Pneumoconiosis is the number-one occupational disease in China, accounting for around 90 percent of all cases.

More than 10,000 workers are diagnosed with this deadly lung disease every year. Yet only a handful get anything like the compensation they are legally entitled to. Most only receive a small lump sum that can cover medical costs for a few years; many get nothing at all. And countless other victims cannot even get the official diagnosis they need to initiate a compensation claim.

A new research report, published today by China Labour Bulletin, examines in detail the myriad obstacles encountered by migrant workers in their quest for redress, and outlines a comprehensive series of measures to improve workplace safety, ensure workers’ rights are protected and make certain that if employees do contract pneumoconiosis, they get the compensation they both need and are legally entitled too.

The Hard Road: Seeking justice for victims of pneumoconiosis in China shows that the current laws and procedures for work-related injury compensation claims are completely out of step with the reality faced by migrant workers, most of whom will have already left their jobs and moved back home by the time clinical symptoms of the disease become apparent.

As a result, what should be a relatively straight forward process of disease diagnosis and classification, disability assessment and benefits calculation can, if the worker does not have proper documentation and the employer and local authorities refuse to help, turn into a convoluted marathon involving up to 22 separate administrative and judicial hearings.

The Chinese government does now recognize the seriousness of the occupational disease crisis in the country, and is attempting to remedy the problem by revising existing laws.

However, as this new report shows, the deficiencies of China’s occupational disease laws and regulations are only a small part of an extremely complex problem.

In addition to legislative reform, employers who currently flout the law must be made to honour their legal obligations and officials in charge of occupational disease diagnosis, assessment and compensation must adopt a more proactive, humane and sympathetic approach towards pneumoconiosis victims seeking redress.

The report uses CLB’s own legal case studies, including jewellery workers, coal miners and construction workers, to illustrate the tangled mass of obstacles faced by China’s victims of pneumoconiosis and show that, through determined collective action, however, there is a way through the logjam.

www.clb.org.hk

China's workers protesting

Martin Hart-Landsberg (marty@lclark.edu) teaches economics at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon, and is the author with Paul Burkett of China and Socialism (Monthly Review Press, 2005).

The U.S. economy is in bad shape and people are understandably seeking solutions.

Many, encouraged by mainstream media and politicians, believe that China’s trade policies bear primary responsibility for the structural decay of our economy and that recovery will require, above all, pressuring the Chinese government to implement “market-freeing” policy changes that will bring the U.S.-China trade relationship into balance.

Despite its popularity, this nation-state approach to understanding the dynamics of the U.S.-China relationship is seriously flawed.

It encourages people to see U.S. industrial problems, falsely, as the outcome of a contest between China and the United States, in which the Chinese government has boosted the well-being of its citizens at U.S. expense, through “unfair” practices.

As a consequence, it leads to counterproductive policy recommendations.

In this paper, I offer an alternative approach to understanding the U.S.-China trade relationship; one that relies on a class-based analysis of (global) capitalist dynamics.

It leads, not surprisingly, to very different economic insights and political challenges.

For example, it reveals that the threat to U.S.-based manufacturing activity comes not from China, but from the operation of a transnational, corporate-shaped, regional production system, in which China serves as the region’s final assembly platform.

It also reveals that, while both transnational capital and elites in China have greatly benefited from the operation of this system, Chinese workers have paid a high cost; in fact, Chinese workers experience many of the same negative consequences from its operation as do workers in the United States.

It also explains why both the Chinese and the U.S. governments have responded to the current world crisis with strategies designed to maintain the status quo, despite the negative effects of this decision on working people.

In short, my analysis reveals that it is capitalism—not competition between China and the United States—that is the source of our economic problems.

Our challenge, then, which I briefly address in the conclusion, is to draw on the above insights to develop a strategy capable of both illuminating and contesting capitalism’s destructive logic—a task that puts U.S. workers in solidarity, rather than competition, with workers in China.

The “Nation-State” Argument

Those who argue that U.S. problems owe much to China’s growth strategy tend to reason as follows: Chinese state policies have transformed China into an export powerhouse, with the U.S. market its main target.

Initially, Chinese exports were predominately labor intensive, low-technology products, such as textiles and shoes.

However, beginning in the mid-1990s, China also became a major exporter of higher valued added, high-technology products, such as computers, cell phones, and other consumer electronics.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/100201hart-landsberg.php

China's workers protesting

by Martin Hart-Landsberg

The U.S. economy is in bad shape and people are understandably seeking solutions.

Many, encouraged by mainstream media and politicians, believe that China’s trade policies bear primary responsibility for the structural decay of our economy and that recovery will require, above all, pressuring the Chinese government to implement “market-freeing” policy changes that will bring the U.S.-China trade relationship into balance.

Despite its popularity, this nation-state approach to understanding the dynamics of the U.S.-China relationship is seriously flawed.

It encourages people to see U.S. industrial problems, falsely, as the outcome of a contest between China and the United States, in which the Chinese government has boosted the well-being of its citizens at U.S. expense, through “unfair” practices. As a consequence, it leads to counterproductive policy recommendations.

In this paper, I offer an alternative approach to understanding the U.S.-China trade relationship; one that relies on a class-based analysis of (global) capitalist dynamics.

It leads, not surprisingly, to very different economic insights and political challenges.

For example, it reveals that the threat to U.S.-based manufacturing activity comes not from China, but from the operation of a transnational, corporate-shaped, regional production system, in which China serves as the region’s final assembly platform.

It also reveals that, while both transnational capital and elites in China have greatly benefited from the operation of this system, Chinese workers have paid a high cost; in fact, Chinese workers experience many of the same negative consequences from its operation as do workers in the United States.

It also explains why both the Chinese and the U.S. governments have responded to the current world crisis with strategies designed to maintain the status quo, despite the negative effects of this decision on working people.

In short, my analysis reveals that it is capitalism—not competition between China and the United States—that is the source of our economic problems.

Our challenge, then, which I briefly address in the conclusion, is to draw on the above insights to develop a strategy capable of both illuminating and contesting capitalism’s destructive logic—a task that puts U.S. workers in solidarity, rather than competition, with workers in China.

Martin Hart-Landsberg (marty@lclark.edu) teaches economics at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon, and is the author with Paul Burkett of China and Socialism (Monthly Review Press, 2005).

Read the full article at Monthly Review Press.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/100201hart-landsberg.php

In December 2009, a magazine article exposed the extent to which labour relations in China had deteriorated over the last year, with enterprises deliberately taking advantage of the government’s leniency during the global financial crisis to exploit their workforce. The writer called on the government and trade unions to take concerted measures, including the introduction of collective bargaining, to alleviate the growing conflict between workers and management.

The most interesting thing about the article however was not so much what it said but the fact that it was published in Liaowang (瞭望), the magazine of the official Xinhua News Agency, which is widely read by senior government officials and policy makers.

It seems that many policy advisors are now realizing that, as the Chinese economy recovers, there is an increasingly urgent need to restore the rights of workers that were systematically stripped away by government officials seeking to protect local enterprises during the financial crisis.

The scholars and officials interviewed by Liaowang all agreed that enterprises had got away with too much, and that unless some balance was restored to labour relations, the conflict would only increase.

