{"id":424,"date":"2014-05-18T10:38:34","date_gmt":"2014-05-18T10:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/2014\/05\/18\/welcoming-chinas-unions-back-into-the-family-eric-lee-2014\/"},"modified":"2014-05-18T10:38:34","modified_gmt":"2014-05-18T10:38:34","slug":"welcoming-chinas-unions-back-into-the-family-eric-lee-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/2014\/05\/18\/welcoming-chinas-unions-back-into-the-family-eric-lee-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcoming China’s Unions Back Into the Family? – Eric Lee (2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nEric Leeericlee@labourstart.org
\n28\/03\/2014
\nWelcoming China\u2019s unions back into the family?<\/strong>
\n(This article appears in the current issue of Solidarity, UK).
\nAt the end of March, the International Labour Organisation\u2019s Bureau for Workers Activities (known as ILO-ACTRAV) and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) signed a Memorandum of Understanding \u201cto promote Trade unions South-South Cooperation in the Asia- Pacific region\u201d.
\nThe Director-General of the ILO, Guy Ryder, said \u201cwe need to find a way which so that the ACFTU can work more closely with other parts of the international trade union movement, sharing common objectives.\u201d
\nRyder is a former General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, which has decided to invite the ACFTU to attend its upcoming World Congress in Berlin in May.
\nThese two events illustrate the fact that the trade union leadership in much of the developed world now seems keen on putting the past behind us and welcoming China\u2019s trade unions back into our \u201cglobal family\u201d.
\nThis is the culmination of efforts going back several years, and the British TUC has played a prominent \u2014 indeed, enthusiastic \u2014 part in this process.
\nI think that this is a problem for the trade union movement because the officially sanctioned, legal trade unions in China are not trade unions in the sense that we understand them in a country like the UK.
\nHistorically, the ACFTU differed not one iota from, say, the \u201cAll-Union Central Council of Trade Unions\u201d in the USSR. In fact, it was set up based on the Soviet model.
\nAnd that model had nothing to do with worker representation, collective bargaining, or class struggle.
\nIn the Soviet model, unions were organs of the Communist Party and the state, designed to enforce workplace discipline and provide some welfare benefits to workers.
\nI think few would deny that the Chinese unions fit that description perfectly, at least up until a few years ago.
\nFor that reason, for many decades the ACFTU was quite isolated in the international trade union movement. Like trade unions in Cuba, North Korea or Vietnam, it was seen as a \u201cstate labour front\u201d \u2014 and not a union.
\nWhat has changed in the last few decades is that China has embraced the free market. And as a result, there is the sudden re-emergence of class struggle.
\nStrikes occur every day, all over the country, and they are often allowed to run their course \u2014 winning workers improved wages and working conditions.
\nThe Communist Party seems to have decided that it is best to let workers let off steam this way, rather than attempting to suppress every strike and protest.
\nSo strikes are tolerated \u2014 but it stops there. The regime does not tolerate, and cannot tolerate, the emergence of truly free and independent trade unions controlled by their members.
\nThe formation of a nationwide Chinese version of \u201cSolidarity\u201d is a nightmare scenario for the ruling Party elite.
\nIn most cases, the strikes taking place are local with very little nationwide coordination. The organisations set up by workers spontaneously tend to fade away fairly quickly.
\nIn some cases, local officials of the ACFTU unions support the workers or even lead them.
\nBut the ACFTU as a whole remains firmly in the grasp of the Communist Party.
\nIts leader, Li Jianguo, is a member of the Politburo of the Party. His entire political career spanning some 40 years has been as a Party official. He was given the task of the leading the ACFTU in early 2013.
\nJust to emphasize \u2014 Li rose up through the ranks of the Communist Party, not the unions. As a very senior Party leader, he was brought in to take charge of the ACFTU. This is typical of the authoritarian, top-down style of Chinese politics \u2014 and trade unionism.
