The measures taken by the government and the ACFTU have been largely ineffective in halting the rise in worker militancy and the rapid increase in the number of strikes. In the five years from 2011 to 2015 inclusive, there has been a sevenfold increase in the number of strikes. Furthermore, strikes are taking place in sectors previously immune, such as the state-owned power company (State Grid) which, in reply to workers’ demands for a pay increase and equal pay for equal work, has sought to push through an unpopular wage structure which would seriously disadvantage the lowest paid.
Of course, the government would love to continue its collaboration with the employers, ignoring labour law violations by companies, harassing activists and sending police with dogs to restrain any action by the workers. But such a policy is of decreasing effectiveness because, despite increased police activity, there are objective factors making the workers more militant.
The bourgeoisie themselves recognise a number of factors for the increasing unrest on the factory floors[46]:
- The growth rate of the Chinese economy as a whole has slowed to 7.4%, but manufacturing activity in areas such as Guangdong is actually contracting with consequential strikes against worker lay-offs, cuts in working hours, replacement of full-time staff with temporary workers, failure of factory owners to have in place statutory redundancy schemes to compensate workers, workers finding out that pension payments have not been made (sometimes for decades), and so on. As a result, workers of all ages and backgrounds are united against the threat of unemployment or pension poverty, and are prepared to take action for what they see as their legal rights.
- The available data shows a zero increase in the number of workers in the core age group available and wanting work in the SEZs, which means a stronger bargaining position of those on the shop floor.
- Workers better understand their rights and are becoming better organised. NGOs such as the China Labour Bulletin operate hotlines, drop-in centres and other outreach activities to raise workers’ awareness of their legal rights to minimum wage rates, to limits on overtime hours, the requirement of the employer to pay pension contributions, health and welfare contributions, and even housing support. These organisations have long been the subject of government harassment but continue to give advice on how the workers can self-organise, and how to use the ACFTU to maximum advantage.
- The first time police break the picket line and arrest strike leaders it is a major trauma for the workers involved, but the second time round the workers are prepared and the shock effect is substantially reduced. The brutality of the police and the ACFTU thugs is a diminishing asset to the state.
As the economic situation in China deteriorates, workers’ struggles will inevitably become more intense. One solution could be to make repression more severe and such a trend has been observed in the de facto criminalisation of strike actions by the increasing frequency of striking workers being charged with criminal rather than civil offences. However, the recent response of the government has been to launch a raft of measures to head-off worker militancy and divert it into channels safe for the regime rather than embark on open confrontation. The first step was a move by the government to take the wind out of the sails of pay demands by approving an increase in minimum pay rates, up 19% in Guangdong the most militant area in China. The government obviously believes that as long as the workers feel they are making gains under the present system they will not radicalise.
More importantly for the future are the changes being made to industrial relations and the role of the ACFTU. This body, with 260 million members and nearly one million officers, is widely seen by workers as, at best, ineffective and all recent strikes (bar the one at Walmart) have been initiated from outside the ACFTU. New regulations issued by the People’s Congress of Guangdong set out a new framework for collective bargaining and dispute resolution in which the ACFTU is expected to take more and firmer control of employee demands and collective bargaining. Given the importance of Guangdong to the national economy these proposals must have originated in Beijing.
The new regulations provide a structure which seeks to give an additional layer of control over the workers. First, and by far the most important, these new regulations (Article 24) make strike action, and incitement to strike action, unlawful during any “collective consultations”. During such times the workers must act “peacefully and rationally”. The obligation on the workers not to strike means there can be no immediate, effective response by the workers to remedy unilateral actions by the employers – an arbitrary reduction in piece rates, cutting ten minutes off the lunch break, etc.
The new Guangdong regulations show clear signs of having been drafted based on the experience of anti-trade union legislation in force elsewhere. Only demands which have the support of at least 50% of the workforce can be submitted, must be channelled through a branch of the ACFTU, and must be “reasonable”.[47] Any demands for higher pay must be in accord with agreed performance criteria and based on the profits of the enterprise. The 50% figure is designed to appear reasonable but, in reality, to limit the activities of militants. The extended period allowed for negotiation will permit the enterprise to either wear down the workers or organise to transfer its facilities elsewhere, The Economist summed up: “The regulations effectively shut the door to the kind of spontaneously-formed groups of workers that have often taken the lead in Guangdong’s strikes.”[48]
The largest single cause of strikes in the Guangdong SEZs is factory owners attempting to move their enterprises to a new location surreptitiously to avoid paying wages owed, to avoid paying pension and other contributions, and to avoid paying compensation for redundancy, etc. Here, more than in any other element, the new regulations show their class bias. The regulations spell out that workers in dispute over a factory closure may not obstruct the removal of equipment and materials, nor may a worker who learns of such a plan convey that information to his/her colleagues because that would be construed as breach of Article 22, as engaging in actions that “intensify conflict”.
The only fig leaf is the supposed protection for the workers’ negotiators who may not be sacked while the negotiations are proceeding, unless the employer informs the class-collaborationist ACFTU and listens to any objections the ACFTU might make.
Importantly, the regulations seek to divide the workers by not providing cover for the temporary workers who comprise such a large proportion of the workforce in the SEZs. This is a deliberate attempt to subvert worker solidarity, precisely because in a number of important recent strikes there has been a noticeable level of mutual support between migrants and resident workers.