For example, the director of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions’ Collective Contracts Department, Zhang Jianguo, was quoted as saying, “In mitigating labour disputes, the fundamental issue is to establish a collective bargaining system that would allow labour disputes to be managed and resolved within the enterprise. From this point of view, collective bargaining is the route we must take in defusing conflict and developing harmonious labour relations.”

Presciently, one year earlier, at the height of the financial crisis, CLB Director Han Dongfang noted:

“The long-term trend is clear. The only way the government can prevent greater social conflict is by giving more power to the workers not less. If workers have the right to negotiate as equals with the boss the chances of disputes turning violent will be greatly reduced. If on the other hand, the government ignores workers’ rights and gives the boss free rein, the consequences will be very serious.”

The Liaowang article acknowledges many of the problems and trends that CLB, and many others, have reported on over the last year, and such as could signal a long overdue change in government policy. The 4,400 word article is translated in full below.

Given that it is an official Party and government publication, the language is rather vague and turgid in places but we have endeavored to make it as readable in English as possible. The Chinese original (抓住重新审视劳资格局, 消除劳资矛盾隐患, 调整劳工政策的机会) is available here.

Grasp the opportunity to reevaluate labour relations, eliminate potential problems, and reformulate policy
Liaowang journalist Yang Lin. 16 December 2009.

When the ACFTU conducted a study in July 2009, we told them that it usually takes three months for labour dispute cases to be heard, far longer than the 45-day limit for rulings, as stipulated in the Labour Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Law. Who would have thought that by October, new cases would not be heard until August 2010? For workers, this is extremely unfavorable!

We understand very well: it’s not that the labour dispute arbitration committees are not working hard, it’s that the number of labour disputes cases has exploded.

Shi Fumao, vice-director of the Beijing Zhicheng Migrant Worker Legal Aid and Research Centre.
Shi Fumao, a dynamic public interest lawyer on the frontline of labour relations, is keenly sensitized to the growing number of labour disputes in China.

In an in-depth interview with Liaowang, Shi explained that towards the end of 2009, there was a sharp increase in the number of collective labour disputes (群体性劳动争议) involving more than 20 people.

“Originally we might get one or two collective labour dispute cases per month, but recently we’ve been getting these sorts of cases every day.”

In the third quarter, the number of cases accepted by labour dispute arbitration committees (LDAC) across the county reached 519,000. Experts have recognized that this is “operating at a high level.”

According to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS), the number of cases accepted by LDACs has more than doubled, from 314,000 in 2005 to 690,000 in 2008.

According to the Supreme People’s Court, the civil courts accepted 280,000 labour dispute cases in 2008, up 93.93 percent over the previous year.

In the first half of 2009, 170,000 cases were accepted, up over 30 percent. Some areas saw even greater increases. In the first quarter of this year, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang saw increases of 41.63 percent, 50.32 percent and 159.61 percent, respectively.

At the same time, mass incidents stemming from labour disputes dramatically increased and took more violent form, raising public awareness of the issues.

Many experts and academics interviewed for this article agreed on this point, and added that labour disputes had now become a major source of conflict in Chinese society.

The “radicalization” of industrial worker responses

In 2009, a number of industrial workers were particularly active in staging mass protests.

In April, over one thousand workers at a cotton factory in Baoding, Hebei, organized a “march on the capital” along a national highway; in July, workers from a Wuhan boiler factory staged three road blockades; also in July, the Tonghua incident ended with a “double loss” − seven of the steel mill’s furnaces were shut down and a senior enterprise manager was beaten to death, shocking the country; in August during the Lingang steel mill incident, a State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission vice-director was held captive for 90 hours; and in November, Chongqing Jialing machinery workers went on strike.

“Labour disputes leading to mass incidents are one of this year’s striking features,” said Dan Guangnai, an expert on mass incidents at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

“In these incidents, we can see the strength of industrial workers in particular. We need to closely follow these trends in labour relations in large and modernized industrial areas.”

In the opinion of the experts interviewed for this article, when compared with the outbreak of mass incidents at the end of the 1990s, the situation in 2009 is perhaps not that bad. However, this observation is premised by the fact that 2009 did not have a large number of lay-offs and redundancies from state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

“The restructuring of SOEs has been going on for many years, and workers, through the experiences of their fathers and brothers being laid-off, receiving compensation, re-employment, insurance and medical care, now understand the original model of restructuring,” Dan Guangnai said.

Zhang Jianguo, the director of the ACFTU’s Collective Contracts Department, told Liaowang that in the process of SOE restructuring, some local officials, departments, and enterprises ignored employees’ democratic rights, declared bankruptcy without proper authorization, and sold off assets directly linked to enterprise survival, disregarded the fate of the employees, and national interests, and in some cases, sold off national assets at below market price.

The restructuring plans at some enterprises were not thorough or detailed enough to meet legal requirements. As a result, government policies on enterprise restructuring could not be implemented, and the rights and interests of the workers were harmed.

Zhang Jianguo thinks that the main characteristics of some of the mass incidents caused by SOE restructuring were: having a clearly disadvantaged group with a strong desire to pursue its interests, the surfacing of social conflict, and the gap between laws and regulations and social reality.

“Moreover, in contrast with the relatively diffused nature of the workers’ protests at small and medium-sized enterprises, workers at large enterprises are fairly concentrated and highly organized.”

Dan Guangnai concurred. “In the Tonghua, and Lingang incidents, we could see that the workers’ indignation and actions were consistent with each other. Such unity of thought and action is intimately bound up with the industrial workers mode of production.”

Most large-scale enterprises have a hierarchical structure comprising shift groups, workshops, branch plants, and headquarters. This sort of structure creates discipline among industrial workers, and brings out their organizational “resource superiority.” Dan Guangnai explained,

“In a shift group, everybody’s salaries and benefits are the same; in a workshop, everybody’s conditions are the same, and in a branch plant, everybody has to face the same conditions. This creates a group with common interests that has a strong sense of community and is relatively powerful – thus the workers’ power to mobilize is relatively strong and they can take action fairy easily.”

In the old industrial regions of China’s northeast, this sort of trend is even more apparent. In some places, a whole town revolves around one large SOE, like in Tonghua’s Erdaojiang district. When geographic space, the mode of production and workers’ interests are linked, it produces an intense feeling of shared collective identity.

The “planning power” (策划力) in these types of mass incidents has obviously increased. “Compared to the Weng’ an Incident in which protest signs were made of torn pieces of cloth, this year we saw signs that were professionally printed, which illustrated that they had prepared in advance, and were highly organized,” Dan Guangnai said.

“Labour conflicts that have been building up for many years, combined with new conflicts and problems brought about by SOE restructuring, are currently changing workers’ thinking. Some local Party and government officials however lack understanding and an accurate grasp of workers’ thinking, and this leads to an intensification of problems, with disastrous results,” Zhang Jianguo said.

Mass incidents stemming from labour disputes have reached new highs

Many experts interviewed for this report pointed out that labour relations are a complex and integral part of society, touching on economic, social, and stability-related issues.

