Tim Pringle

Trade unions in China : the challenge of labour unrest

List of Tables, Charts and Graphs. Acknowledgements. Abbreviations 1. Introduction 2. Industrial Relations in the Peoples Republic of China 3. Labour Unrest in the State Sector: The Rise and Demise of Decent Work with Chinese - and some Russian - Characteristics 4. From Victims to Subjects: The Long March of Migrant Labour 5. Experimental Pragmatism I: Collective Consultation in Xinhe Town 6. Experimental Pragmatism II: Trade Union Rights Centre in Yiwu 7. Trade Union Elections: From Dependency to Democracy? 8. Conclusion

Can party-led trade unions represent their members?

This article examines the implications of party leadership for the ability of trade unions to represent the interests of their members by comparing the cases of China and Vietnam, where the trade unions are under the leadership of the Communist Party, with that of Russia, where the trade unions have been politically independent for almost two decades. The article examines the changing role of trade unions in the transition from a command to a capitalist economy and the pressures for trade union reform from above and below. The key finding is that the form and extent of independent worker activism, and the response of the state to such activism, are a much more significant determinant of trade union development than is the legal and institutional framework of industrial relations, while the main barriers to trade union reform are the inertia of the trade union apparatus and the dependence of primary union organisations on management.

The absence of rigor and the failure of implementation : Occupational health and safety in China

Abstract Despite government concern with occupational health and safety (OHS) in China and the promulgation of new lawsand regulations in 2002, a lack of rigor and lax implementation are major impediments to improvements in workplace safety. The article highlights important elements from the new Work Safety Law and the Law on the Prevention and Cure of Occupational Diseases, then analyzes key issues arising from bureaucratic excesses, the impact of government restructuring, continuing confusions and contradictions in government responsibility for OHS, and ongoing questions about the official duties and responsibilities of employing units, workers, and the trade union.

A Class against Capital: Class and Collective Bargaining in Guangdong

Abstract This paper argues that a class against capital emerged in Guangdong province between 2007 and 2014. I base my arguments on data drawn from significant strikes in the province and the processes of collective bargaining that partially resolved them. I observe that the formation of a working class against capital in Guangdong, made up primarily of migrant workers, has at least partially overcome fragmentary pressures it continues to face. I argue that it is the self-activity of workers themselves that is chiefly responsible for the significant improvement in wages and, to a lesser extent, working conditions that unfolded during this period. While collective bargaining remains mostly—but not exclusively—outside institutional norms, workers’ agency pushed the practical application of forms of collective bargaining on to both the political and labour relations agenda in Guangdong and beyond. Continued pressure from below will keep it there.

Taming Labor: Workers’ struggles, workplace unionism and collective bargaining on a Chinese waterfront

This article examines the case of the Yantian International Container Terminal (YICT) to consider under what conditions unions can provide effective workplace representation in China. The authors draw on semi-structured interviews to analyze how and why the union was effective, despite rigid prohibitions against organizing outside of the Party-led All-China Federation of Trade Unions. The authors argue that the YICT union developed a system of annual collective bargaining that tamed the power of militant dockworkers and helped prevent strikes. This outcome required an effective enterprise-level trade union that was nevertheless able to influence and manage members’ somewhat ambiguous acceptance of its role. Ultimately, workers’ interests were partially represented and their acquisition of associational power—in the form of trade unions—increased.

A Solidarity Machine? Hong Kong Labour NGOs in Guangdong

Although the literature on labour NGOs (LNGOs) in China has significantly expanded, few scholars have attempted to subject the work of these organizations to a Marxist perspective. This article draws on a recently developed Marxian theoretical framework on social movements to analyse the pioneering work of Hong Kong LNGOs and their partners in the province of Guangdong, China. Over the past 15 years, the Hong Kong groups, as they are known collectively, have been ideally placed to develop specific interventions in response to migrant workers’ pursuance of wage claims and improved working conditions during a time of increased rights awareness and widespread labour shortages. While consistently careful to remain the right side of China’s restrictive laws on freedom of association and demonstrations, the Hong Kong LNGOs were able to contribute to a narrative of class-based collective solidarity that has yielded significant gains for workers.

