International trade unions split on China

The current visit of "Change to Win", a coalition of US trade unions to China will most certainly enter the history books of the future. Lead by Teamster president James Hoffa, for the first time a major international trade union delegation met with top-officials of the Chinese ACFTU, the party-led trade union. Other trade unions are not allowed in China.
Over the past decades the international trade unions supported, be it marginally, dissident-led labor groups in Hong Kong and southern China with Han Dongfeng as their main icon. As the ACFTU started to unionize Wal-Mart last year and made careful moves into becoming a real trade unions, the rest of the world - employers and trade unions alike - watched. The ACFTU was only acknowledged by a few marginal trade unions and - remarkable enough - the Japanese.
The ACFTU mainly had a ritual function inside state-owned companies, were when possible also set up in foreign joint ventures, but were fast losing membership. Traditionally companies outside the big cities and in private companies had no trade union.
As the political agenda of a "harmonious society" of president Hu Jintao got into place, the ACFTU has to do what it had never done: act as a trade union. While still rather uncommon, it looks that also collective bargaining as a negotiation tool will become more common in the future.
The US labor movement has over the past decades lost most of its power and has split in two over the past few years. The larger AFL-CIO still holds a firm anti-China position and has asked for trade sanctions against China.
The Change to Win alliance has taken a radical different position. From the Washington Post:

"This new direction that we're taking is propelled by the new challenges we face in a new world economy," Greg Tarpinian, executive director of Change to Win, told reporters. "Our mission is to fight for the American Dream and we don't believe we can fight for the American Dream and restore the American middle class without linking up with Chinese workers."

The US mission in China had very obvious a domestic target, as this quote shows. The wider debate will also spill over in the rest of the trade unions and push their China discussion from a Hong Kong, dissident oriented into a Beijing, official one. While I do acknowledge the good things that have come from Hong Kong, it is about time to change.