Photo: Professor Lu Zhang speaks about labor conditions inside Chinese auto factories.
By Stephanie Luce
I recently returned from two weeks in China, where I participated in a scholar exchange sponsored by the American Sociology Association, Labor and Labor Movements section. The exchange was the third piece of an ongoing effort to increase communication and collaboration between Chinese and US scholars. There were 8 sociologists in our delegation, along with Katie Quan, the coordinator of the program.
We spent time in Beijing at a conference on labor relations, then meeting with union officials and organizers from worker centers. I then spent a week in Hong Kong meeting with more labor activists, as well as people involved in the Umbrella movement. I’ll report on what I learned about the labor movement here, and in a second post I will write about the Umbrella movement.
China has essentially built a labor market from scratch over the past two decades, moving from a system where employment and wages were determined by the state and people were assigned work largely based on where they were born, to a system where workers sell their labor power for a wage and often must move around the country to find work.
The labor market emerged in the early 1990s and grew rapidly at a pace that is unimaginable in the US. By the early 2000s, it was clear that the conditions in the factories were poor — wages were low, and conditions often dangerous — and workers began striking. While some employers raised wages, and the provincial minimum wage began to rise, strikes continued. By 2010, it appeared that strikes had intensified in number, scope, and character. For example, workers managed to shut down all four locations of Honda operations in Guangdong and Hubei provinces for a sustained period, capturing international attention.
While labor markets are relatively new in China, trade unions are not. The All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) was officially founded in 1925. It has gone through many transformations but remains the only authorized trade union federation, and is charged with operating as a “transmission belt” between the Communist Party and workers. In most cases this means that the union is more aligned with the Party and/or management than workers, and it serves little meaningful purpose in terms of representing workers rights. Some of the strikes took place in workplaces with little or no union presence. In others, workers formally belonged to the union but engaged in wildcat strikes, walking out without union authorization or knowledge.
Initially, the strikes were primarily economic strikes, but by 2010 they appeared to be getting more sophisticated, with some workers coordinating strikes across locations, and in some cases, workers demanding to have their own independent union elections.
Meanwhile, labor non-government organizations (NGOs) were expanded. Labor NGOs had first been formed in Hong Kong in the 1980s by activists who began trying to organize workers in the export processing zones newly developing on the mainland. Labor NGOs then began to form on the mainland in the 1990s. Around 2005, the government cracked down on NGOs in general, possibly out of concern that NGOs had been behind the Color Revolutions. But slowly they began to rebuild.
I visited Guangzhou in 2010 a few months after the notorious Honda strike. We met with various union officials, including the head of the Guangzhou ACFTU, Chairman Chen Weiguang. Chen expressed his respect for the young strikers he had met, and said he was interested in pushing for reforms that would allow workers to elect their own union representatives. The law did not specifically forbid strikes, but it did not explicitly allow them either.
The mood then seemed optimistic and open. The number of labor NGOs was on the rise again — not just in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta region, but in other areas as well. NGOs had legal status to exist but the regulations governing them were vague. These included organizations functioning with a close or formal relationship, existing bodies such as the ACFTU or the Communist Youth League, those with independent non-profit status, and those operating underground without legal registration.1
There ensued much debate about the direction of Chinese labor law. Some observers expressed concern about adopting labor law reforms that authorized strikes if that meant accepting a narrow framework that limited legal strikes to economic demands. They suggested it was better to keep things as they were with the right to strike somewhat nebulous, rather than chance making it specifically illegal to engage in strikes over political demands.
Others looked to bring in western models of collective bargaining to stabilize the labor market and the economy, and in some cases making a Keynesian argument for using higher wages and collective bargaining to build a middle class and stabilize the emerging capitalist economy.
Debate continued as reformers introduced legislation in Guangdong Province that would mandate unions to allow workers to elect their own workplace leaders. The legislation failed two times but then eventually was passed in 2014, and went into effect on January 1, 2015.
In the meantime, political debate occurred on the national and provincial levels — not just on union issues, but on the direction of the country overall. In the west, Bo Xilai developed the “Chongqing model” as an alternative economic strategy that emphasized using the municipal government to spur not only economic growth but redistribution and investment in quality of life. State owned enterprises were required to return 15 to 20 percent of profits to the municipality, and this was used to fund public projects, from massive tree planting to public housing and issuing hukou permits to migrants.
Others critiqued the Chongqing model, instead pushing the country in the direction of export-led economic growth, putting the interests of domestic and foreign investors ahead of those of workers or social needs.
In 2012, political tensions mounted as the country prepared for the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. In a high profile case, Bo Xilai was charged with corruption, expelled from the Party and eventually sentenced to life in prison. Some observers claim that while he may have been guilty of corruption, he may also have been targeted for political reasons, as he was seen as a threat to Xi Jinping. In any case, it appeared that the Chonging model was ruled a failure, paving the way for a more rightward direction in the Party, and a clear emphasis on economic growth above social need.
