China’s Workers Rising
March 24, 2015
Cathy Walker
Canadian Auto Workers (CAW)
Director, Health & Safety Department (retired)
To: Dr. Xinying Hu’s class
LBST 330-3
Simon Fraser University
Does increased
prosperity lead to
improved health and
working conditions in
China?
Whose prosperity?
Whose health?
Whose working conditions?
It’s not just Apple
We’ll focus on Apple because they are
the biggest, but the same pattern
repeats for the other big electronics
manufacturers
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
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
Wage system was
very egalitarian
But with later
privatization of the
SOEs: mass layoffs
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
After reform, strikes about unpaid wages
and pensions, unfair layoffs, corruption
Now, as the income gap widens in China,
there is more and more resentment
1989 Tiananmen
It was workers who
manned the
barricades on the
streets leading to
Tiananmen to protect
the students from the
army
And it was they who
died in greater
numbers than the
students
Fighting back in Daqing
Daqing, 50,000 oil workers demonstrated, 2002
Formed Daqing Provisional Union of Retrenched
Workers
What’s happening
today?
Many SOEs (State-Owned Enterprises)
still good places to work.
Joint Ventures with foreign capital,
depending on where and the industry,
can sometimes be good places to work.
Private companies, wholly owned by
foreigners or domestic, can be very
unpleasant places to work. Workers
lives can be miserable.
Since 1990s
Manufacturing Boom
Workers needed
Like the English Industrial Revolution,
workers recruited from the countryside
China has had the biggest labour
migration in human history
Government Response to
job security concerns
2008 Labour Contract Law
Provided for mandatory labour
contracts between individual workers
and employers
After two short term contracts, workers
had no expiry date labour contract
Word spread among workers about
these new worker rights
Because of production
for export
However, China recovered much more
quickly than elsewhere because of
government investment, stimulating
the economy and providing
employment
But this led to serious reflection about
the need to develop the domestic
economy and domestic consumption
How do workers get
higher pay?
Strike for higher pay
Increases in minimum wage,
– context is interest by government in social
stability, that is, in preventing strikes
Increases to Minimum
Wage in China
Government’s Employment Promotion
Plan minimum wages are supposed to
increase in accordance with local living
standards by at least 13 percent
through 2015 and be no less than 40
percent of the average local wages.
Minimum wages under such policies
increased by an average 12.6 percent
rate between 2008-2012.
Increases to
Minimum Wage
The 2011-15 Five Year Plan stipulates
an average increase of 13% per year.
In 2013 the minimum wage increased
16% and in 2014 13.4%. While these
base wages are still low, these
increases are important.
Where did the pressure for such
increases come from?
Most SE plants
Low wages
Poor benefits
Long hours
Forced overtime
Monotonous work
Strict discipline
Called ‘blood and sweat’ shops in China
Southern Weekly
undercover report, 2010
Story picked up by rest of media in
China and reports were closely
followed
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
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
Specific ill health
problems at Wintek,
Apple supplier
N-Hexane
Why? It evaporates faster than
alcohol so company could speed up
production
137 workers chemically poisoned
Wintek workers
Problems began in 2009, became
public in 2010, company said stopped
using n-hexane in 2009 but one worker
died
Workers offered compensation
Where does much
environmental ill health
come from?
From the workplace
Toxins and contaminants are most
concentrated in the workplace and are
exported to the surrounding
environment
Workers are indeed the ‘canaries in
the coal mines’
Video of Foxconn
workers in Chengdu
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2012/0
1/25/business/100000001313019/mad
e-in-china.html
Made in China
Behind Apple’s products, harsh
working conditions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKB
Y94l0ewo
PBS: workers in China
Since 2010 wage
increases, production
has shifted
Why?
Wages are cheaper
Foxconn plants moving inland
And other companies on the coast are
manufacturing Apple parts
For example, Pegatron, another
Taiwanese company is manufacturing
in Shanghai
Pegatron and overtime
Average work week: 60+ hours a
week
52% of workers more than 90 hours
overtime a month
Why? Wages aren’t high enough so
workers work overtime in over to meet
basic living standards.
BBC report in 2014 reduced overtime
worked.
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
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.”
The Honda parts workers
won a 24% wage increase
Negotiated by Renmin University professor
Photo: Nov. 2009 conference organized by
Chair of the Guangzhou Trade Unions.
