La compagnia americana Wal-Mart ha recentemente permesso l’accesso ai
sindacati statali nei suoi ipermercati in Cina. Mentre i Democratici negli Usa
si fanno “portavoce” dei lavoratori, in Cina come negli Usa crescono le domande
di impiego a basso costo dovute a condizioni di povertà. La tesi del WSWS è che,
come non c’è possibilità di lavoro politico nei sindacati cinesi controllati
dallo stato, non ce ne sia NEANCHE in quelli americani
§
La compagnia americana Wal-Mart ha recentemente
permesso al governo cinese di creare delle filiali del gruppo statale All China
Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) nei suoi
ipermercati in Cina.
§
Questi grandi magazzini assumono prevalentemente
giovani dalle campagne e, inizialmente, come negli Usa, rifiutano la
partecipazione delle sindacati statali.
Dopo che il solito metodo del
sindacato di porsi alla direzione non ha funzionato, la ACFTU ha convinto 25
lavoratori di un ipermercato Wal-Mart nella provincia di Fujian ad iscriversi e
creare una filiale del sindacato.
La Wal-Mart ha reagito avvertendo i membri del
sindacato che i loro contratti non sarebbero stati rinnovati. Una settimana
dopo, però, Wal-Mart ha firmato un memorandum con l’ACFTU permettendo ai sindacati
locali di essere presenti nei grandi magazzini cinesi, che impiegano 31 mila
persone. Ora 62 degli ipermercati Wal-Mart in Cina sono stati sindacalizzati.
§
La funzione del “sindacato” ACFTU , arma in mano
all’apparato poliziesco, non è quella di migliorare le condizioni dei
lavoratori cinesi, ma di imporre le richieste degli investitori e di
disciplinare la forza lavoro.
§
A Maggio la Wal-Mart ha venduto 16 grandi magazzini
in Sud Corea e 85 in Germania a Luglio. Ora vuole concentrarsi in Cina per competere
con la francese rivale Carrefour SA. La Wal-Mart progetta infatti di aprire
quest’anno 20 grandi magazzini in più in Cina. Ha inoltre fatto un’offerta per
comprare la Trust-Mart, che ha sede a Taiwan, per 1 miliardo$.
§
Più dell’80% delle 6 mila fabbriche che
riforniscono i magazzini Wal-Mart sono in Cina, che produce la maggior parte
dell’abbigliamento, giochi, materiale elettronico, mobili, accessori per la
casa. I suoi approvvigionamenti totali dalla Cina erano di 18 miliardi nel
2004. Nei prossimi 5 anni si pensa che il loro volume ammonterà a una cifra tra
i 20 e i 25 miliardi $. Come altre multinazionali, Wal-Mart preme in Cina per
l’abbassamento dei costi.
Proteste e scioperi spesso esplodono per le cattive
condizioni soprattutto nelle aziende straniere e private.
§
Tre anni fa i sindacati cinesi hanno cominciato a
guardare alla Wal-Mart per il suo alto
profilo, cercando di porla come esempio per le altre transnazionali.
§
L’ACFTU vuole controllare 200 milioni di lavoratori
migranti dalle campagne che formano la maggior forza lavoro nelle città (il
numero sta aumentando di 13 milioni all’anno). Anche se col sostegno dello
stato, dalla fine del 2005 l’ACFTU ha visto
iscriversi solo 23 milioni di emigranti rurali. Quest’anno sono previste altre
10 milioni di persone.
§
La decisione della Wal-Mart non sarebbe stata
menzionata se non fosse che è stata riportata nella campagna elettorale da
Democratici e sindacati: i primi infatti, fra cui Hillary Clinton, hanno
utilizzato lo slogan sostenuto dai sindacati “Wake up Wal-Mart” nel tentativo
di porsi come difensori dei lavoratori contro l’abbassamento dei salari e le condizioni
inadeguate inflitti dalla compagnia. Ciò rappresenta solo il sistema dei
profitti, basato da una parte su lavori sottopagati negli Usa, dall’altra sulle
aziende sfruttatrici in Cina. Non è l’interesse dei lavoratori a guidare i
Democratici e i sindacati ma è il tentativo di premere sulla Wal-Mart per
permettere loro di giocare un ruolo simile a quello dell’ACFTU – di presidiare
la forza-lavoro per incassare i contributi sindacali.
