Let me say this about that
—By Gene Klare
U.S. corporations lobby against
workers’ rights in China
But with wages and
conditions improving in
China, global race to the
bottom may be at an end
Tim Joy enters Hall
TIM JOY, 81, a retired business representative of Portland-headquartered In-
ternational Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 48, stands in the spotlight in
this edition as a new member of the Labor Hall of Fame, which is sponsored by
the Northwest Oregon Labor Retirees Council.
The Retirees Council is affiliated with the Portland-based Northwest Oregon
Labor Council of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial
Organizations (AFL-CIO).
Joy will receive his 60-year lBEW
membership pin at Local 48’s holi-
day meeting on Dec. 13. He joined
IBEW Local 591 in Stockton, Cali-
fornia, in 1946 and completed his ap-
prenticeship there as an inside wire-
man in 1948.
JOY SERVED with the U.S. Ma-
rine Corps in the Korean War as an
electrician in the First Marine Air
Wing based near Inchon. He earned
the stripes of a staff sergeant.
Newell White (Tim) Joy was born
on Sept. 13, 1925 in Portland. His
first and middle names are family
names. His nickname was bestowed
on him in childhood. Due to the eco-
nomic uncertainties of the Great De-
pression of the 1930s, the Joy family
moved from Portland to Chicago,
TIM JOY
Missouri and California as his father
pursued job opportunities. Tim got
most of his schooling in Stockton and graduated from high school there. Be-
cause he had relatives in Portland, he attended Multnomah College for a school
year after working in a Stockton wartime shipyard to earn money to support him-
self. Then he studied electrical engineering for a year at Oregon State University
in Corvallis.
JOY AND HIS WIFE, the former Hilda Teixiera, were married in Stockton
in 1954 and moved to Portland the next year. Joy transferred his IBEW mem-
bership into Local 48 and worked as an inside wireman. He became active in the
union in a number of capacities. He was a founding pension fund trustee who
helped write the 1969 agreement that set up Local 48’s Edison Pension Fund. He
served as one of six trustees — three from the union and three from the National
Electrical Contractors Association — from 1969 until 1992. “I’m quite proud of
the time I spent on that,” Joy said of his 23 years as a trustee of the Edison Pen-
sion Fund, which is named for Thomas Edison, whose many inventions included
the light bulb and an electric power system.
Joy’s other union activities included teaching the electrical trade to apprentices
as an instructor at the IBEW/NECA training program at Benson High School in
1967, ‘68 and ‘69, and serving as an alternate member of the Apprenticeship
Committee. He was appointed as Local 48’s press secretary in the mid-1960s
and held that volunteer post for many years. In the IBEW, a local union press sec-
retary’s duties include writing articles and taking photos for the international
union’s magazine, The IBEW Journal. Tim recalled writing an article for The
Journal about a Local 48 member’s blind son who despite that condition was an
accomplished musician in his own band named “The Twilighters.” As press sec-
retary, Tim wrote articles for Local 48’s special newsletter pages in the Labor
Press. He also took photos and provided layouts for the monthly newsletter. Joy
said that in handling the press secretary duties, he drew on skills he learned in a
journalism class he took while at Oregon State University.
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
U.S. companies have said for a
decade that making goods in China
would raise standards there and lead to
improvements in worker rights.
Now, some globalization activists
say, it’s clearer than ever that Ameri-
can companies are in China precisely
because the workers lack freedom.
Earlier this year, China’s National
People’s Congress made public a pro-
posed set of changes to China’s labor
law that would strengthen the power of
unions and grant Chinese workers
much greater job security.
Groups representing U.S. corpora-
tions notified the Chinese government
that they opposed the changes, even
warning of disinvestment if the gov-
b h
m k
ernment passes the law.
That stance has outraged some in
U.S. Congress, and may lead to hear-
ings when the newly elected Democra-
tic majority takes office in January.
The proposed labor law reforms
come about as China is rapidly trans-
forming into a global manufacturing
superpower. In one of the largest mi-
grations in history, rural Chinese are
making their way to cities and finding
employment in mostly export-based
manufacturing. Their willingness to do
good work for low wages is siphoning
export-related manufacturing from
other poor countries, and also threat-
ening jobs in Europe and the United
States.
But a combination of workplace
abuses and wage inequality approach-
ing U.S. levels is provoking worker
unrest.
“Over the past year there have been
thousands of little demonstrations in
China and it’s causing anxiety about
public order,” said Jeffrey Barlow, a
China expert at Pacific University. “So
Bennett Hartman
Morris & Kaplan, llp
Attorneys at Law
Oregon’s Full Service Union Law Firm
Representing Workers Since 1960
Serious Injury and Death Cases
• Construction Injuries
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• Social Security Claims
the Chinese leadership wants a union
movement at local levels that will take
that discord out of the streets.”
To restore harmony, they’re propos-
ing a rewrite of the labor law to give
workers more power in their relation-
ship with employers.
On March 20, China’s National
People’s Congress released a Draft La-
bor Contract Law that greatly strength-
ens the existing, largely unenforced re-
quirement that every Chinese worker
have a labor contract with their em-
ployer.
Under the proposed law, if an em-
ployment relationship starts without a
written contract, a de facto employ-
ment contract favoring the worker
would apply. That rule is intended as
an incentive to get employers to sign
contracts with workers, in consultation
with China’s state-dominated unions.
China has unions, though they’re
unlike unions in the West. Only unions
belonging to the All China Federation
of Trade Unions (ACFTU) are allowed
in China, and their leaders are ap-
pointed by the Communist Party,
which also controls the government.
Now that so much of China’s economy
is foreign-directed, there’s a move to
increase the role of the ACFTU as a
defender of workers.
The proposed law would also make
it harder for employers to lay off
workers, and it requires that newer
workers be laid off before more senior
workers. All workers would get sever-
ance pay upon expiration of their con-
tracts. Bosses would have to have a
“just cause” to terminate an employee
before the labor contract up. If a com-
pany changed ownership, its labor
contracts would apply to the new
owner.
After making the proposed law
public, the Chinese government so-
licited comment, and got it —160,000
comments came in, from workers,
employers, and foreign companies.
(Turn to Page 3)
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