Also in 2012, Guangdong Province leaders began to crackdown on labor NGOs. The Province passed regulations governing NGOs, and some worker centers had debated whether or not to participate in the process to get registered. According to some sources, Party leaders pressured landlords to evict NGOs. Others reported that their offices were raided and that organizers were arrested.2 All reports suggest that the repression against labor NGOs has continued since then, although there appears to be some internal disagreement within the party about the nature of the regulations and the space for NGOs to operate.
I went to the meetings in Beijing and Hong Kong expecting to face a beleaguered labor movement. Instead, I was surprised to hear some people, including labor NGO organizers, suggest that the labor movement is stronger than ever. All reported that the repression continues, but despite that workers continue to strike. Strikes are spreading to new sectors, and growing in size with more large-scale strikes than before.3 One NGO activist told me that when the NGOs are forced out of their offices they learn to find new places to operate and new ways to function.
Of course, conditions remain serious for most workers. Today, there are 260 million migrants in China — more people than the entire adult population of the US. These are mostly people from the west and north of the country who moved to the south and coastal regions in search of work. Most migrant workers are engaged in precarious work — little job security, low wages, and often very dangerous work. I am no stranger to inequality – I live in New York City! But it is jarring to be in Beijing where you can enter malls with New York City prices, while you know that many millions of workers are not even being paid the full minimum wage of 16.9 yuan, or about $2.70 U.S., per hour.
In the past few years more production is moving inland, and migration patterns are changing somewhat. There still exists a household registration system, hukou, which assigns differential rights to people based on where they were born. This functioned to regulate labor markets, as it made it difficult for people to move from rural to urban areas and obtain access to benefits such as housing and health care. We heard different opinions on the current and projected state of the hukou system. Some unionists stated that this is one of the main policy challenges for worker rights, and the system must be abolished in order to improve conditions for migrant workers. Others reported that the system has already weakened to the point that it is not one of the major obstacles – particularly as more work moves inland where hukou registration is easier to obtain.
And while much international attention is on the plight of migrant workers, particularly those in privately owned factories, there are also serious problems for many employed, or formerly employed in the State Owned Enterprises (SOEs). Tens of millions of workers lost their jobs in the 1990s and 2000s when the SOEs underwent massive reform and privatization. In some cases, the SOEs remain open but have been outsourcing some jobs, creating a two-tier system within the plant with some workers still enjoying decent wages and job protection, and others in temporary low-wage work.4
It seems that public sector employment is as turbulent in China as in the US. There have been an increasing number of teacher strikes at the village level where teachers earn low wages and often experience delays in overtime pay and housing funds. Most teachers earn less than Foxconn workers. In the past, they at least had a strong pension system that provided 80% of their salary after they retired, but starting last year, teacher pensions are connected to the market. Teachers are coordinating with one another and engaging in more militant action. This includes public and private school teachers.
It is difficult to predict what will happen in China in the near future. It seems clear that Xi Jinping and the Party are focused on sustaining economic growth, particularly as there are signs that the economy may be slowing a bit. While the government makes mention of a balanced “harmonious society,” major policy is clearly aimed at growth. We heard numerous academics voice significant critique about the current direction, and the missed opportunities for serious labor and human rights reform. On the other hand, efforts to bring in a “new normal” and weed out corruption will be positive for the country, provided they are aimed at the right targets and the charges are not used falsely for political gain. As a few people observed, it is too early to tell what Xi Jinping will do in relation to labor.
I have been told by many people over the years that the space for experimentation is greater the further you are from Beijing, and that perhaps major reform is most likely to happen at the municipal or provincial level – whether through ACFTU reformers, party leaders, or worker protest. It remains to be seen how the new Guangdong legislation will pan out, and whether workers will actually get the opportunity to elect their own leaders. Other regions have also adopted some forms of collective bargaining, such as in the restaurant industry in Hubei Province, but again, it is not clear how authentic this will be.
True experimentation will most likely meet with some repression, as seen with the Chongqing model, or labor NGOs in Guangdong. But what I learned on my visit is that the experiments continue, and workers keep striking. I asked one activist how she keeps going, despite the threats and challenges. She replied, “Do we have a choice? What other choice is there but to keep going?”
Stephanie Luce is a Professor of Labor Studies at the Murphy Institute.
1 Chris King-chi Chan. 2013. “Community-based Organizations for Migrant Workers’ Rights: the Emergence of Labour NGOs in China.” Community Development Journal. 48(1). 6 – 22.
2 Debby Chan Sze Wan. 2012, “New Crackdowns on Labor NGOs in Guangdong Province of China.” Talking Union, August 7; The International Center for Non-Profit law. 2013. “NGO Law Monitor: China.“ http://www.icnl.org/research/monitor/china.html
3 Chun Han Wong. 2014. “Labor Disputes a Growing Threat to Social Stability in China, State-Backed Think Tank Says.” Wall Street Journal. December 25.
4 See for example, Lu Zhang. 2014. Inside China’s Automobile Factories: The Politics of Labor and Worker Resistance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
