Today's Stories

August 25, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
US Out of Iraq by "2011"

August 23 / 4, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
"Change," "Hope"...Why They Must be Talking About Joe Biden!

Jeffrey St. Clair
Killing Salmon with Paul O'Neill: Power, Profits and the Future of the Columbia River

Patty O'Grady
John McCain in a New Context: Why the Senator is No War Hero

Nicole Colson
Obama and Big Corn

Steve Conn
Obama and the Mining Cartel

Deepak Trapathi
Pakistan in Uncertain Times

Robert Fantina
Once Upon a Time in America: a McCain Administration

Jonathan M. Feldman
Obamanomics: Does the Left Have Anything to Say?

Joshua Frank
Targeting Pelosi (and the War Machine): an Interview with Cindy Sheehan

Osama Qashoo
Sailing to Gaza

Howard Lisnoff
The Long Silence: American Jews and the Palestinians

David Michael Green
Sen. McShame and the Wreckage: John McCain Discovers America

Dave Lindorff
Why Not Let the Republicans Deal With This Mess?

Christopher Brauchli
A Banner Month for Passports

Alan Farago
Who Crippled the Government?

Michael Winship
Cash Register Conventions

Richard Rhames
Vlad the Derailer: Can Putin Save America From Itself?

David Rosen
The Culture Wars Are Over: But Culture Warriors Are Still Terrorizing America

Patrick B. Barr
Don't Try to Tame the Lightning Bolt

Jamie Newlin
Western Turf Wars: the Politics of Public Lands Ranching

Poets' Basement
Glendinning, McEnteer and Bonner

Website of the Weekend
Cafe Reconcile, New Orleans

August 22, 2008

Boris Kagarlitsky
Fallout from the Georgian War

Laura Carlsen
Obama and Latin America: Change or Continuity?

Bob Barr
No War for Georgia

Marwan Bishara
From Russia with Love: Putin Hits Georgia, Bloodies Bush

Peter Morici
Is the Fed Still a Central Bank?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Big Heat

Charles Mostoller
The Battle for the Amazon

Sumbul Ali-Karamali
Obama is Not a Muslim: But Would It Be So Terrible If He Were?

Keith Rosenthal
Standing Up to Union-Bashing

John F. Miglio
The Devolution of the Baby Boom Generation

Website of the Day
Fire Sale in the Markets!

August 21, 2008

Allan J. Lichtman
Is Georgia 2008 a Repeat of Hungary 1956?

Dave Lindorff Loserville: How Obama Blew It

Ralph Nader
The Problem with Problem Banks

Joanne Mariner
The Military Commissions, So Far

Wajahat Ali
Descent Into Chaos: an Interview with Ahmed Rashid on Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Taliban

Ron Jacobs
Georgia and Historical Farce

Rostam Purzal
The Left and Iran

Anthony Papa
Unlocking the Power of Art to Counter Injustice

Website of the Day
Rocky Mountain Way

August 20, 2008

Michael Neumann
Russia and Georgia: Proportion and Distortion

Ray McGovern
Musharraf Out Like Nixon

Eric Walberg
Georgia's Ossetian Debacle

Fidaa Abed
Blocking a Gazan's Path to San Diego

Daniel Haack
The Pentagon's Most Prolific Pundit

Mike Whitney
Greenback Surges, Euro Shrivels

Website of the Day
Hands Off South Africa's Centre for Civil Society

August 19, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for Nuclear War?

Deepak Tripathi
A New Age of Torture

Marwan Bishara
The Politics of Evil in the US Elections

Saul Landau
Baseball Diplomacy or Just Baseball?

William S. Lind
Leave Georgia Alone, George

Martha Rosenberg
Whole Foods and Other Food Offenders

James Brittain
The Road to Tyranny in Colombia

Pratyush Chandra
Krugman's Great Illusion

David Macaray
AFSCME's Strike Against the University of California

Website of the Day
McCain Plagiarizing Solzhenitsyn

August 18, 2008

Tariq Ali
Pakistan After Musharraf

Gary Leupp
Russia's Georgia Campaign and the Expansion of NATO

Uri Avnery
The Anger, the Longing, the Hope

John Ross
Inside America's Death Chamber

Farooq Sulehria
An Afghan Woman Who Stands Up to the Warlords

Luis Rodriguez
The Power of Art and Youth

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
A Laser Weapon of Plausible Deniablity?

