[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 58 (Thursday, May 11, 2000)]
[House]
[Page H2954]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1615
    END THE EXPLOITATION OF WORKERS BEFORE CONSIDERING PERMANENT MFN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Petri). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, let me just start by commending the 
gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella) and the gentlewoman from the 
District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) and the gentlewoman from Connecticut 
(Ms. DeLauro) for all their leadership and work on the pay equity 
issue. It is a very important issue, not only for women, but for 
families in this country, and I applaud their leadership.
  Having said that, I want to tell my colleagues about another person 
who works. She is a 16-year-old girl. I want my colleagues to meet her. 
She is not a criminal. She spends her days locked up behind a 15-foot 
wall topped with barbed wire.
  At the end of the day, she must leave in a single file from her work 
site like a prisoner. During the day, she assembled sneakers, applying 
toxic glue with her bare hands. She is not in school to make her life 
better. Despite all the evidence, my colleagues can see her, she is not 
in prison.
  She works in a shoe factory in China that ships its sneakers to our 
department stores and our malls. She toils for $70 a month. She could 
work for a month and barely afford to buy one pair of the shoes that 
she makes. She works with 1,800 other young women. Ninety percent of 
them are between the ages of 16 and 25. By the age of 25, most of them 
are exhausted. In some factories, they are forced to retire.
  This scene is played out over and over again throughout China's 
thousands of American-owned factories. Handbags made for the American 
market are stitched together by thousands of workers under conditions 
of indentured servitude, with only 1 day off a month. They work 30 days 
out of 31 days.
  The workers earn an average, listen to this, 3 cents an hour. They 
are fed two dismal meals a day and are housed in a dormitory, 16 people 
to one very small room, crammed into this room.
  When the workers protested for being forced to work from 7:30 in the 
morning to 11 p.m. in the evening, 7 days a week for literally pennies, 
pennies an hour, when they protested, 800 workers were fired.
  Now, this is what American companies are doing in China. Instead of 
trying to create a consumer market for American goods in China, these 
companies are looking for cheap labor by exploiting Chinese workers.
  Make no mistake about it, Mr. Speaker, we want to expand market for 
American goods in China, but that is not what this trade deal is all 
about, and that is not what these companies are doing. These companies 
are moving jobs to China, exploiting Chinese workers, and shipping 
these products back here into the United States of America.
  China is an export platform. American companies operating in China 
have an obligation to abide by internationally-recognized standards on 
wages and working conditions and the right to organize, so they can 
have a say that they do not have to work 14 hours a day, 16 hours a day 
for 3 cents an hour, 30 out of 31 days a month.
  Regrettably, a new report was issued by Charlie Canahan on sweat 
shops in China. This new report shows that these companies, who are 
also lobbying, they are here all over Capitol Hill, lobbying for 
permanent MFN for China, they consistently deny human and worker 
rights.
  But the WTO excludes labor rights from consideration and so does the 
bilateral deal reached with China last year. It does nothing to ensure 
that Chinese workers will be free from this exploitation by American 
companies, much less than the oppressive regime in Beijing.
  If this Congress, Mr. Speaker, passes permanent MFN for China without 
giving workers the same protection that the WTO calls for software, 
compact discs, tapes, we will lose our leverage to do anything at all.
  We should insist that China and American companies in China abide by 
internationally recognized worker rights before we even consider 
permanent MFN for China.
  In conclusion, let me say, Mr. Speaker, that if one raises one's 
voice for worker rights, for human rights, for religious liberties in 
China, one will end up in prison, where are thousands and thousands and 
tens of thousands of people are languishing in gulags today because 
they dare to try to create an atmosphere where they can worship their 
God, where they can have a decent working condition with decent wages 
for themselves and their families, and where they can politically 
participate in a government to change the way of life that is so 
oppressive for them and their families.

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