Labour Activism and the Reform of Trade Unions

What has been the role of labour activism in driving forward the reform of the trade unions in Russia, China and Vietnam? In the most general terms one can say that the reform of trade unions has been driven by worker activism, because the primary objective of reform of the traditional trade unions has been to confine worker activism within peaceful constitutional channels of trade union representation. In China and Vietnam this objective has been imposed on the trade unions by the Communist Party, whereas in Russia it has been an objective imposed on the trade unions by threats and opportunities presented by the state. The Chinese Party, perhaps haunted by the memories of Tiananmen and challenged especially by SOE worker protest (Pringle 2001), has been much more anxious about the political dangers posed by industrial unrest than has the Vietnamese Party, which has until recently taken a more relaxed view of strikes and worker protests, and ACFTU has accordingly come under much more concerted pressure to reform than has VGCL. The political weight of VGCL may also have put it in a stronger position to resist pressure to reform.

The Limits and Possibilities of Trade Unions in Transition

We have seen in previous chapters that the activities of the trade unions in all three countries are severely constrained by their political situation, on the one hand, and the dependence of workplace trade unions on management, on the other. The two barriers are closely linked, in that their commitment to the maintenance of social peace, born of their dependence on the state, makes the higher-level trade union organisations very reluctant to sanction or encourage activism on the part of workplace trade unions which might give rise to labour conflicts and even to strikes. The ACFTU and VGCL, which are subject to direct political control from the Party and local administration, are more rigidly constrained in this respect than is FNPR in Russia, whose legitimacy and political weight depends on its ability to show that it represents its members and which faces competition from alternative trade unions. These are the main reasons why the Russian trade unions have made considerably more progress in developing their proper trade union activities than have the trade unions in China and Vietnam. While there has been some local progress in developing more effective trade unionism in China and Vietnam, it is Russia that can give us a better idea of what is possible and so in this chapter we will concentrate on examples from Russia.

The Challenge of Worker Activism

We have already seen that the initiatives to give the trade unions more independence in representing the interests of their members in the early stages of reform in all three countries were determined primarily by the real or potential threat of worker activism and the emergence of independent worker organisation, exemplified by the rise of Solidarity in Poland, the strike wave across the Soviet Union, centred on the coalmining regions, and the developing support of Chinese workers for the student-led democracy movement in July 1989. On the other hand, legal and constitutional changes had little impact on the activity of trade unions on the ground. The transition from state to market regulation of the activity of enterprises led to radical changes in the orientation of management, now seeking to maximise profits rather than fulfil central directives, but the social structure of the enterprise, and the role and function of workplace trade unions, barely changed. Higher trade union bodies had little leverage over their primary organisations and had no interest in encouraging changes which might stimulate rather than contain conflict, while few trade union officers had any interest in changing their ways of working. Pressures for change could only come from below, from the activism of workers themselves.

State-Socialist Trade Unions in the Transition to a ‘Socialist Market Economy’

The system of state-socialism was based on the state (in some cases nominally collective) ownership of the means of production and the planned allocation of resources to production units, which were assigned rights to acquire the necessary inputs of labour, raw materials and plant and equipment and were allocated production targets. Consumers could buy their basic means of subsistence in state shops at administered prices, but access to many goods and services, such as housing, consumer durables or vacations, was through administrative allocation, primarily through the workplace, rather than purchase. At various times, peasants had the right to sell the produce of their private plots in local markets, but otherwise the private sale of goods and services and the employment of wage labour by private individuals were more or less strictly prohibited. Production units were supervised by state bodies of the appropriate level, the largest units being supervised by national ministries, smaller units being supervised by the appropriate regional or municipal bodies.