Suddenly outsourcing is not looking quite so good. From the Asia Times Online comes news of how labor laws in China will begin to protect workers from exploitation. From the article:

In a historically unprecedented visit, influential Chinese scholar and labor-law expert Liu Cheng arrived in Washington, DC, to garner support from US legislators and labor leaders for a law that is pending not before the US Congress but before the National People’s Congress (NPC) in China. Liu Cheng has been a key adviser to the drafters on a labor-law reform bill currently working its way through the Chinese legislative process.

His visit is part of a behind-the-scenes battle that is raging worldwide over reforms in China’s labor law. On the one side are Wal-Mart, Google, General Electric (GE) and other global corporations that have been aggressively lobbying to limit new rights for Chinese workers. On the other side are pro-worker-rights forces in China, backed by labor, human rights, and political forces in the US and around the world.

Liu Cheng’s visit to Washington was part of that international support campaign. He warned in an interview that support for the new law within China is not enough. “Some National People’s Congress representatives are influenced by the employer lobby. Although the principles of the amendments are secure, there may be concessions on the details, so we call for help.”

In March 2006, the Chinese government, with considerable popular backing, proposed a new labor law with limited but significant increases in workers’ rights. But the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Shanghai, the United States-China Business Council, and US-based global corporations are lobbying to gut the proposed law. They have even threatened to leave China for such countries as Pakistan and Thailand if the law is passed. [full text]

The article also points out that China sets the standard for much of what will happen in other developing nations whose economic expansions are largely being driven by US corporate outsourcing of labor.

Labor organizations around the world have become involved not only to defend the principle of universal labor rights, but because reform of China’s labor law is important to workers everywhere. Chinese wages and conditions set those around the world not only in low-wage industries but increasingly in those with the highest of modern technology. Low wages and poor working conditions in China drive down those in the rest of the world in a “race to the bottom”. Failure to raise standards in China will have a devastating effect on workers around the world.