Where is the trade union reform and labour legislation in China heading to?
An interview with two labour and trade union activists
A wave of workers’ resistance swept China in 2010, with suicides
by some Foxconn workers, and a large workers’ strike at Honda
drawing immense social attention, local and global alike. This
has compelled the Chinese government to come up with some
new policy initiatives to contain the labour unrest, including
trade union reform and collective bargaining legislation. Given
these labour reforms a few questions arise:
.
Where is this labour reform heading to?
..
What are the crucial factors that can make workers benefit
from this reform?
..
Can the party-led state trade unions be transformed to
serve workers’ interest?
In an interview conducted on 10th March 2011, Monina Wong,
the Director of the International Trade Union Confederation/
Global Union Federation Hong Liaison Office1 (IHLO) and Mr.
Parry Leung, the Chairperson of Students and Scholars Against
Corporate Misbehavior2 (SACOM), shared their viewpoint on
these issues.
This interview first appeared in the on-line publication Global Labour Column of the Global Labour University (No. 60, May 2011) (http://column.global-labour-university.org/)
Elaine Sio-ieng Hui [E]: What kinds of labour issues have
been raised by the series of workers’ suicides in Foxconn in
2010?
Parry Leung [P]: Although it hardly violates any laws, Foxconn,
a supplier to many global electronic brands, has a highly oppressive
production regime under which workers have no means at
all to voice out their discontent. They felt so desperate that they
resorted to suicide as a silent demonstration of their defiance.
My observation is that no matter how much internal migrant
workers from the rural areas have been exploited in urban factories,
in general they still have room, however little it is, to show
their resistance, for example, by means of strikes, road blockades
and so forth. But in Foxconn this is not possible. It does not only
strictly control the production process in factories, but also the
private life of workers. For instance, all workers must stay in the
dormitory provided by the company, but those coming from the
same home province or working in the same production line are
not allowed to share a dormitory room; this is a tactic to prevent
the building up of rapport and support among workers. Another
example of Foxconn’s infringements on workers’ private lives is
that all calls from the dormitory to the police hotline in the city
will be automatically diverted to the security station in the dormitory;
Foxconn has formed a small kingdom of its own which is
basically not subjected to outside interference.
E: The Honda workers’ strike in 2010, which lasted for
17 days and involved over 1800 workers to demand a
wage increase, is seen as starting on a new stage of labour
resistance in China. What are its implications for
labour relations in China?
Monina Wong [M]: This strike ended with a 32.4% wage
increase for the Honda workers, who have demonstrated a
high level of consciousness concerning their positions in
production and are aware of the serious impact of their
strike on the overall production of the enterprise. They
have also manifested a clear consciousness regarding the
proper function of trade unions; they were exasperated
when they found that the enterprise trade union was on
the side of the management, instead of supporting the
strikers. In the past decades, we used to treat Chinese migrant
workers as exploited objects that needed outside
help to protect them. But now we see that they are active
agents who have the labour consciousness needed for advancing
their interests with collective means. And so far,
the Honda workers’ strike is the most effective and powerful
strike launched by migrant workers that is capable of
upsetting the regional production of a transnational company.
The physical confrontation between trade union officials
(who leaned towards management) and workers during
the strike has triggered immense social discussion on the
proper role of the Chinese trade unions. After the strike, the
official party-led All China Federation of Trade Unions
(ACFTU) and the government tried to alleviate labour discontent
by speeding up the pace of trade union reform
and by introducing collective bargaining legislation. It is
good that these two issues have become the agenda of the
ACFTU. However, at present most trade union education, if
there is any, is solely conducted by the ACFTU while other
relatively independent agents (e.g. international trade unions,
labour NGOs) have no role to play in the process. The
degree of democracy and accountability available to members
inside trade unions and the ACFTU at the moment is
still at a low level. Therefore, we need relatively independent
trade union education among trade union officers so as
to ensure the effective and genuine implementation of
trade union reform and the collective bargaining mechanism.
E: Recently the Chinese government and the ACFTU were
promoting legislation on collective bargaining. In your
opinion, what are the driving forces for that?
M: In 2004, the government attempted to build up a workplace
collective bargaining mechanism by means of ministerial regulations
issued by the Labour and Social Security Bureau, but it
was not very effective as not many enterprises followed the
instructions. In 2005, the ACFTU started to unionize the Fortune
500 corporations in China. Subsequently, trade unions
were established in Wal-Mart and many other foreign enterprises,
but many people know that they are paper unions only
and that the collective contracts they signed with the enterprises
remain a formality.
