever had with people out there that they believe that we
should respect these rights all over the world. I believe
Congress thinks this, too. It is in our trade law, and it is in
our development law. We would love to see it enforced.
Mr. Scott. Okay. And, Mr. Lucy?
Mr. Lucy. I can't help but agree with what Dr. Athreya
said. I mean, the American people recognize the unfairness and
lack of abilities of a people's substandard ways. America
stands for something. It stands for something. It is why we
remain the envy of the world. It is why regardless of all of
our faults, and we have them, regardless of all of the
imperfections of America, America stands for constantly
reaching for that standard, and that is what is at stake here,
and that is why if we let down that standard and we enter into
trade agreements that don't hold that standard, we hurt
ourselves.
I believe we can get to that point with Colombia, with
others, but, Mr. Murphy, you would accept going into trade
agreements, and I might add that you are looking at someone who
was down there, 2,700 is a lot stretched over 20 years as you
have said, but 47 were killed in the year that I went down. As
a matter of fact, one life is too many lives lost, the pattern,
and there is a reason why the issue is impunity. Now, you and
I, no one can do anything.
The government says we can't do anything about somebody
shooting or killing somebody else. That happens. Murder, it
happens. We try to prevent it, but it happens, but the one
thing the government can do is go through the process of
getting some results and convictions and searching and have a
system where they don't tolerate it. That is a problem with
Colombia.
It is indeed the killings and that, but it is a government
that has a record of complicity in some of them and a dragging
of the feet of not having the judicial system in place or the
priority in place to adjudicate these cases and bring some
people to trial. One or two that have got, they have even let
go, so I just wanted to make that point as plain as I could
because I think that we have a standard in this country. We
have a standard that is held high in the world, and we can't
lower that standard. I see my time it out. I don't want to go
to my question. Maybe I will have another round. Thank you.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you all, and I apologize. I had to step
out for just a moment but wanted to ask a couple of questions.
One of the issues that I was concerned about particularly in
this global economic crisis that it has created an even greater
reliance on sub and sub-subcontracted production that hires
workers under short-term contracts in often exploitative
conditions.
In your estimation, to what extent are U.S. companies
making real efforts to effectively monitor their supply chains
and take actions when necessary, and what more can or should be
done to ensure that multinational companies source goods and
services that are made under decent working conditions, and let
me start with Mr. Lucy.
Mr. Lucy. Mr. Chairman, let me give you an experience. In
visiting with migrant workers in Jordan about a year or so ago,
and we have an agreement with Jordan, it is supposed to be a
fairly good model, but we found workers there who have had
their passports taken, their work permits taken and forced to
work and live under some of the most dreadful conditions. We
don't see the American corporations who benefit from those
products doing a whole lot to change those conditions, and we
strongly support the agreement, but we also support fair
treatment of workers under that agreement.
Mr. Carnahan [presiding]. How do you think we can better
shine a light on those kind of practices when they happen?
Mr. Lucy. I am sorry. I missed your----
Mr. Carnahan. How do you think we can better shine a light
on those practices when they are found?
Mr. Lucy. I think effective reporting by the responsible
agencies of the U.S. Government and not pull punches, but state
the situation as it exists, just as it was asked with regards
to Mr. Posner earlier. The State Department and Labor
Department ought to be clear and concise in their reporting on
incidents such as this.
Mr. Carnahan. All right. Doctor?
Ms. Athreya. Thank you very much for the question. Since
the issue of impunity has arisen in the comments of this
committee, I would like to particularly point out that some of
the companies that directly benefit from trade access in places
like Colombia and the Philippines, which I also mentioned in my
testimony, are reported to directly aid and abet violence
against trade unionists. We can mention a case against Dole
Corporation in Colombia right now.
We can mention cases involving both Dole and Nestle in the
Philippines and the aiding and abetting of torture,
disappearance, murder of trade union leaders and community
members as well to clear out their land to get access for
planing agricultural products. We believe strongly that it is
important that these companies that benefit directly from
increased access also be held directly accountable for
maintaining all of the labor rights in their operations in
these countries and that much more is needed to strengthen the
ability of these programs to look deeply at who is receiving
the benefits and whether those companies and those industries
are actually upholding labor rights. Thank you.
Mr. Carnahan. Mr. Murphy?
Mr. Murphy. I think we live in a day and age when your
reputation is everything whether you are a Member of Congress
or a company, and that is why companies that operate around the
world often go to extraordinary lengths to vet their own supply
chains, to have their own solutions to inspections and finding
ways to make sure that they are living really up to the highest
standards of respect for labor rights. I see that all around
the world. I have traveled extensively in places like Honduras
and seen in the apparel operations there how this is a priority
for those industries, and that is why working for an American
company is usually a big step up over many of the economic
opportunities there.
