1. China’s Workers Rising
BCFL/VDLC Delegation
Orientation
June 3, 2014

2. Most populous country
in the world: 1.4 Billion

3. Since Liberation in
1949
 Socialist period, 1949-1978
 First part of reform period, 1978-1992
 Post Southern Tour, 1992-2010
 New militancy, 2010 to 2014

4. What is this event?

5. Urban danwei (work
unit) system
 Lifetime employment guarantee
 Housing provided and subsidized
 Food and fuel subsidized
 Medical care system provided
 Public school education free
 No firings or negative discipline
 Positive examples such as model workers

6. Workers had a lot of
power in a socialist
society Unions didn’t have
to protect people
from firing or unfair
discipline
 Management was
paternalistic (eg.
Beijing Jeep)
 Wage system was
very egalitarian
 But, things have
changed….

7. Unions in the past:
1949-1978, Role:
 Organized the ping
pong tournaments
 Helped out sick
people
 Promoted
production and
model workers
 Promoted good
nutrition “The union
gave us eggs.”

8. ACFTU
 One party and one
union
 All-China
Federation of
Trade Unions
 No independent
unions

9. 1976: Terrible Year
 January: Premier Zhou died
 April: flowers in Tiananmen
Square
 July: earthquake in Tangshan:
250,000 died
 September: Chairman Mao died
 October: Gang of Four arrested

10. 1978 Deng
Xiaoping
came to
power
 New China
started down the
capitalist road

11. One of Deng’s
first invited
guests: Milton
Friedman,
Chicago School
of Economics

12. 1980, Special Economic
Zones established for
industry to try out capitalist
methods of production.
This is Shenzhen in 1980.

13. Shenzhen today

14. Privatization
of industry
and lay-offs
of millions
of workers
in State-
Owned
Enterprises
started
slowly

15. Inflation of the late 1980s lead
to protest about corruption and
accountability
 1989
 Tiananmen Square
 Far more workers were
killed than students
 They defended the
streets leading to the
Square by barricading
them

16. 1992: Deng’s
Southern Tour

17. Workers fought back
against structural
changes and lay-offs
 2000, official tally of
collective actions:
8,247 involving
259,445 workers
 2002, Northeast
action
 Liaoning, 30,000
workers protested
 Liaoyang city,
leaders arrested
and jailed

18. China joined WTO in 2001
What event preceded it
two months before?

19. Effects on people
 UNCTAD estimates 25 million
unemployed resulting from WTO entry
in 2001
 Education has plummeted in rural
areas, especially among girls; less
than ½ girls attend schools in some
provinces
 Public health coverage:
– 1978: 90% of population covered through
work unit or commune;
– 1997: 4% covered

20. Learn from Daqing

21. Fighting back in Daqing
 Daqing, 50,000 oil workers demonstrated, 2002
 Formed Daqing Provisional Union of Retrenched
Workers

22. Privatization of industry and
lay-offs of workers in State-
Owned Enterprises
intensified and workers
fought back with
demonstrations, blockades

26. Chinese workers are
rebelling and standing
up for justice

27. Who is benefitting from
the ‘economic miracle’
of the Chinese
economy?
And who is not?

28. Gap between rich and
poor enormous

29. Support for strikes?
Why now?
 Wages have fallen from 17% of total
economic output in 1980 to 11% in
2008, creating resentment among
workers who feel they are owed a
bigger share of China’s new wealth.
 At the same time there are many more
wealthy people. The gap between rich
and poor is as much as the U.S.

30. Apple iPad

31. Apple computers

32. Who makes these great
gadgets?

33. Foxconn workers in
Guangdong, China

34. Motherboards etc.

35. Foxconn
 Enormously profitable Taiwanese
company
 More than 1 million workers in China

36. Most Foxconn factories
in SE cities

37. Most workers have
migrated from the
countryside

38. Most SE plants
 Low wages
 Poor benefits
 Long hours
 Forced overtime
 Monotonous work
 Strict discipline
 Called ‘blood and sweat’ shops in China

39. Foxconn-owned plants
are particularly bad
 Run like military camps
 (brow) beaten by security guards if
they don’t line up properly

40. Foxconn workers
In dormitories they may be on different
shifts and don’t have the chance to
make friends

41. Unhappiness led to
utter despair

42. In 2010 14 Foxconn
workers committed
suicide
 Young men and women in their early
20s

43. Southern Weekly
undercover report
 Story picked up by rest of media in
China and reports were closely
followed

44. Shocked the nation
 People were glued to their television
sets and newspapers
 Foxconn was roundly condemned and
many did not attribute the ‘blood and
sweat’ shop conditions to Foxconn
alone, but abhorred the conditions in
so many factories

45. Foxconn’s response?
 Put up anti-suicide nets on the
dormitories

46. What to wear at an
anti-suicide rally

47. Workers finally got a
30% - 70% wage
increase
 Not because of the effort of the union
in the workplaces because it was a
fake union run by relatives of
managers; it was public pressure
 Not only product knock-offs are fakes

48. But most workers don’t
despair, they fight back
 Honda auto parts plants workers
organized in the summer of 2010
 They had been working alongside
Japanese workers paid many times
(50X) what they received

49. So they organized and
struck for change &
improvements

50. The parts plants
workers stuck together

51. Effect of Just-in-time
production: shut down the
Honda assembly plants

52. In some cases, the
“union” roughed up the
workers
 As Chair of the Guangzhou Trade
Union said to us, “These are fake
unions”.

