Phái đoàn nội chính Mỹ đến sau khi cưa ghế Phùng Quang Thanh

**vinhtruong** · 08-06-2015, 03:38 PM

TPP Will Help Workers in Vietnam Pursue Their Rights

By TOM MALINOWSKI
June 08, 2015
Two months ago, workers at a shoe factory in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, went on strike to protest changes their government had made to the country’s social security law. The strike spread through the city’s industrial zones until around 90,000 workers had joined. What happened next is not what you’d expect in a communist country lacking respect for freedom of association and the right of workers to organize, especially since the strikers sought to change national policy rather than just to improve conditions in a local factory. The police left the strikers alone, and the government agreed to amend the offending law.
Many members of Congress are asking if it is right to include Vietnam in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, given Vietnam’s record on human rights. I understand their wariness. But having spent the past year urging Vietnam to release prisoners of conscience and reform its laws, I believe we now have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to advance these goals. The prospect of Vietnamese participation in a completed TPP, which passage of Trade Promotion Authority will advance, offers the best hope of giving the Vietnamese people — whether it is those workers in Ho Chi Minh City, independent bloggers in Hanoi or Christian activists in the country’s northwest highlands — the space to pursue their rights.
I approach this question with no illusions. Vietnam is still a one-party state, with laws that criminalize political dissent. Last month, I visited a Vietnamese Catholic priest, Father Nguyen Van Ly, in the prison where he is serving time for nothing more than advocating democracy. Three days later, police brutally beat an activist, Anh Chi, in Hanoi. I wouldn’t argue that trade with Vietnam will by itself change any of this; Congress has heard such arguments before, with respect to China, for example, and is understandably skeptical.

At the same time, there is a high-stakes debate underway in Vietnam about whether and how to build a more democratic society under the rule of law. That debate is being driven by civil society, including the tens of millions of Vietnamese on Facebook who are speaking freely online about political topics every day. It has also been joined by many within the government who don’t want the changes in their society to leave them behind.
Proponents of change within Vietnam’s government know their country will be more stable and prosperous if it continues to open up. But principled arguments don’t always carry the day. Their most powerful pragmatic argument is that reform is also necessary to secure something everyone in Vietnam, from party hard-liners to democracy activists, say the country needs and wants — a closer economic and security partnership with the United States.
The Obama administration has told Vietnam that such a partnership, including TPP, depends on continued human rights progress. We have not asked for the impossible, for then we’d end up with neither TPP nor improved respect for human rights. We have asked for reasonable but meaningful improvements, consistent with aspirations the Vietnamese themselves have expressed. In this way, we’ve given reformers within the Vietnamese political system leverage to press forward.
Under the spotlight of the TPP negotiations, Vietnam has released prisoners of conscience, bringing the total number down to around 110 from over 160 two years ago. In 2013, Vietnam convicted 61 people for peaceful political expression; thus far in 2015, there has only been one case in which activists were convicted under statutes criminalizing peaceful expression. It has most recently ratified the Convention Against Torture and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and promised to bring its domestic laws—including its penal and criminal procedure codes—into compliance with its international human rights obligations. This will be a long and hard process, which some in the Vietnamese government will resist. But the government has been sharing drafts of new laws with its public and with the United States, inviting our input, which would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

TPP - Donald Trump and the Clown Show
By JACK SHAFER

What’s more, the TPP agreement will include a requirement that Vietnam guarantee freedom of association, by allowing workers like those who went on strike in Ho Chi Minh City to form genuinely independent trade unions. Allowing workers for the first time under their system to organize unions of their own choosing would be a historic breakthrough in a one-party state. TPP will require all countries that join the agreement to conform their laws and practices to fundamental labor rights and principles. Vietnam will have to make the necessary reforms or miss out on the agreement’s benefits.
These developments do not by themselves guarantee full respect for human rights and labor rights in Vietnam but are necessary and significant steps in that direction. Without the chance to join TPP, it’s not likely Vietnam would have taken any of them at all. Passage of TPA, which provides congressional guidance to our negotiators on labor rights and human rights, gives us bargaining power to keep pushing Vietnam for more progress. And if Vietnam then meets the conditions for TPP itself, we will still have leverage, including via its desire for a full lifting of restrictions on the transfer of lethal arms sales, which we have also linked to human rights progress.
It’s hard to see how the failure of TPA would advance any of these goals. The Vietnamese understand our political process and our calendar. They know that approval of a trade pact is less likely in the United States next year. If Congress closes the door to an agreement now, the Vietnamese government will turn its focus to internal political consolidation — with a Communist Party leadership contest coming up in 2016 — rather than on what it will take to improve its relationship with the United States. In this scenario, there would be zero chance of seeing independent unions legalized in Vietnam, less support for the legal reforms we are seeking, and a greater likelihood of a political crackdown. How would this leave us better positioned to gain human rights progress in Vietnam in the next few years?
Members of Congress concerned about human rights in Vietnam are right to maintain a healthy skepticism about its government’s intentions. Congress should keep demanding more progress. But members should also recognize the importance of TPA in sustaining a process that facilitates securing more progress. TPP is not a leap of faith; it is an instrument of leverage. It has already empowered those in Vietnam seeking a more open society, and it enables us to help them as well.
Tom Malinowski is assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/tpp-will-help-workers-in-vietnam-pursue-their-rrghts-118720.html#ixzz3i37Bq93Q