I think that is the reason why the business community as I
have mentioned supported using the 1998 ILO declaration as a
reference point in the context of free trade agreements.
Mr. Carnahan. Just to follow that up, to the extent that I
take it you think most companies, and understandably so, would
be concerned about their reputation to being sure those supply
chains and standards are done correctly, we hear about a lot of
the extreme examples, obviously. What do you think is the best
strategy in dealing with those?
Mr. Murphy. In dealing with the extreme examples?
Mr. Carnahan. Yes.
Mr. Murphy. I think the business community does agree that
there is an important role that is played by U.S.
administration programs, such as the ones we heard about in the
first panel. Those things are not generally in question. I
think when you see the business community establishing its own
vigilance programs to fill in a void, I think that is a sign
that many in the business community would like to see
government have a role there that it is currently not
fulfilling.
Mr. Lucy. Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Carnahan. Yes, Mr. Lucy?
Mr. Lucy. In our written testimony, Mr. Chairman, we spoke
to the need for being able to do more. Certainly, ILO
Convention No. 81 provides a function of inspection which would
take care or certainly raise an earlier flag on a lot of these
situations, so the adoption of that convention will certainly
be a positive step in the right direction.
Mr. Carnahan. That is it for my questions. I want to ask if
any others have any followup? I am going to allow my chairman
to go first. Chairman Sherman?
Mr. Sherman. Yes. Just to set the record straight, the idea
that it is no more dangerous to be a union activist in Colombia
than a citizen of the Unites State requires the most bizarre
math. Five hundred union activists have been brutally murdered
during the Uribe presidency. Now, you could say that is a tiny
risk if you divide that 500, the entire population of Colombia
or all working people in Colombia, maybe even all labor union
members of Colombia, but it is not like the 500 people that
were killed were just randomly selected union members or
working people.
These were the folks who were the key to organizing the
union. These were among a group of 5,000 or 10,000 people who
were the most active in trying to bring a labor movement to
Colombia and the death rate among them massively exceeds any of
the statistics that have been put forward by the Chamber of
Commerce. Being a CPA is an occupational hazard. You get
numbers, and you actually look at them, and sometimes it is a
little bizarre.
Mr. Lucy, thanks for being here. I look forward to working
with you to fight for labor rights around the world. I do have
one question. Since 2001, March, which was the peak of the
business cycle most recently, the United States has lost 3
million manufacturing jobs, and of course it is manufacturing
that is most affected by international trade agreements. So far
they haven't figured out a way to contract out my job, but
manufacturing jobs are affected by international trade, and we
have seen this 17.4 percent decline.
To what extent are these losses due to differing labor
standards in our trade partners, and what is the impact of
these free trade agreements on labor standards both
domestically and abroad?
Mr. Lucy. I think a substantial number of those jobs, Mr.
Chairman, can be directly attributed to the trade agreements as
almost incentives to remove good-paying industrial and
manufacturing jobs offshore. The 3 million jobs that are gone
was substantially the foundation of our middle class. They are
gone. They will not be back unless we find some magical way of
creating an industrial policy that will speak to our domestic
needs.
We see cities around the country that were related to
industry and manufacturing, think of Detroit, Cleveland and
many others directly affected by NAFTA, directed affected by
some of these others, so the American worker and the American
middle class has suffered tremendously as a result of these
trade agreements.
Mr. Sherman. I thank you for your answer, and I look
forward to a trade policy that is in the interests of the
American working family rather than a policy dominated for the
interests of Wall Street and Wal-Mart, and with that, I yield
back.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you. Now, Mr. Scott, for followup
questions?
Mr. Scott. Yes. I would like to just ask each of you to
comment on the International Labor Organization's core
conventions concerning collective bargaining are Conventions 87
and 88. The U.S. has not yet ratified these conventions, nor
has it submitted them for review by the tripartite, by the
administration, Labor and business representatives, so the
question I have is taking just simply Colombia, how can the
U.S. leadership, particularly the forces that I have sitting
here before me, each of you represents a unique and separate
constituency to this.
Mr. Murphy, business. You are with the International Labor
Organization. You are with the American labor movement, and I
am wondering where can particularly, Mr. Murphy, the Chamber of
Commerce, and the labor movement in America, how can you work
together to put pressure on Colombia? I know the value of a
Colombia trade agreement. I know the importance of trade. There
is no question about it.
