China: a fast moving labor market

While Teamster president James Hoffa and a delegation of American trade unionists are traveling China, it is certainly not only them on the move, although they certainly reserved their spot in the history books, according to AP:

Teamsters president James Hoffa and other leaders of the Change to Win federation of unions arrived in China on Friday, ending a decades-old boycott by U.S. labour groups, many of which still reject the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, which closely follows government and Communist party orders.

We are trying to catch up with the companies, says the delegation to whoever wants to listen. The US magazine Newsweek covers the dispute over the Chinese labor law, where US companies are accused of watering down the labor for their own profits with the catching headline: Profits over Principles.

When critics accuse U.S. companies of moving jobs to China to exploit cheap labor and sweatshop conditions, businesses always argue that their presence has helped improve labor standards and even forward democracy. Now the same companies that pat themselves on the back are lobbying to weaken a draft Chinese labor law—and workers' rights activists are calling them hypocrites.

And while at the US-side employers and trade unions fight for media attention, the Chinese labor market takes its own turns. We reported already about the upcoming shortage on Chinese migrant workers. The National Geograpic describes very colorful how the shortage of cheap labor drives Chinese companies literally into the last parts of Zhejiang province that have not yet been industrialized. Chinese media repeat that message on the shortage of workers, educated or not, and the rising wages.