**vinhtruong** · 08-08-2015, 01:18 PM

“Bửu Bối TPP” buộc VN buông thả Cộng Sản ôm Mỹ cứng ngắt. “Bửu Bối TPP” còn là Bom nguyên tử thổi bay csVN + csTQ để hồi sinh VNCH vỉnh viển bên cạnh Mỹ như Do Thái bên Trung Đông, chấm dứt Siêu Chiến Lược Eurasia-1

A Race to the Bottom: Trans-Pacific Partnership and Nike in Vietnam
"TPP & The Quintessential Case of Nike in Vietnam"
President Obama is visiting Oregon to push Fast Track for the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Free Trade Agreement because of Vietnam or by Secret Society?
Nike is truly the canary in the coal mine, pointing us to what unfettered “free trade” looks like, and what the world will look like under the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
In the year 2014, Nike produced over 365 million pairs of athletic shoes, while at the same time refusing to make a single sneaker in the United States. Meanwhile, they are making these shoes at a tremendous profit while paying their overseas workers pennies. In fact, Nike’s largest production center is Vietnam, where more than 330,000 workers, mostly young women, toil in 67 factories making goods for Nike. Everyone knows that Nike shoes do not come cheap, selling in the U.S. from $60 to $120 to well past $200.

According to U.S. Customs records analyzed by the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, there were at least 16,423 shipments of Nike Athletic footwear exported from Vietnam to the U.S. in 2014, with an estimated customs value of $491 million!
In February 2015, we looked at a sampling of ten shipments of Nike sneakers from Vietnam destined for the U.S. market. It did not take long to find that the average customs value of the Nike sneakers was just $5.27 per pair!
Meanwhile, Nike’s presence in Vietnam led to a continuation of wages as low as 27 cents an hour in 2012, with a slight increase to 48 to 69 cents an hour in January 2015, which is well below subsistence levels.
It is common that Vietnamese workers have no legal rights. Nor has Vietnam ratified the United Nations Conventions on freedom of association and the right to organisation
Nike’s CEO, Mark Parker, announced that “Fiscal year 2015 is off to a strong start. Our connection to consumers and ability to innovate, combined with our powerful global portfolio, is a complete offense… Nike has never been better positioned to realize our tremendous growth potential.”
Nike’s revenues for the year ending February 2015 totaled $30.3 billion.
Let’s be honest. For years, Nike has been exploiting the 330,000 Vietnamese workers, mostly young women, who are poorly paid and denied their most fundamental rights.

But every once in a while, the truth leaks out. In this case, it was Thanh Nien News in Vietnam that spilled the beans:
“Analysts acknowledge that Vietnam’s abundance of cheap labour has played an increasingly pivotal role in wooing foreign firms looking to set up overseas manufacturing operations in a country with a population of 90 million.
“This edge appears to be working well in the context of rising labor costs in China and political mayhem in Thailand… They [foreign and local companies] warn any further wage hikes will cause grave consequences on Vietnam’s competitiveness in the near term, adding it needs to be considered ‘very carefully.’”
Báo Thanh Niên News, “Vietnam Approves Minimum-Wage Hike of 15 Percent in 2015,” November 11, 2014
On March 10, 2015, Ms. Hilary Krane, Chief General Counsel at Nike, send an email to all 44,000 Nike staff, asking them to lobby for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, telling them that the TPP would:
“reduce duties on footwear and apparel among TPP countries, including Nike products manufactured in Vietnam for sale in the U.S. For Nike, rolling back these duties will allow us to grow in new markets, reinvest in innovation, and offset costs of doing business.”
In short, Nike is after even cheaper prices, and expanded access to Vietnamese workers with no legal rights, no voice and no way out. Is this how we want to live?

