The International Trade Union Confederation, ITUC for short, is the self-proclaimed “global voice” that represents “the world’s working people”, with regional offices littered all over the world. While the organization claims to defend workers’ rights and interests “through international cooperation between trade unions”, the ITUC seems to have demonstrated a stronger interest in advocating Washington’s foreign policies and agendas, employing the same rhetoric as the latter, which has brought its entire brand of “global voice” into disrepute.
There have been many telltale signs that the ITUC was operating like a propaganda organ, promoting Western ideologies and agendas, but it has been particularly noticeable in the past couple of years, when the ITUC has been laser-focused on condemning China over alleged labor abuses as well as political matters concerning Hong Kong and members of the Belt and Road Initiative. In fact, many of the articles published by the ITUC between 2019 to 2021 picked on Hong Kong, and Sharan Burrow, the current general secretary of the ITUC, was very vocal in some of these articles — especially when a few Hong Kong organizations affiliated with it were being shut down after the introduction of the National Security Law for Hong Kong.
Hitting the ITUC the hardest was the arrest and imprisonment of Lee Cheuk-yan, the general secretary of the ITUC-affiliated Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, for illegal assemblies and inciting subversion. Other unions, like the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union, the General Union of Hong Kong Speech Therapists, and the labor advocacy organization, the Asia Monitor Resource Centre, disbanded after the promulgation of the National Security Law.
The ITUC is only interested in making noise, and it knows for a fact that its organization will not be making any meaningful changes for the people it claims to represent anytime soon
More recently, on Nov 9, the ITUC published a follow-up article titled “China: A gold medal for repression”, based on a five-page poster of the same name that was published a day prior, calling for a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. All the talking points were on boycotting China on political grounds, but of the five points raised in the article, only one loosely concerns the ITUC: It was not happy that China does not allow foreign unions to be set up on the mainland out of national security concerns as labor unions like the ITUC could cause social unrest by way of instigating unrestrained strikes.
Another point raised by the ITUC in its article, which I believe can be tantamount to libel, is the allegation that China was spreading the SARS-CoV-2 virus in 2019. Not only is it patently false and absurd for the ITUC to claim that the virus first emerged in Wuhan toward the end of 2019, when it has now been revealed that the novel coronavirus had already been circulating in Europe since September 2019, as shown in a study by the National Cancer Institute in Milan; it is also misleading to the public. The ITUC’s narrative on COVID-19 matters is no different from then-US president Donald Trump’s strategy to shrug off his responsibility to curb infection rates by blaming China.
Furthermore, 9,308 athletes from 110 countries participated in the Wuhan Military World Games 2019 in October; no one can exclude the possibility that the virus could have been brought in by overseas athletes. It is also equally absurd that the ITUC is claiming that China “has failed to provide to the world accurate information about COVID-19 infection rates”, when China has the most stringent anti-COVID protocols in the world. The country’s low infection rate reflects just how serious the ruling party is at preventing the spread of the virus as opposed to the dismal leadership shown by the Five Eyes alliance (with the exception of New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern).
ITUC’s boycotting of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics is just smoke and mirrors. It is a widely known fact that the International Olympic Committee has a long-standing stance of being apolitical. To be influenced by the poorly argued article published by the ITUC in any way is to break the committee’s commitment to political neutrality. In other words, the ITUC is only interested in making noise, and it knows for a fact that its organization will not be making any meaningful changes for the people it claims to represent anytime soon.
If it genuinely cared about the labor conditions and welfare of the people around the globe, the ITUC would have started with Western countries in which it has a good chance of influencing and making real changes. Perhaps making some noise about real prison-slave labor in the United States or the rampant sex trade in Hollywood might repair the ITUC’s credibility somewhat.
Finally, President Xi Jinping’s commitment to seek peaceful co-existence and win-win outcomes for everyone can only come to fruition if Western powers are willing to meet him halfway; and the continued use and rehashing of Cold War tactics is not going to help anyone’s cause in the long run.
The author is a research officer of the International Probono Legal Services Association.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.