by Ryan Weber

Created on: September 07, 2008

As the global standard-bearer of justice and human rights, American corporations and consumers share the tremendous burden of ensuring fair and safe working conditions for the whole world. We realize today that the world is more interconnected than ever before. Ignoring substandard conditions in other countries simply because the workers are not American or because loose regulatory standards lead to lower prices is not acceptable.

Just as moral failings come back on those who perpetrate them, so too does American refusal to stand up for what is universally right. Unsafe working conditions along with the whole spectrum of worker rights affect the US like a cancer, sucking the vitality out of the economy.

The fact that Chinese companies do not offer worker's compensation or death and liability insurance makes it more profitable for businesses to operate in China and ship the finished products to the US to be sold. Add to that, environmental standards, health insurance costs, vacation time and overtime laws in the US. In China, corporations don't have to deal with any of those barriers to maximizing profit.

The result is what we have seen since President Clinton granted China 'Most Favored Nation' status in the nineties. At that moment, free trade conquered fair trade and large corporations were given the green light to move their operations to China, leaving millions of hard-working Americans jobless.

American citizens bare very little of the responsibility directly. They have benefitted as consumers, buying Chinese goods for prices unimaginable in the eighties. As employees, however, they have been forced to jump from job to job as manufacturing jobs are moved overseas. The US economy now faces a trade deficit in the trillions with China. Our main industry has become the service industry. Instead of Americans manufacturing products, we have erected an economy which merely trades one service for another. In recent years, even the service industry has begun to outsource its labor.

The American consumer's ability to boycott Chinese made products has passed the point of possibility as nearly everything on store shelves is made in China. As conscientious citizens of the world, the only recourse left to the people is to speak through our democratic system. It is time for Americans to recall the dream of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that inspired the birth of government of, by and for the people. Go to the voting booth and vote on the local and national

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