If Nike had the guts and morals, Nike would demand that their products made in Vietnam be made by workers who are guaranteed their freedom of association, their right to organize and to collectively bargain.
I am certain that many Nike workers are desperate for reform which will allow them to make a living wage and to freely organize unions to defend their interests. Together we can work on making this a reality!

Trans-Pacific Partnership countries include Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States, and Vietnam. The wages in Vietnam, Mexico, Peru and Chile range from 48 cents to $1.86 per hour. The United States has trade deficits with Vietnam, Mexico, Malaysia, Canada, and Japan

Obama To Visit Nike To Promote the TPP for Vietnam. Wait, NIKE? Really?
President Obama is scheduled to visit Nike’s Oregon headquarters on that Friday to promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Yes, Nike – a company that grew to billions by outsourcing jobs to overseas sweatshops, a company that sets up P.O.-box subsidiaries in tax havens to avoid paying U.S. taxes, a company that uses threats to extort tax breaks from its “home” state.
Phil Knight, head of Nike, is now worth $23 billion because America’s trade policies encourage companies like Nike to create and move jobs outside of the U.S. The 23rd-richest American is one more symbol of the kind of inequality that results from outsourcing enabled and encouraged by these trade policies. Workers here lose (or never get) jobs; workers there are paid squat; a few people become vastly, unimaginably wealthy.
Meanwhile Massachusetts-based New Balance struggles to manufacture its athletic footwear in the U.S. TPP will remove tariffs on imported Vietnamese and Malaysian shoes, benefiting Nike and wiping out New Balance’s efforts to maintain its manufacturing here.
There will be an anti-fast track/TPP rally outside of Nike’s headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., on Friday.

What About New Balance?
“New Balance: ‘It’s literally us against every other athletic shoe manufacturer in the world’“:
While the President visits Nike, New Balance is struggling to be able to keep some of its manufacturing in the U.S. Currently New Balance makes shoes in five factories in the U.S. Their executives say if TPP passes, lower tariffs on shoes made in places like Vietnam will force them to close their U.S. factories.
At issue are tariffs the United States imposes on imported athletic shoes from Vietnam. New Balance depends on as many 10 long-standing tariffs on certain footwear products to remain competitive, according to LeBretton.
Vietnam, along with New Balance competitors such as Nike, which manufactures all its shoes overseas, want the tariffs removed as part of the free trade agreement, which is known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership
This is just one example of how even more American workers would lose their jobs if TPP passes. But TPP would not require Nike to pay its workers in Vietnam more and it does not mean Vietnamese workers will be able to buy more U.S. goods. These workers are not even paid enough to buy the shoes they make, much less buy other U.S. exported goods.
The Obama administration says there are special “progressive” labor rights provisions for Vietnam, in recognition of its bad labor conditions. The administration did the same thing for Colombia, and in the three years that those special rules have been in place, more than 100 union organizers have been assassinated and another 1,000 more have been threatened with violence.
If the President gets his way and TPP passes, the tariff on non-U.S.-made (Vietnam) shoes will end and New Balance – like so many other companies struggling to manufacture inside the U.S. – will have no choice but to end its U.S. manufacturing operations. Meanwhile Nike, already manufacturing in Vietnam and currently selling shoes that cost $10 to make for over $100, will gain even more of an advantage, which obviously will not be passed on to consumers. If you are able to get a certain price for a product, why reduce it?
Obama said Vietnam, where 330,000 workers make Nike shoes, would have to increase the minimum wage, improve working conditions and even establish the right of workers to join a union
Meanwhile Massachusetts-based New Balance struggles to manufacture its athletic footwear in the U.S. TPP will remove tariffs on imported Vietnamese and Malaysian shoes, benefiting Nike and wiping out New Balance's efforts to maintain its manufacturing here.
-The TPP would give Nike unfettered access to the rapidly expanding footwear sweatshops in Vietnam, and would allow its to sell those shoes in the U.S. without tariffs. In Vietnam, the minimum wage is 56 cents an hour.
-The 100-year-old company is the only athletic footwear manufacturer that still produces some of its shoes (about 25 percent) in the United States. But that homegrown story is threatened by a free trade deal the Obama administration is negotiating with Vietnam and other Pacific countries ... At issue are tariffs the United States imposes on imported athletic shoes from Vietnam. New Balance depends on as many 10 long-standing tariffs on certain footwear products to remain competitive.
Vietnam, along with New Balance competitors such as Nike, which manufactures all its shoes overseas, want the tariffs removed as part of the free trade agreement, which is known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Phái đoàn nội chính Mỹ đến sau khi cưa ghế Phùng Quang Thanh

Phái đoàn nội chính Mỹ đến sau khi cưa ghế Phùng Quang Thanh

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