Noah Baker Merrill
We Can Do Better

Charles Thomson
Betrayal of Trustees at the Tate

Website of the Day
Gonzo Environmentalism

August 16 / 17, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Don't Know Much About History...

Jeffrey St. Clair
Last Stand in the Big Woods: Resistance and Ignominy at Cove/Mallard

Deepak Tripathi
A Pawn in Their Game: From Georgia to the Brink of a New Cold War

Conn Hallinan
Georgia on My Mind

Mike Whitney
Revisiting the "Battle of Tskhinvali"

Robert Fantina
Russia, Georgia and Bush

Ray McGovern
Out Damn Blot: a Letter to Colin Powell

Nicole Colson
Bled Dry by the Oil Giants

Fatima Bhutto
The Impeachment of Musharraf

Jean-Luis Rocca
The Middle Kingdom's Middle Way

David Michael Green
My Army Went to Iraq and All I Got was This Lousy Air Lift

Ramzi Kysia
Standing Up for Justice in the Middle East

Dave Lindorff
Forging the Case for War

Lisa Martinovic
What's So Funny 'Bout Bush, Lies and Torture Memos?

Richard Rhames
Single-Payer, a Dream Denied

Don Santina
Taps for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

Rannie Amiri
Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim vs. the Ugly Dictator

Ramzy Baroud
Family Politics and the New Gaza Crisis

John Stanton
The Army's Human Terrain Systems: From Super Concept to Super Farce

Howard Lisnoff
The Deportation of Jeremy Hinzman

Ron Jacobs
Sweat and Sacrifice Make History

Seth Sandronsky
Arianna Huffington's Blind Spot

Poets' Basement
Landau, Darwish and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Summer Screening: CounterPunch's Favorite Films

August 15, 2008

Steve Niva
The Surge in Iraqi Female Suicide Bombers

David Remington
Sharpening Occam's Razor on the Forged Intelligence Documents

Michael Winship
The Imperial Presidency

Paul Craig Roberts
The Neocons Do Georgia

Farzana Versey
Taming the Islamic Shrew

Harvey Wasserman
McCain Goes Nuclear

Felice Pace
The Politics of Smoke

Julian Critchley
All Experts Agree: Legalize Drugs

Website of the Day
The Farting Preacher

August 14, 2008

Saul Landau /
Nelson Valdés
The Shape of Cuba's Reforms

Conn Hallinan
The Coming Surge in Afghanistan

Mike Whitney
Georgia and U.S. Strategy

Reza Fiyouzat
U.S. and Iranian Relations: What Does Normalization Entail?

Ralph Nader
Single-Payer Health Care in an Age of Two-Party Politics

Christopher Brauchli The Cheerleader in China

Jack Bradigan Spula
Plowing Through the Farm Bill

Patrick Irelan
After the Flood

John Walsh
Buyers Remorse Over Obama

Dan Bacher
Schwarznegger Pimps the Water Bond

Website of the Day
Zevon: Renegade

August 13, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
"President Bush, Will You Please Shut Up?"

David Remington
Forgery, Fakery and Fatigue (Scandal, That Is)

Brian Cloughley
Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Press

Glen Ford
Are Black Politics Headed Toward the Graveyard?

Brendan Cooney
A Shattered Myth in Georgia

Dave Lindorff
This War Has Been Approved By Your Government

Tom Lewis
Morales After the Bolivian Referendum

Stan Cox
Let's Handcuff the Property Cops

Alan Farago
Crimes Against the State: Bushism and the Florida Mortgage Crisis

Martha Rosenberg
Fear and Loathing Behind the Plexiglass Curtain

Website of the Day
Here Today, Here Tomorrow: Young Workers and Social Security

August 12, 2008

Uri Avnery
Obama and the Middle East

Anthony DiMaggio
Master of Ambiguity: Obama's Non-Plan for Ending the War in Iraq

Bill Christison
No NATO Membership for Georgia

Eric Walberg
War a la Carte: How the US Invited a War in S. Ossetia

Kate Connolly
Old Cold Warriors Never Die: Brzezinski Compares Putin to Hitler

Diane Farsetta
Cracking the Pentagon Pundit Code

Peter Morici
The Trade Deficit and Job Losses

Thom Rutledge
Equal Opportunity Judgment: Reason, Morality and the Edwards Scandal

Lee Patton
How to Swiftboat McCain

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Technological Titans, Moral Midgets

Website of the Day
Mr. Hot Buttered Soul

August 11, 2008

Ishmael Reed
Politics of the Race Card: McCain Gurgles in the Slime

Paul Craig Roberts
The Moronic Party: From Off-Shore Drilling to the Georgian War