It is clear that if we enter trade agreements with a poison
pill in it as we have done to a degree with NAFTA and others
where we have suffered, where we have seen jobs go where they
shouldn't be, multi-national corporations who operate all
around the world certainly want that, but it hurts the American
worker here at home. If we take the Colombia situation, how can
labor and business work together to put pressure on Colombia to
straighten up its act?
I think that as long as there is a dichotomy of thought
here in the United States in terms of our trade policy, some of
these countries don't move as fast as they should, and I am
saying especially on getting the infrastructure in place to
make sure the impunity that is going on in Columbia, that can
stop. That can be put to place, but I just wanted to know, and
I thought the question might be appropriate. Where can we work
together here? Where can you, Mr. Murphy, work with Mr. Lucy
and Dr. Athreya? I know I have butchered your name. I am sorry.
Is it Athreya?
Ms. Athreya. You were perfect. Thank you.
Mr. Scott. Thank you so much. Where is there we can work
together on this? Is there some way we can work because I tell
you there is a split opinion in this Congress on moving forward
on these trade agreements. Central to it is the labor rights,
the treatments of the trade unions there and this impunity
issue. Is there some ground where particular Mr. Murphy, Mr.
Lucy, are there areas that can be worked together with some
united force in this?
Mr. Murphy. Well, 50 years ago when George Meany was the
head of the AFL-CIO, he strongly supported the interests of the
American worker to pursue international trade. He opposed
issues like Buy American and argued with people across the
country that the American workers' destiny was to be making
things to sell around the globe. Unfortunately, I think that we
have come a distance, and there is a strong difference of
opinion here, and if you are talking about Colombia
specifically, I think that this place to start is really to
look at the facts on the ground there.
I strongly disagree with the facts as they have been
presented by some in this hearing here today. In the past few
years, there has been 300 convictions of priority cases
identified by trade unions in Colombia, convictions that have
happened there. Labor unions in Colombia have grown by more
than 50 percent during the Uribe administration to more than
1.5 million, and you don't have to be an actuary to do the math
that 29 murders of trade unionists last year among 1.5 million
is a murder rate that is 1/17 that of the District of Columbia.
We have to establish the facts first and move past the
rhetoric of 10 years ago and see Colombia for what it is today.
Mr. Sherman. If you really think your likelihood of being
killed by brutal anti-labor forces is equal whether you are a
rank and file member or whether you are an organizer, if you
live in that kind of fairy tale land, then it is not dangerous
to be an organizer in Colombia. When you use as your
denominator something other than the number of organizers, you
use a phony denominator in calculating your murder rate, and
you can keep repeating the same number over and over again, but
if you use a phony denominator, you get a phony rate. I yield
back to the gentleman.
Mr. Scott. Yes, and here is the fact, and I don't think you
will argue with it, in more than 95 percent of the killings,
there has been no convictions, and the killers remain free, and
this is from Human Rights Watch World Report 2010 Colombia, 20
January 2010. This is a part of the problem. I mean, that is a
stark situation down there. The business community of this
country wields an awesome amount of power.
There is a need for us to try to get this free trade
agreement there. There is all kinds of reasons. We need it. I
have been down there. I know we need it, but we have got to
resolve this human rights and labor problem, and I think that
the business community could join with labor and unite and put
pressure on the Colombia Government to really resolve this. I
think we could move forward with getting a trade agreement
there that we would be proud of, but under these circumstances
where these people have been killed, assassinated, these trade
unionists, and nothing is being done about it.
There is a record of complicity with the Uribe government
that is real, and 95 percent of the people are walking free who
have done the killing, there is just no way we can put that
there, but I think that if we could find a way to work together
here, that is what I am after. You can throw up this fact, you
could throw up that, but the fact is a lot of people are
getting killed, and they are not being paid for. This cannot go
on, and how do we move together to resolve it? Is there a
willingness on business to work with labor to resolve this?
Mr. Murphy. I think the Colombian Government has shown
incredible resolve. You mention a number of more than 2,000
murders dating back to 1988. Most of those are more than 5 or
6, 7 years ago and took place in a period of civil war in the
1990s. That is why the government identified in consultation
with the Confederations of Trade Unions these priority cases,
and they have made remarkable progress with them.
Mr. Scott. Mr. Murphy, there have been trade unionists who
have been killed this year. Mr. Lucy, is it possible for
American business and American labor to work together to put
pressure on this Colombian Government to kind of help resolve
this issue?