However, some local governments take “administrative competence” to simply mean the ability to ensure economic growth, and thus, to be in an advantageous position, they primarily think about attracting capital, and overlook related social policies and the protection of workers’ rights.

Behind every glittering economic statistic, the unharmonious phenomenon of some local governments infringing on workers’ legal rights can be seen, and this has led to the erosion of labour relations.

“The frequency of labour-related mass incidents is intensifying, their scale is increasing, and indeed they have already reached new highs in both scale and frequency,” said Zhang Jianguo.

According to Shandong Federation of Trade Union statistics, in just the first quarter of 2009, the province recorded 52 “regular mass incidents” (一般群体性事件), the main causes of which were wages arrears, economic compensation, and long unresolved issues.

According to the Shenzhen police, labour disputes were the most rapidly increasing category of mass incidents and “potentially destabilizing” (不安定因素苗头) incidents in the city. There were 637 incidents in 2008, a rise of 119.7 percent from the previous year; and in January of 2009 there were 97 incidents, a rise of 61.7 percent from the previous period.

The government and ACFTU report entitled Under the background of the financial crisis, a survey of enterprise-labour relations and workers rights situation showed that 50.4 percent of the enterprise union chairs interviewed either “agreed with” or were “uncertain” about the statement, “the upcoming year will be an explosive period in collective labour disputes.”

While 55 percent of union chairs either agreed with or were uncertain about the statement “in the upcoming year mass incidents could show a clear increase.” From this we can see that over half the union chairs expressed concern over the prospects for 2010.

Zhang Jianguo noted that enterprise unions are on the frontline of labour relations and therefore are in the best position to vividly and directly understand conflicts. The fact that so many enterprise union chairs expressed concern about the trends in labour relations should alert Party and government officials to the seriousness of the problem.

Moreover, the antagonism and violence in this year’s labour-related mass incidents was striking. In some cases, young working men and women, united hand-in-hand, staged road blocks and silent, peaceful sit-ins in front of government buildings.

Some incidents however turned violent causing injury to workers and police and damage to property. There were even kidnappings and violent beatings in the Tonghua and Lingang incidents. The experts interviewed openly acknowledged the violent tendencies apparent in labour relations nowadays.

Neglecting migrant workers rights

Labour disputes in 2009 took place against the all-encompassing background of the international financial crisis.

The State Council’s economic stimulus plan, unveiled in November 2008 to boost domestic consumption and increase economic growth, led to the Chinese economy rebounding in the third quarter of 2009, and by October there was little doubt that the goal to “protect eight percent growth” could be realized. Experts, however, were not so optimistic about the financial crisis’ impact on labour relations.

Su Hainan, director of the MOHRSS Labour Research Institute and author of Under the background of the financial crisis, a survey of enterprise-labour relations and workers rights situation, told Liaowang that the financial crisis had led to a sharp drop in foreign demand, causing problems for some foreign export-oriented enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises, and labour-intensive industries. Privately-owned companies in particular, sought to get out of trouble by continually adjusting their modes of operation, labour management systems and structures, leading to conflict with labour.

“We’ve never experienced a situation in which so many enterprises, almost all at the same time, and on such a large scale, started to undergo adjustments – some had no alternative, while others took advantage of the situation to evade the law,” Su said.

Firstly, these adjustments affected both individual factories and the national structure of employment. The most obvious example of this was the “tide of migrant workers going back to the countryside” that was seen at the end of 2008 and early 2009. Sample surveys by the National Bureau of Statistics showed that right before the 2009 Spring Festival, an estimated 70 million migrant workers returned home, some 50 percent of the migrant worker workforce.

Grassroots rural society found it very hard to cope with such a heavy burden. During an investigation of the Shishou Incident on 21 June 2009, Dan Guangnai said, “we discovered that the youngsters in the streets were all returned migrant workers. Some of them hadn’t received an adequate salary, and they were very emotional – this was a destabilizing factor.”

Second, some enterprises changed working hours and rest schedules. In his survey, Su Hainan found that 40 percent of enterprises were not paying workers during rest or vacation days. “The actual percentage may be a bit higher,” he said.

Some enterprises, due to a lack of orders, changed the regular working hour system into a “total calculation based on work time” (综合计算工时制) in which time worked on rest days and public holidays was only paid at the normal rate. In the process of these and other adjustments, many enterprises didn’t inform the Labour Department, nor did they negotiate with workers.

Third, some enterprises froze wages, decreased benefits, increased” flexibility” in salary remuneration, decreased or suspended overtime payments, and some enterprises, without government approval, decreased social security payments.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics’ sample survey, in the first half of 2009 the rise in workers salaries was 5.1 percent lower than in the previous year – the lowest level increase since 2001.

According to Su Hainan’s survey, in the second half of 2008 and first half of 2009, the salaries of many workers at export-oriented small and medium-sized enterprises dropped by 20 to 30 percent.

The National Bureau of Statistics reported that 5.8 percent (4.06 million) of the migrant workers who went back to the countryside in 2009 were owed wages in arrears.

In the Pearl River Delta the situation was particularly bad. In Shandong, Guangdong, Fujian and other coastal provinces, there were many instances of Korean, Hong Kong, and Taiwanese enterprise owners skipping town without paying wages. “The number of workers who were affected by foreign enterprise bosses owing wages and skipping town, and the amount of money owed, was probably more than double in previous years,” Su Hainan said.

Fourth, working conditions deteriorated. In July 2009, Henan migrant worker Zhang Haichao’s extreme method of defending his rights – volunteering for open chest surgery to demonstrate his work-related lung disease – exposed the dark side of China’s occupational illness prevention and safety record.

“The financial crisis comes, orders drop, and companies no longer have the money to carry out planned improvements to working conditions. So they wait till the economy starts to recover, and enterprises start to add overtime, production picks up, and this exacerbates already problematic safety conditions,” Zhang Jianguo said.

“Through all the optimistic data, we can see substantial problems that have been glossed over, especially in terms of protection of the rights and interests of the 150 million migrant workers. If China didn’t have migrant workers to act as a “reservoir” then the hit from the financial crisis in aggravating labour problems would be even more severe.”

“Emergency medicine” or “ordinary medicine”

As the economy gradually gets better, more and more people are starting to see that the financial crisis did nothing more than provide the spark that aggravated the deep-layered, long-accumulating structural problems between capital and labour.

Many experts stressed that in order to promote long-term social stability, harmony, and development in China, before the after-effects of the financial crisis have been completely quieted, we should push aside the smokescreen of the financial crisis, and grasp the opportunity to reevaluate labour relations, eliminate potential problems, and reformulate policy.

“The labour conflicts of 2009 had another cause, namely the collision of new labour legislation and the economic crisis,” said Qiao Jian, director of the labour relations department at the China Institute of Labour Relations.

Qiao, who has attended over five conferences related to the international financial crisis and its impact on labour relations, told Liaowang, “The experience of the past year shows us that we should re-consider the operating and administrative models for labour relations as economic growth increases”.

Qiao Jian was referring to the Employment Promotion Law, the Labour Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Law, and the Labour Contract Law.