§
Come la loro controparte cinese, i sindacati
americani hanno presidiato al disastro sociale: milioni di licenziati,
fabbriche chiuse, condizioni disastrose in queste tre decadi di “competitività
globale”. Per quanto i sindacati americani facciano riferimento alle cattive
condizioni dei lavoratori in Cina o Messico, ciò è solo per fare appelli
divisori ai nazionalismi americani e per chiedere misure protezioniste. Lo
stesso Clinton è stato per anni nel consiglio della Wal-Mart.
§
L’effetto Wal-Mart, afferma il WSJ, con i suoi beni
a basso costo, ha risparmiato alle famiglie statunitensi 263 miliardi $ sul
costo della vita un anno –paragonati ai 33 miliardi programma federale sul cibo
per le famiglie con basse entrate.
I beni a basso costo negli Usa, derivanti dal lavoro
sottopagato dei lavoratori cinesi, vengono comprati da famiglie di lavoratori
americani, non da quelle benestanti. L’alta domanda di lavoro a basso costo
alla Wal-Mart è dovuto, in America come in Cina, alla forte richiesta di
impiego dovuto alla condizione di povertà.
Il risultato in entrambi i paesi è la divisione
crescente tra ricchi e poveri: secondo il Census Bureau statunitense il 20%
“ricco” delle famiglie americane nel 2005 ha percepito il 50,4 % di tutte le entrate
delle famiglie – l’ammontare maggiore dal ’67. La Wal-Mart ha fatto profitti
per 11,2 miliardi $ lo scorso anno.
In Cina lo scorso anno il reddito disponibile del 10
% delle famiglie più ricche era 8 volte del 10% di quelle più povere, mentre il
60 % dei residenti urbani erano sotto il livello medio di reddito disponibile.
Tutto ciò aggravato dal costo crescente delle case come da quello esorbitante
per l’assistenza sanitaria e le tasse scolastiche.
Wal-Mart
opens its doors to state-run unions in China
By John
Chan
4 November 2006
The largest US retail company Wal-Mart
has recently allowed the Chinese
government to establish branches of the state-run All
China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) in its stores
across China.
Wal-Mart’s
practice in China is no different than in the US. Its stores mostly hire rural youth and initially, as in
the US, rejected the involvement of the state unions. After the union’s usual
method of going to management did not work, the ACFTU persuaded 25 employees at
a Wal-Mart store in Fujian province to sign up in late July and created a union
branch.
Wal-Mart reacted by warning the union
members that their contracts would not be renewed. A week later, however,
Wal-Mart signed a memorandum with the ACFTU allowing local unions to have a
presence in its Chinese stores, which employ 31,000 people. Now 62 of
Wal-Mart’s stores in China have been unionised, which Beijing and the ACFTU have hailed as
a “historic breakthrough”.
The
decision in no way represents a gain for the workers. The Chinese regime is
notorious for its police-state methods in suppressing any unrest among Chinese
workers, including the jailing of activists calling for independent trade
unions.
The ACFTU “trade unions” function as an
arm of the police apparatus, not to improve the lot of Chinese workers, but to
impose the demands of investors and to discipline the workforce.
Wal-Mart’s
main aim in allowing unions into its stores was to secure Beijing’s support for
a huge expansion in China.
In May Wal-Mart sold 16 stores in South Korea and 85 in Germany in July. It now
wants to concentrate on China in order to compete against its French rival
Carrefour SA. Wal-Mart plans to open 20 more stores in China this year. It has
also made an offer to buy Taiwan-based Trust-Mart for $1 billion.
Wal-Mart’s
bigger business in China is its gigantic network of sweatshops in which wages
and conditions are far worse than for its retail employees. Over 80 percent of the 6,000
factories supplying Wal-Mart stores around the world are in China, which
produces most of its garments, toys, electronics, furniture and home
appliances. Its total procurement from China was $18 billion in 2004. In the
next five years, the volume is expected to rise to between $20 to $25 billion.
Like
other multinationals,
Wal-Mart is notorious for pressuring its suppliers in China to lower the costs,
by threatening to transfer orders to other plants or countries. As a result of
low-wages, long hours and harsh conditions, strikes and protests frequently erupt, especially in
foreign and private firms. Beijing is particularly concerned that the
new sections of workers not under the direct control of state unions will
become a source of social discontent.