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.
China’s Gini Coefficient,
20 years ago: 0.45
2012: 0.73
(0 is best, 1 is worst)
Top 1% owns 1/3
of wealth
Bottom quarter of
population own
1% of the wealth
In Guangdong Province
alone in 2010
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)
Today Chinese workers are
fighting back
Number of protests (gov’t calls them ‘mass incidents’)
continues to grow
2005: 87,000
2008: 127,000
2009: 240,000
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
2014 report says 2010, 2011 and 2012 leading years for mass
incidents, numbers growing
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
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.
Since 2010 wage
increases, production
has shifted
Why?
Wages are cheaper
Foxconn plants moving inland
And other companies on the coast are
manufacturing Apple parts
For example, Pegatron, another
Taiwanese company is manufacturing
in Shanghai
Pegatron and overtime
Average work week: 60+ hours a
week
52% of workers more than 90 hours
overtime a month
Why? Wages aren’t high enough so
workers work overtime in over to meet
basic living standards.
BBC report in 2014 reduced overtime
worked.
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
200 strikes
and protests a
month, 2015
Up from 60 a month
two years ago
Geoffrey Crothall,
China Labour Bulletin
(Globe & Mail, March
19, 2015)
http://maps.clb.org.hk/st
rikes/en Yue Yuan Strike, Dongguang
Issues for HP Workers
on 3 week strike
Employees at the networking
equipment manufacturer were
particularly opposed to:
– the nomination of a new chairman
– the firing of a worker representative
and demanded more involvement in
company management and decision
making.
Who will lead the
Chinese workers?
What about unions in China?
There’s one union, the All-China
Federation of Trade Unions which in
practice, varies widely according to the
industry or location.
“30 years ago everything was made in
Japan; 20 years ago everything was
made in Singapore and Taiwan; 10
years ago everything was made in
China; and now everything is made in
Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh.”
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.”
How should people in
Canada respond?
By communicating with the ACFTU,
engaging in exchanges and dialogue
By being frank about how unions work
in Canada in a capitalist society: how
we organize workers; how we
represent workers on the shop floor;
how we bargain contracts; and how we
strike to win our demands from
employers
Vancouver & District
Labour Council
Visited Beijing in 2006
At the same time as the Walmart
organizing
Beijing MFTU Visited
Vancouver in 2007
We gave them a warm welcome, gave
them presentations and training
Beijing MFTU
BEIJING, Sept. 1, 2010 (Xinhuanet) -- Amid rising concerns over trade
unions' role in better protecting workers' rights and interests, the Beijing
municipal trade union's move to liberate grassroots trade union chairs from
their economic dependence on employers marks an important step forward.
The capital's trade union will establish a special fund to pay grassroots
[workplace] trade union leaders. That will hopefully make grassroots trade
unions more independent in their negotiations with employers, when workers'
rights and interests are violated.
Before the 1980s, State-owned enterprises offered welfare packages to take
care of almost everything in workers' daily lives. Trade unions then were
actually the ones providing welfare services. Now, different forms of private
businesses have become an important part of the country's economy.
Employers can ignore or even violate the rights and interests of workers
when their major concern is to pursue maximum profits. There are instances
of employers firing trade union leaders who pressured them over workers'
rights and interests. Trade union leaders can even side with employers
instead.
As such, the Beijing union is working for the direct election of union leaders or
have such leaders sent by higher-level unions. This will help ensure that they
will be paid not by employers, but by unions. The leaders will then have less
to fear of in helping the workers. Despite all possible resistance, this plan is to
be put into practice.
Harvard’s Elaine Bernard
and UCLA’s Kent Wong:
both heads of
labour studies programs
“China has undergone tremendous change in the
past few decades…In this context of change,
would not more worker-to-worker and union-to-
union exchange be positive? Through more
dialogue with Chinese workers and unions, the
…labour movement could promote mutually
beneficial labour solidarity, move beyond the
cold war and unilateralism, and refocus attention
on the domestic and global corporations and
associated institutions that are, in fact, the main
threat to workers throughout the world.”
China has many
challenges
And a good opportunity
to build many
successes in wages and
working conditions,
occupational health and
safety, the environment,
and a return to a more
egalitarian society
In the Year of the Sheep
and beyond