Much has already been said about the lengthy battle surrounding the draft labor contract law in China. A lobby, headed by US labor groups and Chinese academics like professor Liu Cheng, have put especially the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai in the position of the villain, accused of trying to to undermine efforts of the Chinese legislators to protect the rights of Chinese workers. By maintaining sweatshop conditions among their suppliers, foreign companies only focus on their own profitability, is the argument.
When you get into such a PR-crisis as Amcham Shanghai did, setting a successful counter-strategy is tough. When Yahoo came under fire because it helped the Chinese authorities to jail the Chinese journalist Shi Tao, they simply kept silence or tried to avoid the issue. The issue is still haunting them. Perhaps, when you action is really indefensible, like in Yahoo's case, shutting up is perhaps the only strategy. But while the way Amcham Shanghai has been dealing with their input for China's labor law certainly does not deserve a prize in a beauty contest, keeping silent only adds to the impression its stance is indefensible. That might be the wrong signal.
An organization like Amcham brings together a great variation of companies, huge, small from almost every conceivable industry. Their opinions on how to deal with labor in China might vary equally, creating a problem whatever position Amcham would take. There would always be a larger portion of the membership disagreeing. Microsoft simply has fewer possibilities to squeeze its suppliers than Wal-Mart.
I think the lobby in favor of a stronger labor law has done itself a disservice by simplifying the debate to a pro-labor and pro-company stance, while ignoring the differences between companies.
Nike is a good example company, despite their dependence on a large number of Chinese suppliers, trying to turn around the current dilemma. Nike has about 800,000 workers in its global supply chain, says this article of the Financial Times, Most of its products come from China.
The company says it will set up an educational programme on workers' rights to freedom of association, to be implemented in all of its contract factories by 2011, the date the company has set for reaching sales of $23bn (€17.1bn, L11.6bn).
Hannah Jones, Nike's vice-president for corporate responsibility, said the brand was now placing a greater effort on promoting "systemic" change in its supply chain, which would include strengthening the ability of factory workers to speak out on their own behalf about problems. "We believe constructive dialogue between workers and factory management leads to better conditions," she said.
Clearly Nike is trying to set a new standard now policing the suppliers failed to work. How that will work out in China, where the government and its only trade union ACFTU has just announced they want collective bargaining for all companies in place in a few years time, is very unclear. For sure we have some interesting developments ahead of us and it would be interesting to see whether Amcham Shanghai would see a role for itself in this new process.
No comments:
Post a Comment