“Especially the Labour Contract Law, in early 2008, it met with opposition mainly from economists and employers. But after the financial crisis hit, it was local governments who opposed it.

“In some places, the financial crisis was used as an excuse not to strictly enforce the Labour Contract Law.

In particular, small and medium-sized enterprises took a “wait and see” attitude in their implementation of the Labour Contract Law.

The central government strictly enforces laws, but some local governments take a laissez faire attitude towards enterprises that disobey rules and regulations and damage workers interests,” Zhang Jianguo said.

In the provinces around the Pearl River and Yangtze River Deltas, some local governments introduced policies to counteract the Labour Contract Law and Labour Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Law.

“As far as enforcement is concerned, these two laws have entered a state of paralysis in certain areas,” Qiao Jian said.

“Without doubt, there have been some enterprises that have used the financial crisis as an excuse to lay off people and not sign labour contracts.

We can’t rule out some local areas not necessarily understanding the new labour legislation, but some felt conflicted from the start, and took advantage of this opportunity,” Su Hainan said.

“In extraordinary times, extraordinary methods will be used, but that doesn’t mean that the new labour laws should be weakened or put aside. Correctly handling workers’ short-term and long-term interests, a healthy dialogue between labour and capital, and respecting the new labour laws, should be the premise and starting point for both formulating and implementing laws and regulations.”

That China uses extraordinary measures in extraordinary times is common knowledge. On 17 November 2008, the MOHRSS announced a temporary freeze on the minimum wage; in December, MOHRSS and three other ministries jointly put out a circular, calling for “The Five Deferrals, Four Reductions, Three Subsidizes and Two Negotiates.”

And some local governments introduced a “Three Flexible” system: flexible use of workers, flexible work hours, and flexible salaries.

“This was a response to the slow down in economic growth, but as the economy recovers, such measures should be readjusted, for example, adjusting wages and the methods of calculation in the medium-term,” Qiao Jian said.

“The financial crisis has given us an opportunity to reexamine China’s labour policies,” Su Hainan said. “We should use two methods to cope with the cyclical changes in economic growth and in sectoral and enterprise diversity.”

First, after the economy recovers, we can consider appropriate adjustments to the minimum wage. The city government in Beijing, for example, has already formulated such a policy.

Second, a sound labour policy utilizes many approaches. “When things get better, the target and scope of the “Five Deferrals Four Reductions Three Subsidizes and Two Negotiates” and the “Three Flexibles” needs to be adjusted and changed,” Su Hainan said.

Concretely, the scope of these extraordinary measures should be reduced, and changed. Enterprises that still have difficulties can still use these policies, but on the condition that they don’t lay off employees and that they protect workers fundamental rights and interests, through consultations between employees and management. Other enterprises that are experiencing better times should stop implementation of these policies, and repay deferred social security contributions to the government.

Su Hainan drew an analogy: “In the context of the global economy, an economic crisis or enterprises encountering difficulties is a bit like someone getting the flu − it’s only a matter of time before you are infected. Therefore, flu medicine should be available for emergency use. This emergency medicine shouldn’t be cast aside. But it should only be available to those who get sick.”

“The financial crisis has divided domestic enterprises into certain categories, and we need to be clear about separating “sick people”, “weak people” and “strong men”, and by separating them we can adopt targeted measures. From there, the formulation and implementation of related laws and policies will fit more closely to China’s actual labour relations,” Su added.

Effectively opening the door to bargaining between labour and capital

Given the long-standing oversupply of labour in China, how can collective bargaining and equal consultation between labour and capital be achieved?

Our experts agreed that although the difficulties are known to all, in a socialist China, it is the basic solution to reversing the abnormality of “strong capital, weak labour.” And as such, the attitude the Party and government is the key.

“From the macro perspective, the tripartite system of consultation (between employees, employers and government) gives us a lot of room to operate in,” Qiao Jian said.

In 1990, the Chinese government approved the International Labour Organization’s “Tripartite Consultation (International Labour Standards) Convention (ILO convention 144), which committed us to implementing a tripartite consultation mechanism.

In 2001, the State Labour Relations Tripartite Consultation Conference (国家协调劳动关系三方会议) was formally set up. As of September 2008, over 12,000 tripartite consultation organizations had been set up nationwide from the many enterprises, unions, and local governments.

“The ILO’s tripartite mechanism has three basic functions− exchanging information, consultation, and negotiation. At this point we’ve not even done half of that. High-level consultation and bargaining have still not been put into play,” Qiao Jian told Liaowang.

“We hope that the tripartite mechanism won’t just be an annual meeting, but rather that it can become a well formulated, real body with a permanent role to play.”

In order to combat the severe effects of the international financial crisis, on 23 January 2009, the State Labour Relations Tripartite Consultation Conference (SLRTCC) issued A Guiding Opinion on Dealing with the Current Economic Situation and Stabilizing Labour Relations, and on 27 February 2009, the ACFTU and the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce jointly issued a Notice on Mobilizing Employees and Enterprises to Pull Together to Overcome Difficulties. We will have to wait and see whether or not any breakthroughs can be made in pushing for collective bargaining at the upcoming 14th meeting of the SLRTCC. (The meeting on 31 December did indeed confirm and recommend many of the points made in the Liaowang article. See 联手推进劳动关系和谐创建活动, 合力深化应对国际金融危机中的劳动关系协调工作).

On a medium-scale and at a micro level, the value of labour and management proactively initiating equal consultation and collective bargaining is increasingly apparent. “This is the fundamental solution to China’s labour conflicts,” Zhang Jianguo said.

“There are huge differences in China’s economic, regional and sectoral development. In this context, the effectiveness of government labour legislation in dealing with labour disputes is diminishing. At this time the government should encourage labour and management to resolve their conflicts through independent negotiations,” Qiao Jian believes.

“During some mass incidents, governmental departments expended a huge amount of effort, and were still unable to find a good solution. If you want to defuse and control labour disputes at their source, first you have to find a person who can engage in dialogue and bargaining. This, without doubt, requires a platform and a channel from within the system (体制内),” Dan Guangnai said.

“Signing collective contracts, pushing for a collective wage consultation system, requires construction of a platform within the system for negotiations; without this platform and without these negotiations, strikes, road blockades and other extra-legal protests may occur,” Zhang Jianguo said.

According to ACFTU statistics, as of 2008, a total of 1.9 million enterprises had signed collective contracts, covering 150 million workers, 89 percent of the workers in unionized enterprises.

At the core of the collective contract system are wage demands, and this core content has been actively promoted in recent years. And yet it has been met with strong opposition due to the fact that employers are in an extremely strong position, and workers and enterprise unions are weak. We can clearly observe during negotiations at small and medium-sized enterprises the phenomenon of the union being “afraid to talk” or being “unable to talk,” and management being “unwilling to talk.”

In order to break this impasse, on 9 July 2009, the ACFTU formulated its Guiding Opinion Regarding Actively Launching Industrial Wage Collective Consultation Work.

For concentrations of enterprises in the same industry, industry-wide union representatives will represent workers in collective consultations with similar level enterprise representative organizations with the aim of signing industry-wide collective contracts covering wage differentials, labour quotas, and the minimum wage. The goal will be to try to use industry-wide unions as the catalyst to push forward the collective consultation system.