Gary Leupp
The Neo-Cons' Dream Forgery: the Habbush Letter Revisited

Douglas Kammen
Rice and Circus in East Timor

William Willers
New Paths Toward the Loss of Our Public Lands: Subsidies, Volunteerism and Outsourcing

Greg Moses
The Smell of Propaganda in the Morning: Press Calls for War in the Caucasus

Jeff Leys
Showdown at Fort McCoy

Cynthia McKinney
We Are Not Hopeless

Alan Farago
The Olympic Spectacle and the New China

Website of the Day
Mahmoud Darwish, RIP

August 9 / 10, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
You Want More Still Proofs the Crony, Old-Line Press is Dead?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Pools of Fire: the Looming Nuclear Nightmare in the Backwoods of N. Carolina

Bruce Jackson
Hamdan's Secret

Kevin Young
Targeting Civilians: the Path to Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Chris Floyd
The Serpent's Egg: Solzhenitsyn and the Origins of the American Gulag

Joshua Frank
Inside Obama's Fundraising Operation

Robert Fantina
Of Campaigns and Timelines

Brendan Cooney
The Eagle is Wounded

Mark Almond
Plucky Little Georgia?

Lois Gibbs
The Lost Lessons of Love Canal

Rev. William Alberts
Blind Patriotism? McCain's Counting On It

Kathy Kelly
The Big Voice

John Ross
The Cutthroat Games: the Decline of the Olympics from Mexico City to Beijing

David Michael Green
The Fire This Time: the GOP and the Economy

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
A Novel Approach to Politics

Ron Jacobs
I Read the News Today, Oh Boy (Or Why John McCain Wants Cindy to Show Her Tits)

Richard Rhames
The Greatest Degeneration

David Yearsley
Once More Unto the Albert Hall, Dear Friends

Lee Sustar
Justice for the Freightliner Five: a Struggle for the Soul of the UAW

Brenda Norrell
Turning Sewage into Snow on the Sacred San Francisco Peaks

Ben Terrall
Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Jenkins, Ibn Salma and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Tuli Kupferberg's Fig Leaf Olympics

August 8, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's Nationalist Surge

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Voting: a Ritual of Justifying Biases

M. Shahid Alam
The Zionist Stratagem

Andy Worthington
Salim Hamdan's Sentence

Lawrence J. Korb
Bad Advice from Generals

David Model
Instant Genocide

Alan Farago
When Miami Goes Bust: the Politics of the Housing Crisis

Diop Olugbala
What About the Black Community, Obama?

Firmin DeBrabander
When the Olympics Went Green--with Algae

Website of the Day
Summer Reading: CounterPunch's Favorite Novels

August 7, 2008

Dr. Trudy Bond
Fixing Hell and Curing Obesity

William Blum
Breaking Young Hearts: Obama and the Empire

Paul Craig Roberts
Do You Feel Safe Now?

Ralph Nader
Gouged in the Skies: Gotcha Capitalism in the Airline Industry

Robert Weitzel
Obama and the Two Walls

Jacob G. Hornberger
Why Wasn't Ivins Declared an Enemy Combatant?

Binoy Kampmark
Driving Bin Laden

David Macaray
What Does a Radical Labor Union Look Like?

Howard Lisnoff
Echoes of the Sixties: Refusing to Recite the Pledge

Website of the Day
Bono's Retirement Fund

August 6, 2008

Marc Herold
Obama and Afghanistan

Greg Moses
The Unnecessary Execution of Jose Ernesto Medellin

Sheldon Rampton
The Anthrax Cover-Up

Kevin Young
The Atomic Bombing of Japan: Tsuyoshi Hasegawa Re-Examines the Japanese Surrender

Michael Estrada
What I Re-Discovered in Mexico

Robert Weissman
The Commercial Games

Dr. Susan Block
The Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church Killings: Did Rightwing Talk Shows Drive Him to Kill?

Cindy Sheehan
This is Horseshit

Ace Hoffman
The Unholy Trinity

Website of the Day
Over to You, Paris

August 5, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Anthrax Attacks and the Assault on Civil Liberties

Jeff Halper
An Israeli Jew in Gaza

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Better? With Three Wars Going On?

