INTERNATIONAL

BEIJING (AP) — China’ s Communist Party marked International Labor Day by urging the country’s
workers, increasingly suffering under free-market reforms, not to foment unrest. Elsewhere in Asia,
thousands of workers defied authorities and marched in South Korea, Cambodia and the Philippines
to protest layoffs, poor working conditions and low wages.

May Day looks at the conditions of workers

Once a joyous holiday for China’s ruling party, May Day has become a painful reminder that economic reforms have cost the urban working class its once privileged status as leaders of the revolution. Unable to compete on free markets and drowning in debt, state industries have sacrificed the cradle-to-grave jobs and benefits urban workers were once guaranteed. Millions have been laid off. Protests over unpaid pensions and benefits have become common throughout China.

Amid the economic hardship, the party’s flagship newspaper, People’s Daily, renewed the communist government’s pledge today to make sure laid-off workers get welfare payments and retirees their pensions.

Such guarantees are necessary to ensure the stability necessary to press ahead with the economic reforms that will benefit all Chinese, the paper said in a front-page editorial. "reserving stability and unity suits the basic interests of the working class and the broad masses. Without stability nothing can be accomplished."

People’s Daily said in a front-page editorial. "The broad numbers of workers must recognize the principle of stability above all else," the newspaper said, quoting a phrase President Jiang Zemin used late last year to justify a widespread crackdown on dissent. Chief among the fears driving the clampdown are that China’ s tiny band of persistent dissidents will try to make common cause with disgruntled workers and farmers angry over stagnating incomes and official corruption.

A member of one of the group’s targeted in the crackdown, a would-be opposition group known as the China Democracy Party, announced Friday that he and another dissident were setting up an independent trade union. Gao Hongming and his China Free Laborer Union appealed today to China’s legislature to amend the laws that put all unions under the control of the government-backed All-China Federation of Trade Unions. "China’s unions at all levels have become bureaucracies, their officials bureaucrats," Gao said in a statement addressed to the legislature and faxed to foreign reporters. "Already these have produced alienation in the eyes of the workers." In Seoul, thousands of workers and students rallied to protest layoffs, while the government pledged stern punishment for violence.

"It is the government’s firm policy not to tolerate illegal, violent protests," said presidential spokesman Park Jie-won in a statement. "We hope the workers realize what the people and the world expect from them."

President Kim Dae-jung’s government has recently grown impatient with recurring labor unrest, saying it will scare off foreign investors at a time the economy showed signs of recovery. The government has urged the country’s bloated conglomerates and state-funded corporations to shed redundant jobs under an International Monetary Fund-ordered remedy to its ailing economy.

In the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, more than 1, 000 factory workers led by opposition leader Sam Rainsy marched to parliament to protest against poor labor conditions. The government had refused to issue a permit for the rally.

In Manila, the Philippine capital, thousands of workers held demonstrations and marches to demand pay increases, while President Joseph Estrada warned workers that a sudden wage hike could upset the fragile economic recovery of the Philippines from the Asian financial crisis.