53. The strikers received
top level support

54. Premier Wen Jiabao
 Urged better treatment for the nation's
vast army of migrant labourers.
 “Rural migrant workers are the main
army of the contemporary Chinese
industrial workforce. Our wealth and
our tall buildings are all distillations of
your hard work and sweat,” Wen told
a group of migrant workers in Beijing,
the People's Daily reported the
following day.
 Wen was the first high ranking official
to comment publicly about strikes and
the current labour situation.
 At the end of the meeting, which got
top billing on national TV, he said,
“The government and all parts of
society should treat young migrant
workers as they would treat their own
children.”

55. The first Honda parts
workers won 24% wage
increase
 Strikes spread to other Honda parts
plants and they won 45% increase

56. And the strikes spread
elsewhere
 E.g. Tianjin Mitsumi Electric workers

57. In Guangdong Province
alone
 There were 90 work stoppages to
demand wage increases mainly in joint
ventures or auto parts and electronics
industries of the Pearl River Delta
(near Hong Kong)

58. But workers have been
striking in China for
years
 Strikes aren’t illegal in China
 In 1982 the right to strike was
removed from the constitution but
there’s no prohibition on strikes in law
 As the income gap widens in China,
there is more and more resentment
 10,000 ‘mass incidents’ in Pearl River
Delta alone; 80,000 countrywide

59. Robots or people?

60. Today Chinese Workers
Are Fighting Back
 Number of protests (gov’t calls them ‘mass
incidents’) continues to grow
 In ‘05 official stats reported 87,000 and by ‘08 it
was 50% higher at 127,000
 2011, 180,000 mass incidents
 Typically fighting expropriation of homes and
land for resource developments (dams, mines
etc.) or construction
 Industrialized regions 50% of ‘mass incidents’
were over wage arrears, workplace closures,
layoffs

61. Today, in some areas,
workers have more power
 Elimination of the agricultural tax (over
5 years, now completely gone)
 Migrant workers still have title to land
and the right to return
 After being cheated in the economic
meltdown in fall 2008-early 2009,
many went home and stayed
 Thus creating the most important
weapon labour has, a labour shortage

62. Those that returned to
the city (or never left)
 Have seen Paris and don’t want to go
back home
 They live in the cities and want a
better life:
– Housing, not just dormitories
– With kitchens, not just cafeteria food
– Consumer goods like what they produce
 In order to achieve these goals they
need higher wages.

63. And today the strikes
and demonstrations
 Are by employed workers
 And are not just fighting for unpaid
wages, to receive the minimum wage,
to receive pay for overtime worked
 But are about real increases, real
improvements to wages and working
conditions
 Labour shortages and labour courage
have brought this about

64. Who makes Adidas runners
for sale in Germany?

65. In April, 2014, nobody

66. Latest big strike
 Yue Yuen, manufacturer of Adidas,
Nike, Timberland and Converse shoes
in southeast (20% of world market for
sports and casual shoes)
 40,000 workers cheated out of social
security premiums not paid by
employer: unemployment, old age
pension, medical, maternity and
occupational injury insurances
 Also, majority of workers were not paid
housing funds

67. Benefits paid on average
salary vs. actual monthly
salary
 Workers would thus receive lower retirement
benefits
 According to local labour laws and regulations,
employers must pay an amount equal to about 11
percent of workers' salaries for their social security
and other welfare categories, while the workers pay
8 percent of their salaries, "But the company never
paid its part for the workers," said the worker.
 This is a common practice among manufacturing
employers

68. Workers Struck

69. First 600 stormed out
of work April 5, 2014
 Blocked roads
 Joined by thousands more on
following Monday and Tuesday
 A human resources executive who
requested anonymity confirmed that
the social benefit payments had been
shorted. Only about 1,000 workers of
the plant's 45,000 have been paid
housing funds, he said.

70. Thousands defied
police

71. Defying police

72. Effect of Strike and
Mediation Efforts
 At first the employer agreed to start paying correct insurance premiums but
balked at retroactive payments
 Nie Xin, an official from the city's publicity department, said Dongguan city
government paid great attention to the case after the strike took place at Yue
Yuan
 A special task force that consisted of more than 80 government officials, trade
union executives, legal and labour experts, lawyers and police officers, was
immediately set up to help mediate the strike, which raised concerns at home
and abroad, Nie told China Daily.
 "The task force members met worker representatives to listen to their account
and request, and organized discussions with company bosses and senior
executives in the past weeks," Nie said.
 "The special task force has been working hard to try to make both parties of
labour and capital reach an agreement according to laws, regulation and
rules," he added.
 Employer finally agreed to pay retroactive insurance premiums

73. Lin Dong
Shenzhen Labour Activist
 Arrested on 22 April
after advising striking
workers at the Yue
Yuen factory, is being
held under a 30-day
detention order at the
Dongguan Municipal
Detention Centre on
suspicion of “picking
quarrels and creating
trouble”
 Colleague, Zhang Zhiru,
detained 2 days and
released

74. Who will lead the
workers?
 What about unions in China today?

75. ACFTU Most Populous
Union in World
 258 million members

76. China has many
challenges
 And a good opportunity
to build many successes
for workers, and a
return to a more
egalitarian society
 In the Year of the Horse
and beyond

Thanks very much.