Nancy Welch
"What Did My Father Do to Deserve Such Treatment?" An Interview with Laila al-Arian

Peter Morici
Rear View Mirror Economics

Sousan Hammad
The Antisemitism Incitement Craze

Eamon Martin
The Audacity of Despair

Shepherd Bliss
Slow Food Nation Gains Momentum

Tim Matson
Keeping Cool and Saving BTUs

Website of the Day
Top Heavy Greens?

August 4, 2008

Uri Avnery
Olmert's Exit

Saul Landau
Reflections on the Cuban Revolution

David W. Remington
The Face of the Modern War Criminal

Rev. Jesse Jackson
The Question Conscience Asks

Dave Lindorff
The Cheney Doctrine: Shoot Your Friends First

Peter Morici
The Lingering Economic Malaise

Joanne Mariner
Debating Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism in Britain

Ramzy Baroud
Through the Israeli Looking Glass: Obama Joins the Club

Christian Wright
Why We're Protesting at the Democratic Convention

Website of the Day
The US and Karadzic

August 2 / 3, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Ongoing Persecution of Sami al-Arian

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Worst Day of Ted Stevens' Life?

Patrick Cockburn
Who's Really Running Iraq?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Is the King of Pork Dead?

James Abourezk
Lies the Oil Companies Peddle

Andy Worthington
The CIA's Secret Prison on Diego Garcia

Brian Cloughley
Baleful Imperial Power

Robert Fantina
Redefining Progress in Iraq

Benjamin Dangl
Total Recall in Bolivia

Marlene Martin
Living in Hell for Life

David Yearsley
The Sound and Fury of Wet Balloons Rubbed with a Big Sponge: Yes, Bill O'Reilly, This Your Kind of Music!

Fatemeh Keshavarz
What Qualifies "Them" for the Death Sentence?

David Michael Green Obama as Dukakis

Harvey Wasserman
Meet the Real Terrorists of the 1960s

Jason Hribal
Moja Has Mojo: How a Few Elephants Turned the Zoo Industry Upside Down

Phyllis Pollack
The Rolling Stones' Exile on Geary Street: an Interview with Rock Photographer Dominque Tarle

Laray Polk
Tongues of Fire, Plains of Grace: Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Ron Jacobs
Jerry Garcia Meets Barack Obama

David Macaray
Labor, Management and the Adversarial Relationship

David Rosen
Teen Prostitution in America

Dan Bacher
Schwarzengger's Water Empire

Joe Allen
Batman's War of Terror

Poets' Basement
Graham, Stevens, Cory and Fleming

Website of the Weekend
Get Your War On: the Watch List

August 1, 2008

Jonathan Cook
Palestinians Face Home Demolitions Spree by Israel

Nikolas Kozloff
McCain's Mad Dog Advisor Max Boot

Rannie Amiri
Islamobamaphobia: a New Word Enters the Lexicon

Peter Morici
U.S. Economy Loses Another 51,000 Jobs

Christopher Brauchli
South Dakota's Abortion Fairy Tale

M. K. Bhadrakumar
Coup in the Great Caspian Play

Patrick Cockburn
Turkish Court Says Ruling Islamic Party Can't be Shut Down

James J. Brittain
The Continuity of FARC-EP Resistance in Colombia

Dan Bacher
Warren Buffett, Salmon Killer

Website of the Day
Shark Genocide: 100 Million Deaths a Year

July 31, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Next Big Bail Out: State, Local and Private Pensions

Carl Finamore
Protest Politics and the Democrats: A Street Protester Looks Back at 1968

Mike Whitney
What's Going on in Afghanistan

Joshua Frank
Obama's Green Coal: Another Myth from the Change Agent

Andy Worthington
The Peculiar Case of Jarallah al-Marri

Ralph Nader
The Living Legacy of Rosa Parks

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The Wave of Capitol Crimes

Robert Weissman
The Collapse of the WTO Talks

Dave Lindorff
Bush Judge Does the Right Thing on Executive Immunity

Website of the Day
Perils of the New Pesticides

July 30, 2008

Brian M. Downing
Assessing the Surge

Chuck Spinney
Should Obama Escalate the War in Afghanistan? A Thought Experiment

William S. Lind
Why McCain is Wrong on Iraq

David Ker Thomson
Against Bike Lanes

Karl Grossman
Nuclear-Powered Amphibious Assault Ships?

Mike Whitney
Apocalypse Down Under

Martha Rosenberg
Heifer Palooza

James Murren
Where Your Life is Worth One Bullet

Dave Lindorff
The Impeachment Hearing

Ron Jacobs
A Conspiracy to Kill Iraqis?

