YSU speaker: Conditions in China affect globe

The speaker said some progress is being made for Chinese labor movements.

YOUNGSTOWN — Bad working conditions in China negatively affect all workers in the global economy, an expert in labor strategies said.

Katie Quan told a Kilcawley Center gathering Thursday at Youngstown State University that Chinese workers make up 25 percent of the world’s work force.

Quan, a member of the University of California-Berkeley Labor Center staff, said when it comes to working conditions across the world, people tend to blame the victim instead of considering the global market, and she questioned the United States’ role in improving China’s poor working conditions.

“What a labor movement needs to be strong is to have a dominant spot in the sector of the job market that they represent,” Quan said. “Bad working conditions and bad treatment of employees in China ... are dragging the rest of the workers in the global economy down.”

Chinese labor movements in the past ended brutally or were repressed or blacklisted. Today, some progress is being made, Quan said.

Quan’s speech focused on recent news of the International Trade Union Confederation’s announcing that it would begin a dialogue with All China Federation of Trade Unions.

She said if both unions could get on the same page, it would boost the global economy by improving working conditions. Using Levi Strauss Co. as an example, she said if Levi’s in the U.S. communicated with Levi’s in China, both companies would have a joint strategy to deal with the same employer.

Dr. John Russo, coordinator of YSU’s labor studies program and co-director for the Center for Working-Class Studies, said deindustrialization is a problem relevant to the Mahoning Valley.

Delphi Packard Electric once had more than 14,000 employees in the Youngstown area before it moved out to the global market because their products could be made cheaper elsewhere. As a result, thousand of local jobs were lost.

Quan also specializes in policies that promote the rights of immigrant workers as well as equity issues for women workers. She was an international vice president of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees before joining the UC-Berkeley Labor Center staff.