In 2007, Premier Wen Jiabao, endorsed the Wenling woolen knitwear industry’s collective consultation system, saying it “can be summarized and popularized” (可以总结推广) across the country. Under the Wenling model, over the last six years, industry employee salaries have risen between five and 12 percent and labour disputes decreased by 70 percent.

In September 2009, when Liaowang interviewed Wenling industry union chair Chen Fuqing, the 59-year-old “regular employee” took out seven labour cost charts showing his seven years of experience and said, “The most important thing that I’ve learned is that industry-wide collective consultation ended the long history of the “boss says what the wages will be – and that’s final”. Now, local workers and migrant workers can both work with peace of mind knowing that they’ll get their money.”

“Giving the union more resources and methods, pushing for unions to be more independent of enterprises, and union officials being more independent of employers, is a necessary step in easing conflicts between labour and capital,” Qiao Jian said.

“Labour conflicts are not necessarily something to worry about. The key is for us to use scientific thinking in devising policies to deal with these problems,” said Zhang Jianguo, adding that, “In mitigating labour disputes, the fundamental issue is the need to establish a collective bargaining system that would allow labour disputes to be managed and resolved within the enterprise.

From this point of view, collective bargaining is the route we must take in defusing conflict and developing harmonious labour relations.”

From http://www.clb.org.hk/en/

The global economic crisis brings further uncertainty for labour rights protection and labour interest representation. Official statistics estimated that more than 20 million migrant workers became jobless during the crisis.

Actually, long before the global economic crisis in 2008, the official Chinese trade union, which operates under the national umbrella of All China Federation of Trade Union (ACFTU), is under pressure for change, and the union is seeking initiatives for improving its capacity of labour representation and labour rights safeguarding.

The institutional arrangement in China requires the trade union to represent the interests and demands of both the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) and the workers.

In this context, Chinese trade unions always need to play the role as a bridging actor conciliating the interest difference and strengthening the common ground between the state and labour.

Before the start of the economic crisis in the late of 2008, continuous economic growth did not bring much difficulty to the union, since economic development created steadily increase of jobs for workers, along with taxation revenues for the state.

However, the global economic crisis pressed down the Chinese economy with unemployment rate rise and taxation revenue shrink, so as to expose the Chinese labour and union to a different environment. Some serious challenges emerge and the union has to respond quickly.

Pressure on the Implementation of Chinese Labour Laws and Regulations

Just before the happening of the global economic crisis, several labour laws and labour regulations were enacted and the labour standards are increased accordingly.

For example, the Labour Contract Law restricts the flexibility of corporate human resource management and aims at establishing long-term employment relations between the employers and workers.

Meanwhile, the Regulation of Staffs and Workers Paid Annual Vacation expands the duration of paid leave for labour and requires the employers to pay high compensation if the workers fail to take the leaves.

A psychological impact is then created among employers, who complain on the increase of labour costs and are lobbying heavily for deregulation.

Within ten months of the implementation of the labour acts, a financial crisis happened in the US, which is the largest buyer of the Chinese products.

Weak demand of global and domestic markets lowers the profits of most companies in China. The companies introduce large lay-off and redundancy plans.

China Academic of Social Sciences, the government think-tank, did a national survey and found the urban unemployment rate in 2008 had reached to 9.4%, twice more than the official number.

Thanks to the shrink of overseas orders and the cut of jobs, rural migrant workers, who usually work in labour-intensive export sectors, lost their incomes and had to either return to their hometowns, or wander around big cities and manufacturing centres for new opportunities.

Official statistics from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of China estimated over 20 million migrant workers became jobless during the crisis, while the real situation can be more serious.

Local governments are then under great pressure.

In order to encourage employment and reduce redundancy, some local governments issued their interpretations about the national laws and regulations, since the national laws are always quite general and require local governments to write operatable local implementation guidelines to enforce the laws and regulations.

In the Pearl and Yangtze River Deltas, which are two largest manufacturing hubs in China, the local governments negotiate with the local and international chambers of commerce for stabilising the labour market. Companies agree to suspend layoff and redundancy plan, in return for deferred payment of social security for the workers.

Moreover, in some regions, local governments permit large local companies to negotiate minimum wage rates with the authority, so that unprofitable firms will not cut jobs, although the workers may receive discounted salaries compared to the normal time.

In Guangdong Province, the Provincial People’s High Court issued a notice and asked the police to be cautious in arresting the owners of firms hiring more than one thousand workers, for the fear of interrupting factory operation and causing unemployment.

The court notice says that if the owner does not violate the criminal act, then this person does not need to be arrested, so that the business operation can go as usual.

ACFTU and its lower unions have paid attention to the situation and reactions from the business and local governments.

The union issues several documents to express its concern about a possible deregulation in the field of labour relations.

The union emphasises that labour standards cannot be compromised under any circumstances.

ACFTU is against the idea of lowering labour protection for keeping jobs.

Instead, ACFTU proposes to conduct collective negotiation and dialogue with the employers to solve the current corporate difficulty.

In several industrial provinces like Zhejiang Province, local trade unions have successfully reached deals with local employers, when the unions promising to mobilise workers for higher productivity and temporarily freezing wage increase. In return, employers agreed to keep the jobs and did not lower the existing benefits for workers.

Escalation of Labour Disputes and Union’s Role in Representing Labour

Although the union tries its best to maintain employment stability, expansion of the global economic crisis leads to closure and bankruptcy of many companies, whose bosses usually flee and leave the workers uncompensated. Riots can happen if a factory closes and workers are unable to find the employer for clearing their unpaid wages and overtime compensations.

Actually, the number of labour dispute has been escalating since the late of 2008.

In the first half of 2009, labour dispute in the Yangtze River Delta increased about 4 folds compared to the same period last year.

The labour dispute resolution team is seriously shorthanded with one labour dispute arbitration or judge having to handle over 200 cases in a year.

Lack of capacity to solve labour dispute cases further contributes to the rise of unofficial labour actions.

Local trade unions in the industrial areas have realised this challenge and are doing their best to provide legal aid for workers.

The local unions also use their positions to lobby the local governments for offering fast track service for rural migrant workers under labour disputes.

Mediation is always emphasised by the trade union as a way to assist labour rights and interests. Unions have established mediation services at the factory and community levels.

Community mediation service is more effective, since the community legal aid centres of the trade union stay away from the intervention and harassment of the employers.

In Hubei Province, one of the largest automobile manufacturing centres in China, the provincial trade union publishes law education booklets for workers and actively represents workers to mediate with the employers.

Sometimes, union legal officers also bring local media reporters to mediation, in order to add pressures on the employers to satisfy labour demands.

In one case, the union officers relied on reporter-involved mediation to get back around GBP 100,000 for workers within one month, while the formal labour dispute resolution procedure may take as long as one year.

However, the union services face to challenges in the localities. Chinese workers, especially young and educated ones, have been aware of their rights, but still lack of legal knowledge on safeguarding their rights. This makes them vulnerable in front of irresponsible lawyers and unprofessional legal consultants.

