Kent Wong participated in a historic delegation of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor to establish formal relations with the Shanghai Municipal Trade Union Council. In July 2007, the delegation was led by María Elena Durazo and met with union leaders in Shanghai and Beijing, visited four different worksites, and met with labor representatives at the national, provincial, municipal, and local levels.
This is the first time a U.S. central labor council has established sister-city relations with a central labor council in China. In the last year, unions in China have successfully organized seventy Wal-Mart stores and four hundred McDonalds and KFC restaurants. China adopted new labor laws strengthening worker rights the week before the L.A. County Federation of Labor arrived in China.
There are about 134 million union members in China. In Shanghai alone, there are more than 6 million union members. The L.A. County Federation of Labor met with the Shanghai Teachers Union president and discussed a new proposal to establish an exchange program for high school teachers and students between the two cities that would begin in 2008.
During the visit to the Port of Shanghai, the third largest port in the world, representatives of the ILWU and the Shanghai Maritime Union discussed working conditions and health and safety issues of the dock workers, and pledged to strengthen relations between their unions. |
