By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer

WASHINGTON (PAI) - In the 1980s, American jobs started moving to low-wage Mexico.

Then, many of them moved from Mexico to ultra-low-wage nations like Lesotho, Kenya, Bangladesh, the Phillippines, Sri Lanka and Cambodia. Now, textile-industry jobs are being removed from those poor nations and are headed to China.

Speaking Oct. 5 to the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area, Peter Bakvis, General Secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, said China's influence is so pervasive that even plants in poverty-stricken nations are closing.

"China does not recognize International Labor Organization standards. And its government-controlled trade union body often fires workers who stand up for their rights," he said. "When you have globalization without any rules, this is the result," in China and elsewhere."

Bakvis noted China is just the largest symptom of the race to the bottom, in which companies and countries ignore the standards - such as the right to free association, the right to organization, freedom from job discrimination and bans on child labor - promulgated by International Labor Organization (ILO) and agreed to by more than 150 nations.

But ILO standards have no force of law and Bakvis admitted it and its allies, including ICFTU, often must use public shaming to advance workers' rights.

And organizations that could enforce workers' rights, including international monetary institutions--such as the World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization, have no mandate to do so and indeed are explicitly told not to include workers' rights in their analyses, conclusions and decisions on trade, aid and loans.

Bakvis said a publication by the World Bank said, "Countries are given negative points for such things like 'too much red tape,'" he said. "And the report basically says that 'If you have labor regulation, you have a problem.'