Website of the Day
Mapping Job Loss to China

July 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
King of the Hill Indicted! Ted Stevens' Empire of Corruption

John Ross
Return of the Gunboat

Peter Morici
When Will Henry Paulson Learn?

Alison Weir
Israeli Strip Searches

Gary Leupp
"Bewilderment and Confusion on the Left?"

David Macaray
The Calculus of Union Strikes

Brenda Norrell
Censored in Indian Country

Marjorie Cohn
End the Occupations: Of Iraq and Afghanistan

Eric Ruder
A New Consensus on Iraq?

Website of the Day
"If You Could See Me Now ... "

July 28, 2008

Dr. Bryant Welch
Torture, Political Manipulation and the American Psychological Association

Kathy Kelly
Pictures from Summer Camp on the West Bank

Mike Whitney
Bad News and Bank Runs

Peter Morici
Spreading Layoffs, Sagging GDP

Christopher Brauchli
Death by (Power) Surge in Baghdad

Clifton Ross
The Spectacle and the Movement in Colombia

Stephen Lendman
The Bush Administration's Secret Biowarfare Agenda

Website of the Day
Stone's Dubya: the Trailer

August 25, 2008

The Role of Trade Unions in China

China in the Spotlight

By CARL FINAMORE

The recently-concluded summer Olympics introduced China as a major player on the world stage in spectacular fashion.

No doubt about it, the country made a superbly dramatic entrance.

Of course there were the much-publicized disclosures that some elements of the production were staged - the embarrassing lip-synching episode and the use of pre-recorded fireworks fed to live television broadcasts.

But first-class, stellar performances by Chinese athletes on the field amply demonstrated there was nothing fake about the progress China has made in the last several decades.

A more valid criticism was that the Chinese government’s track record on human rights won’t win any medals. And to be sure, it must be recognized that some of those complaints were made by those with less than genuine motives.

This was the topic of a recent discussion between twenty northern California labor leaders and a visiting high-level Chinese delegation from the Guangzhou Federation of Trade Unions (GZFTU).

The delegation, which is affiliated with the state-controlled All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), surprised us a bit when they said this was the first visit of top Chinese labor officials with leaders of a AFL-CIO Central Labor Council.

Facing new challenges to organize multi-nationals, our guests emphasized they wanted to rapidly end their isolation from American unions.

GZFTU's Chairman Chen Weiguang began by acknowledging that China‘s unions had to be reformed. “We need to protect the rights and interests of the workers and elect leaders who will stand up for workers,” said Weiguang. “Of course, the bosses within the enterprises want a union chair who will be obedient to the company but we believe the union belongs to the workers, not the bosses.”

Chen speaks from his experience as a major planner of the successful unionization of Wal-Mart in China.

China's “Economic Miracle”

Currently the seventh largest world economy, the country of 1.3 billion is on track to become the third largest by 2015. Its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown at rates that are among the highest for any major country in the 20th century. (US Dept. of Agric., USDA 2004 report)

There are many internal factors contributing to China's economic "miracle" such as a more-skilled workforce and unprecedented capital spending on roads, utilities, buildings, machinery and equipment.

Over time, infrastructure improvements result in big increases in labor productivity and mass production of quality products, something U.S. policy makers do not appreciate. Substantial foreign investment in new technology since the early 1990s has also helped spur productivity.

Before the mid-1990s there were clear differences between state-owned "socialist" factories, which offered lifetime employment, housing, and medical care, and private sector factories, which provided little job security, low wages, and no fringe benefits.

Today, however, competition and persistent government efforts to privatize state-owned firms has led even these enterprises to offer less job security, fewer welfare benefits, and stricter labor conditions. (China Labour Rights Bulletin)

As a result, wages of Chinese workers have remained very low. Experts estimate wages at around 12% of US workers, thus providing China an extremely favorable trade advantage.

For example, the USDA reports that “furniture manufactured in China can enter the U.S. market at 25 to 35 percent of the cost of comparable furniture” made in the United States.

This imbalance is representative of most Chinese exports.

From these statistics, it should be clear that raising the wages and living conditions of Chinese workers is imperative. Solidarity is not just an abstract emotional impulse; it is an economic necessity that unites workers around the world.

Our goal should be to avoid divisive competition between ourselves by establishing uniform international labor standards.

A Conversation with Chinese Labor

Our meeting with the Chinese delegation proved to be a lively and frank exchange. I asked a question about the control of the Communist Party over the official trade unions.

