Unions tremble as China's textile tidal-wave approaches
December 7, 2004
Myazaki - Union leaders across the world are bracing for China to dominate the global textile market when a decades-old quota system ends next month. They have warned that 30 million jobs - many held by women - are at risk.
With only days to go, the expiry of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement, which has set the industrialised world's clothing import quotas for 40 years, is the hottest topic at the 18th World Congress of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) being held in Japan.
China, whose lax labour standards have made it formidably competitive, is expected to win away massive numbers of jobs when the free market takes over the textile trade, with the main losers set to be developing countries.
"One million women workers will lose their jobs. This is reality," said Roy Ramesh Chandra, president of the United Federation of Garments Workers of Bangladesh, where some textile companies have already gone bankrupt.
"Many of them may have to join the ranks of sex workers for a living," Chandra told AFP.
His union has called for global support to cope with the changes and backing from the Dhaka government to protect the textile industry - Bangladesh's biggest foreign-exchange earner other than overseas remittances.
But labour leaders are not optimistic as China, which is already the world's largest apparel exporter by controlling 28 percent of the world market, is not a member of the ICFTU and has an abundant pool of cheap, unprotected workers.
"At the moment 30 million jobs are at risk in a period of five years," said Neil Kearney, general secretary of the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation.
But Kearney predicted the changes will come gradually as the global trade shifts to China's advantage.
"There will be no earthquake on the first of January," Kearney said. "Later in the year (there will be) some tremors. Real problems are probably in mid-2006 and mid-2007."
Indonesia may lose one million jobs, with Sri Lanka likely to have to give up 350 000, while China could snatch 50 percent of US clothing imports against a current 16 percent, according to recent surveys.
Many union leaders are showing frustration as China, which was not among the 150 countries with delegates at the ICFTU meet, takes advantage of only the bright side of globalisation.
Rich countries led by the United States have pressed poor nations to adopt democratic labour standards.
And, "At the same time they opened the door for China and destroyed other countries. It's a hypocrisy at the global level," Harry Sandrasekera, senior vice president of Ceylon Workers' Congress of Sri Lanka.
"China is a winner in globalisation, which has been all set by us. It is ironic," he said.
The looming dominance of China has been fuelling competition among other textile exporters to stay competitive, to the unease of organised labour.
"Most of the textile trade has already been displaced by China and also Vietnam and Sri Lanka," said Democrito Tolo Mendoza, a representative of the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines.
According to the ICFTU, China's wages are half of those in Indonesia, a quarter of those in Malaysia and the Philippines, an eighth of Mexico's and around a mere five percent of Taiwan's.
Manufacturing wages in China average 60 US cents per hour as the labour force is based on a massive pool of migrant labour.
"Countries losing those jobs are not the United States, not Japan, but developing countries," ICFTU general secretary Guy Ryder said.
"They are losing hundreds of thousands of jobs they can't afford to lose," he said. "We need to see a linking of trade and labour standards so that we do not face the situation in which the denial of workers' rights becomes an element of competitive advantage." - AFP
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