\nJust before his elevation to the leadership of the Chinese unions, Li faced public accusations of favouritism. He was accused with promoting his nephew to a plum position.
\nThe website of the ACFTU speaks a great deal about how the organisation protects workers:
\n\u201cThe fundamental task of the Chinese trade unions is to carry out the various social functions of the trade unions in line with the guiding principle of reflecting and safeguarding concrete interests of the workers and staff members in a better way while safeguarding the overall interests of the people throughout the whole country, and, united with the broad masses of workers and staff members, strive for the realization of China\u2019s socialist modernization. The major social functions of the Chinese trade unions are as follows: (1) to protect the legitimate interests and democratic rights of the workers and staff members, (2) to mobilize and organize the workers and staff members to take part in the construction and reform and accomplish the tasks in the economic and social development, (3) to represent and organize the workers and staff members to take part in the administration of the State and social affairs and to participate in the democratic management of enterprises, (4) to educate the workers and staff members to constantly improve their ideological and moral qualities and raise their scientific and cultural levels.\u201d
\nThat was quite a mouthful, but the operative phrases emphasize the ACFTU\u2019s role regarding the \u201coverall interests of the people\u201d rather than its own members, and its striving for the country\u2019s \u201csocialist modernization\u201d. It includes in its job description the accomplishing of tasks and taking part in construction and reform \u2014 all of this being code for supporting the Communist Party.
\nThe Orwellian language about improving the \u201cideological and moral qualities\u201d of its members reflect the ACFTU\u2019s origins as a Soviet-style state labour front.
\nBut it may be a bit more complicated than that today.
\nThe authoritative \u2014 and fiercely independent \u2014 China Labour Bulletin offers a nuanced view of the ACFTU:
\n\u201cThe ACFTU is China\u2019s sole official union. It has traditionally been an adjunct of the Chinese Communist Party and government, serving as a \u2018bridge\u2019 between workers and management in state-owned enterprises. With the economic reforms and development of the private economy over the last two decades the ACTFU\u2019s role has been blurred. It has sought to unionize the private sector but thus far has failed to encourage the development of genuinely representative grassroots unions. It has adopted a top-down approach, imposing unions and collective contracts on enterprises without consulting the workers themselves. However CLB believes the ACFTU, especially at the local level, can play a positive role in the future development of grassroots unions.\u201d
\nAn example of that kind of local initiative could be seen earlier this week, as the FT and others reported that China\u2019s \u201cnormally reticient official union\u201d has been \u201cinvolved in at least one of three protests that have erupted at [Walmart] stores slated for closure this month.\u201d
\nWhile there may well be local examples of ACFTU bureaucrats taking the workers\u2019 side, no one seriously views people like ACFTU leader Li Jianguo as anything but a Communist Party hack. And a corrupt one at that.
\nThe vast majority of trade unionists in Britain or elsewhere in the developed world know very little about the Chinese trade union movement, and presumably trust their leaders\u2019 decisions to engage with, or not engage with, the ACFTU.
\nThe issue is unlikely to be addressed at a congress of the TUC, or even at the ITUC\u2019s World Congress in Berlin.
\nAnd yet it should be \u2014 for two reasons.
\nFirst of all, because in order to genuinely help Chinese workers, the international trade union movement should fully support real unions, democratically controlled by their members \u2014 and this includes first and foremost the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions.
\nThe principle of trade union independence (from both employers and the state) should be defended.
\nChinese workers are not helped by pandering to the likes of Li Jianguo and his Communist Party bosses.
\nAnd second, by blurring the distinction between state labour fronts and actual trade unions, we lose something of importance.
\nWe lose a sense of who we are, and of what it means to be a trade union.
\nWe don\u2019t need more handshakes and photo-ops in Geneva and Berlin, nor trade unionists flying off on junkets to Beijing to be wined and dined by Communist Party officials.
\nWe need an open and honest discussion of these issues \u2014 for the sake of our Chinese brothers and sisters, and for ourselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}