After the world economic crisis broke out in 2008, many enterprises
in the Pearl River Delta have been shut down. The central
government and many local governments realized that the
country’s economy could no longer depend entirely on export-
oriented industries and that it had to develop a consumption-
based economy. It is in this context that the ACFTU and the
government have again picked up momentum to push forward
collective bargaining legislation, which they hope will
lead to better wages, and thus to higher consumption by workers.
It is also hoped that such measures can help reduce labour
unrest and maintain political stability.
P: The legislation on collective bargaining is related to the
waves of labour resistance occurring in the country, especially
in South China, in the past decades. The government is aware
of the increasingly intense labour discontent, which it has been
trying to alleviate with an individualized legal approach; this
explains why the Labour Contract Law and the Labour Dispute
Mediation and Arbitration Law focusing on individual legal
rights were passed in 2008. However, after the breaking out of
the world economic crisis in 2008, it is evident that this individualized
legal approach no longer works. On the one hand, the
number of labour disputes increased dramatically at the time,
and the fact that so many workers went for arbitration led to
the overburdening of courts; workers had to wait, on average,
for 9 months to have their claims dealt with. On the other
hand, many of the labour disputes are beyond the scope of
existing laws, and thus could not be effectively settled by the
court. Since the individualized legal approach cannot properly
handle workers’ grievances, many workers resort to collective
means, such as strikes and road blockades, to defend their interests.
In order to pre-empt labour unrest and prevent it from
erupting into social rebellion, the government is trying to absorb
workers’ discontent through the use of collective bargaining.
Although the proposed collective bargaining legislation has
given some room for the collective organizations of workers, it
remains constraining in some areas. For example, the proposed
legislation only allows workers to negotiate certain items (such
as wages, working hours, welfare etc.) with employers. Besides,
collective bargaining can only be carried out by the trade unions,
despite the fact that many trade union officers are appointed
by the enterprises or by higher-level trade unions;
workers are not allowed to elect their own representatives for
bargaining. The government is trying to eradicate factors that
can cause social unrest through developing collective bargaining
legislation; it tries to divert aggrieved workers from open
resistance to the bargaining procedures. And, most importantly,
it has delegated the party-led trade unions to take charge of
the bargaining so as to ensure everything is within its control.
E: What is the role of party-led trade unions in promoting
the collective bargaining mechanism?
M: A genuine collective bargaining system should include the
process of consulting their members before trade unions negotiate
with employers. However, in China, a top-down approach
has been used by the ACFTU. It is a common practice for it to
send invitations for collective negotiations to employers and to
reach agreements without informing or consulting its members.
Democratic participation is a process to educate workers
about true unionism. But “negotiation” in China is usually ends-
oriented and the ends (e.g. the wage increment) should not
contradict the conditions of the “larger context”. Priority to the
“larger context”, according to the Party and the government’s
definition, results in “negotiations” led by the administration,
not workers. In view of this, in order to build up a genuine collective
bargaining system in China, trade unions should initiate
a proper reform first, enabling democratic and grassroots participation,
so that they could truly represent workers’ interests.
At the moment, there are many “fake” trade unions at the enterprise
level; to tackle this problem, it is very crucial that workers’
trade union consciousness be cultivated properly, so that
they understand the importance of having their trade union
representatives being able to represent their interests and accountable
to them. A very critical foundation for achieving this
is to make trade unions financially independent from the companies
or the government. In the past, most enterprise trade
union officials are paid by the enterprises, while the current
trend is that the government is paying their salaries. Neither of
these practices is ideal; they will either make the enterprise
trade unions a management-union or a party-union.
(1) The IHLO is the Hong Kong Liaison Office of the international trade union move
ment, which has a mandate to support and represent the international trade
union movement in Hong Kong and to monitor trade union and workers’ rights
and political and social developments in China. Readers can learn more about it
from its website http://www.ihlo.org/
(2) SACOM aims at bringing concerned students, scholars, labor activists, and con
sumers together to monitor corporate behavior and to advocate for workers’
rights. It teams up with labor NGOs to provide in-factory training to workers in
South China. Readers can learn more about it from its website http://sacom.hk/mission
Elaine Sio-ieng Hui is a PhD candidate at Kassel University,
Germany, and she also works as a research assistant
in the City University of Hong Kong.
Monina Won is currently the Director of the International
Trade Union Confederation/Global Union Federation,
Hong Kong Liaison Office.
Parry Leung is the Chairperson of Students and Scholars
Against Corporate Misbehavior and a researcher on labour
issues in China.