The Chinese laws allow every citizen to represent parties on court under the title of citizen surrogate.

As a consequence, many people become professional citizen surrogates and take labour cases, though they receive no legal education or training.

This group of people are usually called ‘black lawyers’ or ‘grassroots lawyers’. In the Pearl River Delta, it is estimated that around 10,000 ‘black lawyers’ are in practice, due to the loophole on the Chinese laws. The quality of their works is not satisfying.

Moreover, workers usually have to accept ‘risk agent’ for representation during the labour dispute resolution. Commercial lawyers and ‘black lawyers’ always tell the workers that the objects of labour cases are too small for them to proceed. As a result, workers are required to sign risk agent contracts and give 60% of the amount of the objects as legal representation fee for the lawyers or ‘black lawyers’, while the laws only permit lawyers to charge maximum 30%.

Labour interests are exploited.

Although Chinese workers have shown high rights protection consciousness, their law awareness and legal knowledge are still quite limited, so that their rights and interests are often violated by both the employers and lawyers.

When realising this situation, workers often lose everything and can only choose to take extreme actions for expressing their discontents.

This also makes it difficult to launch coordinated or union-led collective labour action, as the organisers and followers of most current labour actions do not trust the legal system, based on their unfavourable experiences with risk agent lawyers.

Meanwhile, the risk agent lawyers and ‘black lawyers’ often hijack labour actions and encourage workers to take on illegal activities like smashing machines to add pressure on employers for increasing the compensation, which then raises the share of legal representation fee for the lawyers.

ACFTU and local trade unions are endeavouring to expand their legal aid facilities and guide workers away from the exploitation of risk agents.

The union legal aid centres have established collaborative relations with the lawyers association and ask the latter to monitor the behaviours of its members.

Also, the unions hire retired judges, law professors from universities and other legal practitioners as part-time legal aid workers to increase the capacity of helping workers. ACFTU is preparing new law education and dissemination plans to empower workers, especially rural migrant workers and increase their law awareness.

Furthermore, ACFTU is advocating the CPC and central government to introduce the collective contract law and invest on the improvement of infrastructure for grassroots union legal aid centres.

These initiatives are expected to raise the union capacity and provide a long-term solution for labour rights and interests protection through the enhancement of collective labour relations.

Conclusion

The global economic crisis brings not only hardships but also opportunities for Chinese workers and their unions.

On the one hand, labour is under difficulty, as cuts of jobs and benefits harm the livelihoods of many workers.

On the other hand, this pressure prompts the trade union to strengthen its ties with the workers and issue new initiatives to represent the rights and interests of labour.

In the future, the Chinese trade union is likely to be more active domestically and internationally.

The union is trying to expand its international relations with unions in developed countries, on account that every global economic and financial crisis or prosperity starts from the developed countries.

The Chinese trade union needs to be sensitive about any fluctuation in the developed consumer markets to change its own strategies within China.

A strengthened connection between Chinese union and international trade unions can be made, as a result of the current crisis, which hits workers around the world and requires global solidarity as a therapy to cure the malfunction of the global market.

Then, as apartheid tottered and eventually fell, SACTU unions became the nucleus of a new federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions. With roots in that liberation war, it declared socialism as its goal, and still does today.

COSATU unions prize rank-and-file control over their elected leaders, and engage members in long and thorough discussions of the country’s development plans. The labor federation has the most sophisticated political strategy of any union in the world today – balanceing a leading role in the tripartite alliance that governs South Africa with independence of program and action, even striking to force policies that put the needs of workers before the neoliberal demands of the World Bank. Jacob Zuma owes his election as president of South Africa today to South African labor.

As an organizer during the same period I worked with many others to force our own labor movement to recognize that organizing new members and changing our politics was necessary for survival at home. If we could double our size (at least), I thought, we’d have more power, while the streetheat generated by the intense conflict organizing creates would set the stage for political transformation. Needless to say, that transformation process turned out to be much more complicated than I expected.

At the beginning of Solidarity Divided, Bill Fletcher recalls a comment made by a healthcare unionist at a meeting in South Africa which sums up at least part of what makes COSATU so different from the AFL-CIO.

“‘Comrades,’ they began, ‘the role of the union is to represent the interests of the working class. There are times when the interests of the working class conflict with the interests of the members of our respective unions.’”

Fletcher and Fernando Gapasin, Solidarity Divided’s coauthor, use the quote to dramatize two important differences between our movements. South African unions talk about workers’ class interests, using words that still frighten unionists here. And not only can COSATU militants see the potential conflict that can sometimes arise, but believe that when it does, unions should put the interests of all workers before their own institutional needs.

There are many differences between the U.S. labor movement and other union movements around the world. In France in recent months workers have imprisoned their bosses in their offices to force them to negotiate over the closure of factories and job elimination. On May Day hundreds of thousands of workers poured into the streets in Germany and Russia, and in Turkey unions had to battle the police for the right to stand in Taksim Square. In El Salvador unions supported the guerrilleros during a civil war to upend Central America’s most unjust social order, while their offices were bombed and their leaders killed. In the Philippines workers commonly put up tents at the gate of a factory on strike, and live there until the strike is over. Even workers from Mexico and Canada use phrases like “working class” as part of ordinary conversation.

By comparison we seem pretty conservative. Our labor movement has resources and wealth that are enormous by comparison with most unions around the world. But our own existence and power is just as threatened as that of many others.

The purpose of Solidarity Divided is not to compare us unfavorably with labor elsewhere, or to mount an unrelieved criticism of our conservatism. It is to ask questions, so that we can come to grips with the problems that endanger our survival. And the experience of unions and workers in other countries, while it can’t be transferred or copied, can at least inspire us with the courage to face our own situation with realism and the determination to change it.

Solidarity Divided has been criticized by some activists for the dark picture it paints of the situation faced by unions in the U.S. It is not a hopeless one, but it is certainly sobering. Few would argue that with 12% of workers in unions there is no crisis for U.S. labor. And the authors are not saying that workers can’t win in conflicts with employers today, or with the political system. The continuation of the Bush era was defeated in large part by union activists, money and votes. Workers can still win major organizing drives, as they did after a sixteen year struggle at Smithfield Foods in North Carolina. US Labor Against the War can win labor to call for U.S. troops to leave Iraq, and for solidarity with Iraqi workers.

But in reality, the working class here at home faces profound changes that have fundamentally undermined its political rights and standard of living. Over the last four decades, corporations have built an international system of production and distribution that links together the workers of many countries, but in which workers have no control over the expropriation and distribution of the wealth they create. Further, this system has forced devastating and permanent unemployment on entire generations of U.S. workers, especially in African American and Chicano neighborhoods. Meanwhile, neoliberal economic policies displace communities in developing countries, creating a reserve labor force of hundreds of millions, migrating both within and across borders, desperate for work.
Fletcher and Gapasin wrote Solidarity Divided before the current economic crisis, which only highlights the problems they describe.

Many elements of this crisis are structural, and won’t disappear with the next turn of the business cycle. Workers increasingly can’t buy back what the system produces – the bizarre loan conditions that financed home purchases only illustrate that thousands of purchasers didn’t have the income necessary to buy housing.
For unions and workers to survive in this environment, they must demand increasingly radical reforms. As Fletcher and Gapasin point out, the idea that “the needs of workers can be met by the bargaining demands and institutional needs of unions” is a relic of a vanished past.

