A sanitation workers strike in the Autumn of 2014 at the Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Center (GHEMC) – a complex of some 200,000 students – has demonstrated an important new stage in trade union struggles in China. While the ACFTU was noticeable by its absence there appeared a new factor, student support for, and participation in, the strike.
The GHMEC was cost-cutting by outsourcing and privatising local government services by contracting work to the lowest bidder. In late August 2014 an attempt was made to introduce a sub-contractor, Sui Cheng Property and Resources Development Company, which threatened the jobs of more than two hundred sanitation workers. The resulting strike, during which garbage piled up in the streets of Guangzhou’s premier higher education site, sets a promising precedent for solidarity between locals and migrants, for women workers’ leadership, and for student-worker collaboration.[16]
Workers were faced with signing up with the new company and accepting pay cuts, loss of benefits, loss of seniority and increased workloads, or finding a new job. Leaked documents revealed that the local government had originally budgeted for 426 sanitation workers but employed just 212, with the result that between US$11 and 16 million remains unaccounted for.
Adequate sanitation is essential for an urban environment, waste cannot be moved to other areas, and thus provides a strategic arena for labour struggles. Moreover, sanitation workers tend to be older, and the workforce is generally more stable than in light manufacturing or commercial service industries. Hence, they are more likely to stick to their jobs and fight to retain existing conditions. Additionally, they have a strong basis for holding together as the great majority of them were locals who had worked at the Center since it opened a decade previously. That said, the strike demonstrated impressive solidarity between local and migrant workers who formed about 10% of the workforce, were especially active, during the strike and comprised half the workers’ representatives at the negotiating table.
The two groups, locals and migrants stood together in their demands. Early in the strike, the workers demanded that migrants be paid their lawfully due social security payments which the company had been paying to local workers, but denying migrants. This was among the demands won. Workers also demonstrated unity at the end of the strike when the new contractor offered locals immediate work for a 30-day “assessment period”, while migrants were told they would have to wait. The workers refused to be split in this way, and returned to work on 12 September, only after the company retracted its earlier statements and promised all workers they would be rehired.
It is now common to see women on strike in China, but it is rare to see such a strong and visible female leadership. The GHEMC’s sanitation workers are 80% female, and of the male employees, many are married to women who also work there. Initially all the elected representatives were women, but it was agreed that in the interests of sexual equality one man should join the negotiators. It was noticeable that women took the leadership role without hesitation.
A small group of students were actively engaged, attending workers’ meetings and demonstrations, reporting the struggle on the internet and generally boosting morale. Hundreds, even thousands, of students, locally and at other universities expressed support for the strike. Although only a tiny proportion of the 200,000 students at GHEMC were involved, their actions set a precedent for student-worker collaboration in future struggles. This is especially important because China is experiencing sharply declining post-graduation prospects. Being a student no longer sets one apart from the working class, and these two important groups are starting to merge in their discontents. Students are increasingly experiencing the same kinds of discrimination as other migrant workers. Early in 2015, for example, Beijing denied permanent residence to graduate students not in a job or without a Masters degree or PhD![17]
The results of this strike are an important victory. But the precise gains are not as important as the experience of worker self-organisation and collaboration between locals and non-locals, and between students and workers.[18]