Mr. Lucy. Well, I think, Mr. Scott, history has shown that
labor can find a way to work in any difficult situation except
we cannot compromise on some fundamental principles. Principle
1, workers in Colombia and all over the globe have the right to
freedom of association. That is just fundamental. That is a
position that the Chamber just disagrees with. Secondly, we
have a right to collective bargaining. How else will workers
get their share of the benefits of a society from this trade,
developments or what have you unless they have the right to
come together and sit across the table as equals from their
employer.
There is a fundamental disagreement on that point. We have
said many, many times that we would like to see conditions set
in that protect the interests of workers, that protect the
environment, and there is a willingness to work on all of
these, but we can't work where there is no acceptance of
fundamental workers rights, and that is the freedom of
association, a right to collectively bargain and all that goes
with that.
Mr. Murphy says that these killings were 10 years ago and
therefore we ought to forget them, well 20 percent of them was
done under the administration of Mr. Uribe. I mean, this is not
illusions. These are real people who are trying to establish
their position and status and in the Colombian society, and for
that, they are assassinated, and we can't pretend that doesn't
exist, and we have got to hold somebody accountable, and if the
government in place refuses to pursue justice for the victims
or their families, how do you rationalize entering into an
arrangement with that and still say we are the leading country
in the world in terms of human rights?
Mr. Scott. Exactly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, and I am going to just wrap up
with one more question that I presented to the first panel. It
is one of the things that has concerned me with regard to what
has been termed this race to the bottom with a lot of
manufacturing jobs that have left the U.S. They have gone south
of our border. They have gone to Asia, and this race to the
bottom in terms of standards for the workforce, for the
environment, but also safety standards, and we have seen the
problems with vehicles, with drywall, with toys, with baby
formula.
I think as was mentioned by one of the earlier panelists,
there are common parallels with these product safety problems
and with workers rights and environmental rights. I would like
to ask each of you if you would just comment briefly about how
you think we can incorporate that because I think that is very
much in our interest for U.S. consumers to address these issues
but also for U.S. businesses because it helps us with a more
fair playing field to compete. We will start with Mr. Murphy
and go to your left.
Mr. Murphy. Mr. Chairman, my reaction is that in this
worldwide economy where we are in competition every day, the
first place we have to look to think about how we are going to
win in that competition is inward. We have to get our own act
together on everything from K-12 through college education. We
have to invest more in our infrastructure, which has suffered
in recent years. We have to think about how our global
companies are able to compete.
This country has some of the highest corporate tax rates in
the world, and that creates a very negative incentive to be
doing business in this country. We have to think about getting
those incentives right, and if we do that right, then we will
be in much stronger shape.
Mr. Carnahan. If I could? I wanted to particularly address
the issue of product safety.
Mr. Murphy. I think in recent years there has been a
considerable effort made on both food, phytosanitary, sanitary
side and on product safety. I think that is a work in progress,
but we recognize that it is very important. Having an approach
that finds a way to weigh those risks and dedicates the
resources that we have to mitigating those risks where they are
has got to be the way forward. That is going to be the biggest
bang for the buck.
Mr. Carnahan. Dr. Athreya?
Ms. Athreya. We are very concerned with issues of product
safety and food safety in the developing countries where we
work, and we find a direct corollary between the existence of
democratic organizations for workers that have access to
justice and the ability of those workers to blow the whistle
when they see their management their cutting corners and
disobeying the standards that are supposed to be applied in the
production of these goods. The right of workers to organize and
have a voice in the workplace is actually very fundamentally
linked to product safety and food safety.
Mr. Carnahan. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Lucy?
Mr. Lucy. I think the last point the Doctor made was
absolutely on point, but beyond that, there are existing
conventions that deal with the issues of safety, both workers'
safety and product safety, and the empowerment of workers with
them able to speak to the quality of products that they
manufacture, their ability to negotiate processes and
procedures of doing work will obviously address some of these
issues.
Mr. Sherman. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. Carnahan. Yes.
Mr. Sherman. I just want to set the record straight on the
U.S. corporate tax rate. We have enormous, giant loopholes for
corporations to exploit, particularly with regard to
international transactions. You have got to look not at the
nominal rate, but the effective rate of taxation, which is
lower on our corporations now than it has been for a long, long
time, and you cannot simply circle the nominal rate and repeat
that over and over again as if it is an accurate reflection of
the effective rate. I yield back.
Mr. Carnahan. I thank the gentleman. I thank the panel for
your patience, for your insight and for your frankness here
today all of you. It has helped us I think get a good overview
of this issue, and we look forward to continuing to work with
you on these efforts. We are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:35 p.m., the subcommittees were
adjourned.]
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