Corporations today are almost entirely opposed to any reforms to the current system, whether single payer healthcare or the right to a job. They’ve discarded the social charter in which employers accepted the existence of unions, under certain conditions, after World War Two.

When one considers the ferocity with which they battle the relatively minor changes in U.S. labor law proposed by the Employee Free Choice Act, it’s clear that to them the idea that unions should be encouraged, an ideal enshrined in the preamble to the National Labor Relations Act, is just so much meaningless verbiage.

Despite a desperate desire by U.S. labor leaders to revive mutual respect between corporations and unions, Fletcher and Gapasin say, “that peace has not come. Nor can these leaders, nor anyone else, identify any sector of corporate America that intends to establish a new social compact with labor.”

Each month for the last half year, over half a million people have lost their jobs. Banks, meanwhile, have been showered with hundreds of millions of dollars to keep them afloat, while working families can’t get their loans renegotiated so they can stay in their homes. Yet there has been no national demonstration called by either labor federation, demanding a direct Federal jobs program or redirecting the bailout to workers instead of the wealthy. Remember those French workers? They’re not just organizing (yet another!) general strike protesting the same conditions, but holding their bosses hsotage.

The book, then, is about change. Where did labor’s current conservatism come from? We too have a radical past. In the U.S. people also used to talk about the working class, debated the nature of capitalism, and discussed strategies for radically transforming or replacing it. So what happened? Why is it now so difficult for labor to change?

One of the most valuable parts of Solidarity Divided is its examination of our own history. It is not a detailed academic history, but it establishes the fact that U.S. labor has always had a left wing that advocated the organization of all workers and radical social change, at the same time that racism limited its potential.

William Syvis organized the National Labor Union and included African Americans during the post-Civil War decades, yet failed to protest the end of Reconstruction and the reestablishment of the racist white power structure in the south. The Wobblies organized immigrants in many languages, and used free speech fights and working class songs and music to organize a population of itinerant floating workers. We see day labor unions developing the same ideas today. The CIO won the crucial battle to organize the country’s basic industry, but lost its radicalism in the purge of the left, substituting a centralized bureaucracy for earlier rank-and-file democratic traditions.

To change, we need to reexamine the ideas and strategy that are part of our own inheritance. But we also need to come to grips with the purges that drove that leftwing culture underground.

One of the most important reasons why change is so hard for U.S. unions is the continuing legacy of the cold war.

Fletcher and Gapasin make a crucial contribution in urging a reexamination of the cost paid for the suppression of the left. That period may seem long ago, but it fundamentally shaped the relationship between leftwing activists and their ideas, and the centers of power in modern unions.

“Today the dominant coalition of traditionalist and pragmatist union leaders continues to shape union culture,” they say, “whereas leftists get coopted or marginalized. This situation limits the union movement’s scope and narrows unions’ political and social impact.”

Although Solidarity Divided has a rare analysis of the role of new left militants in unions during the post-Civil Rights years, it offers no comment on why those activists made so little effort to come to terms with the history that created the conservatism against which they rebelled.

No pair of authors can write a prescription for change – “just do what we say and your problems will be cured.” But they can urge us not to be afraid of facing the truth, and Gapasin and Fletcher do that.

Discussion in labor is difficult because the cold war taught unionists that political differences beyond a limited range would result in marginalization at best, expulsion at worst. You can’t talk freely if you’re afraid for your career or your job. That cold war straightjacket strengthened a hierarchical structure and culture, very differnt from the egalitarianism in COSATU or Salvadoran unions. We have forgotten the wobblies’ idea that we’re all leaders, equals among equals. At the same time, unions have accumulated property, treasuries, and political debts, and have an interest in defending them, making institutional needs paramount. We don’t challenge the government out in the streets beyond a certain point becaaue we don’t want to risk not being at the table when the deals affecting our future are made.

Fletcher and Gapasin spend a great deal of the book analyzing the various efforts to change labor’s direction following the election of John Sweeney as president of the AFL-CIO at the New York convention in 1995. One important reason for the halting and incomplete nature of these changes was the failure to come to grips with what had come before. Labor needed then, and still needs today, its own truth commission, to publicly discuss the consequences of the anticommunist hysteria of the 1950s.

Radical ideas and the language to describe them continue to be illegitimate because their suppression has been unacknowledged. After 1995, the prevailing attitude in national leadership was, “We don’t need to rehash the past. Let’s concentrate on where we’re going now.” It’s difficult, however, to determine that new direction if you can’t talk about where the old one was headed, and what was wrong with it. Nowhere is this confusion more evident than in labor’s attitude toward U.S. foreign policy. In Colombia the barriers to solidarity with its leftwing union federation came down, and unions like the Steel Workers became bastions of support for its embattled unionists. Yet next door in Venezuela, U.S. labor supported coup plotters against the radical regime of Hugo Chavez.
Under pressure from US Labor Against the War, the AFL-CIO publicly rejected U.S. military intervention in Iraq. Yet the Democratic Party’s support for war in Afghanistan and for Israel’s attack on Gaza are greeted with silence.

Change is always uneven and incomplete, but the change process in U.S. labor has virtually stopped, leaving unions increasingly caught up in internal divisions and conflict. Solidarity Divided was written before the current internal struggle between SEIU and its California healthcare local, and its intervention into battles within UNITE HERE. But these are conflicts over the basic issues raised in the book – class partnership vs. class struggle, and the right and ability of union members to control their own organizations.

Lacking agreement on how and why the power of unions was undermined by the suppression of the left, there has been no consensus on what should replace the old cold war philosophy. Much of Solidarity Divided, then, is devoted to description and analysis of the different ideas about how labor should be revitalized, some good, some at best ineffective, and some awful.

Both authors write as “participant observers,” Fletcher as a highly-placed staff member at SEIU, then education director at the AFL-CIO and special assistant to Sweeney, and Gapasin as a local union leader, labor council head, and labor and ethnic studies professor at UCLA. They were there for many of the arguments and movements they describe, and they outline some of the most important efforts to get the union movement to change direction – Jobs with Justice, the Los Angeles Manufacturing Action Project and others.

They pay particular attention to the “organizing model,” which was developed in opposition to the philosophy of business unionism, in which members pay dues and receive in exchange union services, as though a union was an insurance program rather than an organization built to fight the boss. But, the book says, “reformers began to worship member mobilization and activism, certainly a component of a vibrant trade unionism, without much discussion of who should do the mobilizing, what the objectives should be, and what methods were approporiate.”

An even bigger problem with this model, however, was that it has so little interest in the education of workers about the nature of the society in which they live.

A deeper understanding (that is, greater class consciousness) can lead to ideas for alternatives, both in radical reforms of the existing system, and even its replacement.

This kind of education, part of the normal life of unions in South Africa or El Salvador, requires an investment of time, and a real interest in how workers think. People act autonomously based on their ideas, and workers with greater understanding and consciousness are able to lead themselves and each other, rather than acting solely on directives from above. Further, while education doesn’t necessarily produce immediate mobilizing results, it does treat workers as the people whose thinking, and eventually whose leadership, is the key element in building a union.