As reported by Paul Burton in the May 28, 2008, Labor, the San Mateo County Central Labor Council newspaper, Chen responded to the question by explaining the history of unions under the Communist Party.

“For a long time China was a 'command economy' and unions were subservient to it. There was no distinction between labor and capital because we were all part of the nation,” Chen said. “The Party worked hard for the development of the working class and to educate workers. Things have changed with the move to a market economy and differentiation in factories between bosses and workers.”

Chen said that over the past 30 years of economic reforms, workers have made great sacrifices and now that capital had become too powerful the Communist Party was rethinking the balance of capital and labor, enacting new labor laws as part of that change.

Apparently some progress is being made.

Burton summarized the meeting by observing that “with the enactment of recent pro-worker labor laws in China, the situation may be changing as workers exercise their rights under these new labor laws.

“The China Labor Bulletin (CLB, online at www.china-labour.org.hk/en/) reported that 'the number of labor dispute cases in Guangzhou for the first two months of 2008 equaled the total number of cases in 2001. More than 60 percent of all cases involved non-payment of salaries and over-time.'"

CLB director Han Dongfang wrote encouragingly that “by developing collective bargaining at the grassroots level, enterprise-level unions will be transformed into labor organizations that genuinely represent the rights and interests of workers.”

Let's wish them well. We all should work toward this common goal in each of our unions. But some would say it is not possible to achieve while the Chinese government retains exclusive control of the unions.

The role of Trade Unions in China

Founded in 1925, ACFTU has around 170 million members. It is the only union legally recognized but its membership is shrinking as privately-owned companies become a larger share of the economy.

The numbers are staggering. In their Feb. 9, 2008, issue, ChinaDaily reports that 200 million were employed by 5.39 million registered private establishments in 2007. This is more than half of all companies in China. These firms alone generated 60 percent of the GDP.

ACFTU is responding to this challenge by mounting a huge organizing campaign in the private sector, especially among the foreign-owned. As a result, the Federation expects it membership to increase to 200 million by its September 2008 Congress. It also hopes to announce successful completion of a “100-day” bold unionization effort begun in June to organize 80% of the Fortune 500 firms.

This new thinking was forced upon Chinese unions after they encountered stiff opposition from notoriously anti union Wal-Mart. Labor officials, normally accustomed to dealing with state enterprises, were shocked when the company actually refused to even meet with union organizers, a tactic commonly employed in America.

ACFTU began a successful grass-roots organizing campaign, a first for the state labor body.

The union was finally recognized in 2006. Chen Weiguang played an important role confronting Wal-Mart as a hostile employer rather than as a friendly joint-venture partner with the government. The latter view has always compromised the union’s ability to represent workers.

For example, the ACFTU official website still clearly reveals its cooperation with management: "Trade unions of the foreign-invested enterprises in China have firmly centered on production and business operation to conduct activities and have given support to enterprises in their operation and management according to law; have educated workers to observe factory rules and regulations and discipline; organized workers to launch labor emulation campaigns; and aroused the enthusiasm of the workers for running the enterprises well, so as to contribute to the sound development of the enterprises."

Yet, soon after the Wal-Mart victory, the ACFTU website announced: “This successful experience in setting up Wal-Mart unions is groundbreaking in that we have discovered a new line of thinking. It not only will influence other foreign and private investors to quickly abide by the law to allow unions to be established, it also brings to trade unionists a new mission. Following the new logic in setting up unions, new adjustments in union work will be needed, be it in methods, in organizational structure, ways of identifying backbone activists, down to how to use union funds….”

We are obviously observing the wavering contradictions of a mass labor organization of millions trying to define for itself a new role and trying to discover for itself a new voice that speaks more sharply to the needs of Chinese workers.

The big question is whether the announced changes in union structure and purpose enacted from “above” will be sufficient to satisfy millions of Chinese workers “below” who so desperately need an organization representing their class interests.

So far, the government is walking a delicate tight rope of enacting reform without relinquishing control.

Fresh off the success of their grand Olympic production, the state retains the stage with the home crowd anxiously awaits their next major performance of reforming the trade unions.

Hundreds of millions of desperate workers still suffering under conditions most observers describe as horribly primitive have so far been relatively quiet.

Chinese officials hope they remain in their seats.

But a “thumbs down” review might end up with a rebellious audience itself taking over the stage.

Carl Finamore was President (ret), Air Transport Employees, Local Lodge 1781, IAMAW. He can be reached at local1781@yahoo.com

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