labor - Amcham Shanghai under attack for rights' row

Leading research group Access Asia has launched in its weekly update an attack on the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai for its stance against the new Chinese labor law.

It has become clear to many now, what we suspected all along – the Shanghai American Chamber of Commerce is clearly a collection of whack jobs that exists just to the right of Franco, and despite usually meekly bowing down in supplication to the Chinese government, has decided to throw its toys out of the pram and get annoyed about Chinese workers potentially getting a few extra rights.

Both the European Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and Nike decided in December last year for a more subtle approach. Access Asia:

Nike is so far the only company to publicly dismiss the AmCham position (they did so at an ITGLWF conference last December), but firms such as Ericsson and GE have distanced themselves by professing support for the spirit of the reforms, while opposing certain specifics of the legislation.

We’ll leave the final word to Tim Costello of Global Labour Strategies (GLS), a labour rights advocacy organisation – ‘companies’ opposition to “modest reforms” flies in the face of the idea that globalisation and corporations will raise standards around the world.’

It seems it is time for a decent public debate.