Tom Barnes and Kevin Lin - China's growing labour movement
The growing labour movement in China, as fragmented and
repressed as it is, offers hope for workers everywhere as an example of
organising and protecting themselves against incredible odds. Independent labour organising and independent trade unions are
banned and workers do not have the legal right to strike. But millions of
workers have organised autonomously and staged “wildcat”, or unofficial,
strikes, with the main union charged with representing Chinese workers either
absent or side-lined in recent industrial actions. In fact, Chinese workers most often organise without any
help from the main Chinese union: the powerful All-China Federation of Trade
Unions.
The world’s largest trade union
Founded on May Day 1925, the All-China Federation of Trade
Unions (ACFTU) is the only legal trade union federation in China and, with a
membership of 280 million in 2014, the world’s largest. ACFTU branches are compulsory and union membership automatic
in many companies. This inflates its membership, even though many branches
exist without the awareness of employees. And “members” don’t exercise any
democratic control over ACFTU affiliates. In fact, the ACFTU serves mainly as
an extension of the Chinese state, which appoints the union’s top leadership.
Its provincial and municipal leaders also simultaneously retain government
positions. Hardly any union leader has prior experience of labour organising.
The international labour movement is divided over whether or
not to engage with the ACTFU, with some activists insisting dialogue with the
union must remain open. But a closer examination of recent events in China
suggests that there is very little chance that the ACFTU can be reformed. To
understand why, we need to appreciate the transformation of the Chinese working
class.
From work units to wildcat strikes
In the Mao era from 1949 to late 1970s, workers were
organised into work-units, which provided education, housing and pensions to
workers and their families. Many workers were entitled to lifetime employment.
They were not won by the union, which acted to distribute benefits and
encourage production. Disparities still existed and workers organised protests
by themselves, most notably by apprentices and temporary workers during the
Great Leap Forward of 1956-1957 and again at the height of the Cultural
Revolution of 1966-1967.
China’s embrace of market reforms since the late 1970s has
thoroughly transformed conditions for workers. As the reforms gradually
dismantled the welfare regime of the work-units and opened up the private
sector for domestic and foreign investment, workers were left largely to fend
for themselves. However, the ACFTU failed to protect state-sector workers
from mass redundancy and migrant workers from low wages, excessive overtime and
employment insecurity. Private companies routinely ignored labour regulations,
and industrial accidents were commonplace. As a result, labour disputes shot up
dramatically in the 1990s.
In response, the government introduced a series of new laws
to channel workers’ grievances but their implementation remains limited and
uneven. The ACFTU has come under considerable pressure to reform. In
the last two decades, it has begun to experiment with collective consultation
and unionisation of the private sector. One well-known case is the unionisation
of Chinese Walmart workers, which was initiated by workers but aided by the ACFTU.
However, it has proved to be mainly about manoeuvring against foreign companies
than a genuine desire to change the poorly paid and highly insecure employment
conditions of Walmart workers.
In the end, these efforts have been shown as half-hearted
and ineffective. They have not strengthened workers’ collective interests or
made the ACFTU more relevant to the Chinese workers. Independent labour organising and independent trade unions
are banned and workers do not have the legal right to strike. Despite the bans,
workers have held “wildcat” or unofficial strikes, without any involvement from
the ACFTU.
In May 2010, 2000 workers at Honda auto part suppliers went
on a strike for higher wages, better conditions and a union election. The
initial strike shut down all four of Honda’s assembly plants in China, and
triggered more than 100 secondary strikes in nearby plants. The workers won
huge wage rises despite the plant union openly supporting management.
At Foxconn in 2010, more than a dozen workers attempted
suicide by jumping off the windows of their dormitory. While exploitation of
migrant workers is well known, the suicide of so many workers still shocked the
public. Subsequently, workers at several Foxconn plants went on strike on their
own over conditions. But, again, the ACFTU played very little role in this
process. Recently, another huge strike took place at Yue Yuen, the
largest shoe manufacturer in the world, in the city of Dongguan. In 2014, about
40,000 workers demanded higher pay and better pension contributions for their
retirement. Again, the trade unions were absent.
It is worth pointing out that municipal and provincial
affiliates of the ACFTU did sometimes step in during a strike to help bring
about a speedy resolution by mediating between employers and striking workers
in negotiations. But once the strike was settled, the union affiliates quickly
withdrew from the factory, with strike-leaders left unprotected and usually
dismissed.
Economic downturn
Although it is still too politically risky to organise
independent trade unions, labour activists have forged informal networks and
accumulated organising experience over the years, especially in the large
industrial zones. The activists are aided by China’s labour non-government
organisations (NGOs), many of which emerged in the 1990s.
The growing strike activities have taken place during a
rapidly growing period, where industrial employment is abundant and the
unemployment rate very low. However, the Chinese economy has begun to slow down
since the Global Financial Crisis, and last year recorded the lowest rate since
early 1990s. Workers face an increasingly uncertain future in a slowing
economy, and a difficult political environment that constrains their organising
capacities. Nevertheless, this has not deterred workers from taking
collective actions, as evident in the rise of strikes in 2014 and 2015. The
labour movement is gaining pace China, against all odds.
See also
The Crises of Party Culture: by Yang Guang: The crises of Party culture become clear with a single glance. The CPC is called the ruling party, yet it operates according to secret party rules: this is an identity crisis. Its formal ceremonies and slogans are like those of an extremist church, and it has long lost its utopian doctrine that stirred the passion of the people: this is an ideological crisis. It tells beautiful lies while accepting bribes & keeping mistresses: this is a moral crisis. The totalitarian system is in the process of collapsing, yet political reform is not in the foreseeable future: this is a political crisis. It has corrupted traditional values & also rejected universal values, rendering Party members & government officials at a spiritual loss: this is a crisis of values.
The Bolsheviks & workers' control: State & counter-revolution, by Maurice Brinton
Trotsky’s violent extremism
"...It is said that compulsory labor is unproductive. This means
that the whole socialist economy is doomed to be scrapped, because there is no
other way of attaining socialism except through the command allocation of the
entire labor force by the economic center, the allocation of that force in
accord with the needs of a nation-wide economic plan.."
The secret speech that changed world historyChina’s Brave Underground Journal - Remembrance
China's official position: one man one vote will lead to civil war