The Chinese unions began to target
Wal-Mart three years ago because of its high profile, seeking to make it an example
for other transnationals. After stalled efforts, President Hu Jintao pressed for action in
March from his “central office for maintaining stability”. He argued that the
expansion of state unions in foreign firms was essential to prevent social unrest.
The ACFTU’s main task is to monitor 200
million-strong rural migrant workers who form much of the workforce in the
cities. The figure is growing by 13 million a year. However, even with state
backing, the ACFTU had only recruited 23 million rural migrants by the end of
2005. It is expected to register another 10 million members this year.
That
is why the union hailed the Wal-Mart decision as “a breakthrough”. The ACFTU
calculates that other corporations from the global top 500 will now have to
follow suit. Vice president Xu Deming blamed the resistance on a failure to
understand the role of Chinese trade unions. “A trade union should unite and
organise workers, boosting the development of a company, guarding employees’
rights and maintaining harmony in the work place,” he said.
In the US, Wal-Mart’s decision barely
rated a mention, despite the fact that Wal-Mart has been turned into an
election issue by the Democrats and the trade unions. Leading Democrats,
including Hillary Clinton, have latched onto the union-backed “Wake Up
Wal-Mart”, in an effort to posture as defenders of ordinary working people
against Wal-Mart’s low-wages, inadequate healthcare and other abuses.
As
the icon of contemporary American capitalism, it symbolises the predatory character of the profit
system resting on low-pay jobs in the US on the one hand, and in Chinese
sweatshops on the other. But the Democrats and American unions are no more
interested in the plight of Wal-Mart workers than the unions in China. The
unions’ campaign is aimed at pressuring Wal-Mart to allow them to play a role
similar to that of the ACFTU—to police the workforce in return for collecting
union dues.
Like their Chinese counterparts, the
American trade unions have presided over a social disaster. Millions of jobs
have been destroyed, plants closed and conditions destroyed over the past three
decades as corporations have slashed costs to boost “globally competitiveness”.
Insofar as US unions refer to the plight of workers in China or Mexico at all,
it is to make divisive appeals to American nationalism and call for
protectionist measures.
In
a comment on October 18 entitled “The Wal-Mart Posse”, the Wall Street Journal
defended the corporation against the union campaign and pointed to the
hypocrisy of the Democrats. It noted that Clinton for instance had served for a number of years on the
board of Wal-Mart.
The
newspaper then elaborated the absurd argument that Wal-Mart’s operations had
brought great benefits to American working people. The “Wal-Mart effect”, it claimed, with its
low-priced goods, had saved US households $263 billion on costs of living a
year—compared to $33 billion of federal food stamp program for low-income
families. “And typically when a new Wal-Mart store opens in a poor area
it receives thousands of job applications for a few hundred openings. So
Wal-Mart’s retail jobs of $7 to $12 an hour, which unions deride as ‘poverty
wages’, are actually in high demand,” it wrote.
The
real “Wal-Mart effect”, however, is to help drive down wages. The cheap consumer goods in the
US, which are based on ruthless exploitation of Chinese workers, are bought by
American working families, not the wealthy elite in Wall Street. Lower
prices give corporate employers room to depress wages even further. And when the American poor line
up for a low-paid position in Wal-Mart, it is due to the lack of jobs and the
desperate need to make a living. It is not unlike the Chinese workers who wait
in long queues for a few dollars a day in sweatshops supplying Wal-Mart. The
“high demand” for these jobs is created by deepening poverty.
The result in China and the US is an
expanding divide between rich and poor. According to the US Census Bureau, the
top 20 percent of American households received 50.4 percent of all household
income in 2005—the largest since such records began in 1967. And the biggest
gains of have been going to the very top. Wal-Mart made a profit of $11.2
billion last year.
According to Forbes magazine, seven
descendants of the company’s founder Sam Walton now have a combined fortune of
$82.5 billion.
In China, the huge flood of foreign investment has
only benefited a small minority of the population. Last year, the disposable income of the 10 percent
of the richest Chinese families was eight times that of the poorest 10 percent,
while 60 percent of the urban residents fall below the average level of
disposable income. The social stress is aggravated by the rising housing costs
as well as exorbitant healthcare and school fees.
The
operations of global corporations like Wal-Mart, aided and assisted by the
unions, systematically drive down the living standards of workers. To fight
these corporate goliaths, workers need their own global strategy and
organisations: for a joint struggle based on a socialist perspective to lift
the wages and conditions and end social inequality in all countries.