Those with experience of trade union negotiations know full well that employers invariably try to protract negotiations in an attempt to erode and break worker solidarity and facilitate the transfer of its facilities to a new site. The new regulations allow the employer to drag out the negotiations for at least ninety days after which the dispute goes to mediation – a process which might take further months, during which time the workers must continue with the wages and conditions previously existing.
In the major strikes that have occurred in 2015 since the Guangdong regulations were announced, the ACFTU, despite representations from the workers concerned, has unquestioningly continued its previous policy of openly supporting the employer against the workers. Two actions, in particular, were widely reported.
The most widely reported action was by workers at the Shenzhen factory of Artigas Clothing and Leatherware.[49] In December 2014, about 1,000 workers at Artigas struck for nine days in an effort to get the company to listen to their demands for unpaid overtime and unpaid social insurance. The workers’ leaders requested the local trade ACFTU union to intervene on their behalf, but on the morning of 18 December hundreds of police descended on the factory to arrest the strike leaders and disperse the picket lines. The workers were forced to return to work.
In June 2015 the dispute escalated when Artigas management began to remove equipment and machines from the factory without notice or negotiation with workers. More than 900 Artigas workers struck and occupied the factory plants from 9 June to prevent management from secretly removing the remaining machinery from the premises.
Artigas hoped that by formally offering to retain staff, even though the move would make it very difficult for the workers to actually transfer, it could avoid paying workers the severance and other social insurance payments they were entitled to under current regulations. By shutting down with no notice, the company hoped to complete the move before the workers could respond, and because few if any workers would or could transfer, such a move would end the ongoing disputes over arrears in the payment of social security contributions and overtime.
These actions were taking place under the new regulations so a key issue was the refusal of management to enter collective negotiation with the workers concerning the closure and the resettlement scheme. An interim meeting was held between management and workers’ representatives at the start of July, but the workers’ request for collective negotiation was rejected. Subsequently, the management unilaterally terminated any further negotiation and announced that they would only communicate with the workers individually, a well-known divide-and-conquer technique for breaking the solidarity of the workers and preventing them from using their collective power.
Artigas workers travelled to Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong province, to present a petition to the Provincial Government, but the group was treated as an illegal gathering and sent back to Shenzhen in a bus escorted by police cars. On arrival the delegation were all arrested and detained overnight!
As part of their strategy, the management attempted to buy off a leading representative of the workers, Wu Weihua, offering her 150,000 Yuan (about UK£15,000 or US$20,000). She refused this bribe and was sacked. On the first day of the strike the police removed more than ten workers, including Wu Weihua. All were released later the same day except Wu. According to the police, she was “seized by the factory”, meaning that the management had told the police to detain her. Importantly, the police did not follow their normal procedure of charging a striker with a civil offence, but instead charged Wu with the criminal offence of ‘obstructing public administration’. This meant she could spend a month or more in jail before being brought to court.
Soon the police returned to the factory and detained five more workers and then told them that if they ended the strike and accepted 500-1,000 RMB per person as compensation, they would be released. Reluctantly, the workers agreed. The five detained workers walked free, but Wu remained in jail facing trial.[50]
This example demonstrates certain historical characteristics of workers’ struggles across China. The workers involved tend to use the organisations at hand and the efforts by many Chinese workers to gain the support of the ACFTU in the struggle against their employers is confirmation. The new regulations recognise this and attempt to use it to the advantage of the Chinese bourgeois. The ACFTU will come under intense and contradictory pressures to make the occasional militant noise and lead the negotiation of pay and conditions for groups of workers, while simultaneously they will have to tell the workers that they can take no collective actions to help their demands. This process is just beginning and events thus far show that it will be a highly contradictory and convulsive one, with the lumbering, bureaucratic machinery of the ACFTU struggling to cope with the changes to be made.
The CCP wishes the ACFTU to head off worker militancy by taking control of negotiations on pay and conditions but the process will not be helped by the large number of important posts within the union held by senior managers of capitalist enterprises. They will oppose any change that impacts adversely on profitability. That the government will hold responsibility for the mediation procedures will involve it directly in industrial disputes which will open the door to the underlying political issues. The process may backfire badly because the tide of worker militancy is rising at a rate that may swamp any attempts by the ACFTU to contain it.
How militants can use the local ACFTU branch to aid their struggles is by no means clear. However, today the workers’ movement has considerable experience of state-run unions, for example, in Stalin’s Russia and Mussolini’s Italy. In September 1934, the fascist regime in Italy passed a law ending the top-down appointment of all officials and giving a thin layer of elected officers the responsibility for negotiating minor elements such as toilet facilities. Militants who stand for such posts should ensure that the elections involve the greatest number of union members and are discussed at branch meetings, not only so that activists get to know each other but members discuss union democracy and the role of shop stewards. The new Guangdong regulations state (Article 13): “Negotiations representatives for the employees shall either be selected by the trade union or by a democratic election by the staff and workers that is organised by the trade union.” If this loophole remains open then it should be used by militants to campaign on pay, conditions and union democracy.
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Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Op. cit.
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Rhomberg, C. A Turning Point for Chinese Workers? 02 April 2015.
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Economist, Guangdong Province Pioneers a New Approach to Keeping Workers Happy, 31 Jan. 2015.
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Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, Violence Against Workers in Artigas Factory, en.hkctu.org.hk.
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Chuang, The Criminalisation of Strikes, http://chuangcn.org/2015.