Instead, Fletcher and Gapasin point out, the mobilizing model produces unions that are directed by fulltime paid staff, in which workers play a subordinate role. At worst, workers become almost irrelevant in a numbers game in which the size of the union is what counts, rather than creating an organization they can learn to use to challenge the employer at work to win better wages and conditions.

Fletcher was himself the creator of the most ambitious effort in decades to educate union activists and local leaders, a program called “Common Sense Economics.” Strangely, Solidarity Divided has no discussion of that experience. There are some other puzzling omissions, especially the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement. That treaty caused a huge debate in labor which coincided with the rebellion that eventually brought Sweeney into office. It marked a watershed in the growing awareness among U.S. workers of the impact of globalization, and brought forth important new movements of solidarity, especially between unions and workers in the U.S. and Mexico.
Solidarity Divided has an important section on globalization, but it sees it mostly in terms of military domination. But what is new about the role workers play in this system? Are the anti-globalization movemennts sweeping Europe and the developing world allies of the labor movement? Do they propose real alternatives, or are they united primarily by a common hatred of capitalism?

NAFTA and the battle in Seattle at the WTO not only profoundly affected the thinking of workers about the future of their own jobs, but they also set the stage for the huge debate over immigration that followed. Those workers and unions who were educated by the debate were in a much better position to understand the way neoliberal reforms displaced workers and farmers in Mexico, and led to migration across the U.S./Mexico border.

The debate over immigration policy now puts critical questions before U.S. unions. Are unions going to defend all workers (including the undocumented), or just some? Should unions support immigration enforcement designed to force millions of workers from their jobs, so that they will leave the country? How can labor achieve the unity and solidarity it needs to successfully confront transnational corporations, both internally within the U.S., and externally with workers in countries like Mexico?
Understanding that NAFTA hurt workers on both sides of the border is a crucial step in answering these questions, providing the raw material workers need to understand globaliztion. But raw material is just that. Workers and unions need an education process, and educators, who can help turn that raw material into consciousness and action. In more radical times, that role of educator was played by leftwing socialist and communist parties. Since this kind of organized left presence in labor is so small today, it is unclear what can take its place. Solidarity Divided helps in presenting the question, but no one has a good answer today for this one.

Fletcher and Gapasin call for a new kind of unionism. “The current framework of U.S. trade unionism is so fundamentally flawed,” they say, “that a new framework is needed. With that new framework will inevitably come new organizational structures, but forging new structures without defining the moment and defining the framework would simply create new problems.”

Arguing that the kind of structural proposals that led eventually to setting up the Change to Win federation are meaningless without a change in political direction, they call for discarding the body of ideas that guides unions today. They condemn the effort to reduce every problem to a question of pragmatic organizing tactics, while essentially seeking a strategic partnership with corporations and the government.

“We call this new unionsim social justice solidarity,” Fletcher and Gapasin say, and contrast it with “pragmatic solidarity,” which sees alliances only in terms of what they can offer to help unions win immediate battles. Using as examples the anti-apartheid movement, the solidarity movement with Central America, and even the broad oppostion to WalMart, they declare that “social justice solidarity begins with an important assumption – that unions are workers’ organizations engaged in class struggle (whether they like it or not) rather than corporations.”

It is unfair to expect the authors to come up with quick solutions to such deeply-rooted problems, so many years in the making. And absent the kind of discussion they urge, any suggestions for a new direction are going to sound very general. Their most important contribution is to put the questions. The labor movemenet is full of intelligent activists, most with a deep loyalty to their class and a real commitment to social change. Any change in direction depends on their willingness to call for a much deeper discussion that can look for answers
.
There are no experts here. There are no leaders with quick fixes. It is time for us all to take responsibility for the future of our own movement. As the pair state in conclusion, “the U.S. union movement must become part of a new labor movement. To do so, unions must move left; they have no alternative.”
Solidarity Divided is a critical contribution to that effort.

David Bacon is a Californian writer and documentary photographer. http://dbacon.lgc.org.

His books are on immigrant workers and most interesting.
His latest is: Illegal People
How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants

In Illegal People Bacon explores the human side of globalization, exposing the many ways it uproots people in Latin America and Asia, driving them to migrate. At the same time, U.S. immigration policy makes the labor of those displaced people a crime in the United States. Illegal People explains why our national policy produces even more displacement, more migration, more immigration raids, and a more divided, polarized society.

Through interviews and on-the-spot reporting from both impoverished communities abroad and American immigrant workplaces and neighborhoods, Bacon shows how the United States’ trade and economic policy abroad, in seeking to create a favorable investment climate for large corporations, creates conditions to displace communities and set migration into motion. Trade policy and immigration are intimately linked, Bacon argues, and are, in fact, elements of a single economic system.

In particular, he analyzes NAFTA’s corporate tilt as a cause of displacement and migration from Mexico and shows how criminalizing immigrant labor benefits employers.

Bacon powerfully traces the development of illegal status back to slavery and shows the human cost of treating the indispensable labor of millions of migrants-and the migrants themselves-as illegal. Illegal People argues for a sea change in the way we think, debate, and legislate around issues of migration and globalization, making a compelling case for why we need to consider immigration and migration from a globalized human rights perspective.

“[I]ncisive investigation . . . Bacon’s timely analysis is as cool and competent as his labor advocacy is unapologetic. In mapping the political economy of migration, with an unwavering eye on the rights and dignity of working people, Bacon offers an invaluable corrective to America’s hobbled discourse on immigration and a spur to genuine, creative action.” – review, Publisher’s Weekly,

“Bacon, an award-winning photojournalist, labor organizer, and immigrant-rights activist, follows the lives of undocumented workers at the Woodfin Suites Hotel in California and a Smithfield meatpacking plant in North Carolina, who travel back and forth from Mexico to the U.S. He ties together interviews, personal histories, and political analysis to provide a vivid image of what life is like for workers with little rights or protections in an increasingly globalized economy.” review, Vanessa Bush, Booklist

“David Bacon is the conscience of American journalism: an extraordinary social documentarist in the rugged humanist tradition of Dorothea Lange, Carey McWilliams, and Ernesto Galarza..” – Mike Davis

right to strike

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Going it alone: a new report on the state of the workers’ movement in China

In a new research report published, China Labour Bulletin looks at how the workers’ movement in China has developed over the last two years, how the government has responded to it, and why the official trade union has been unable or unwilling to play a positive role in it. Thursday, July 09, 2009

Going it Alone: The Workers’ Movement in China http://www.clb.org.hk/en/

This analyses 100 collective labour protests that took place in 2007 and 2008, and identifies three major trends:

* Workers took matters into their own hands. Bypassing the largely ineffectual official trade union, they used public protest as a means of forcing local governments to intercede on their behalf. And, in many cases, workers were successful.

* Strikes ignited other protests in the same region, industry or company subsidiaries. The wave of taxi strikes that swept the county at the end of 2008 exemplified both the spread of industry-wide protests and the willingness of local governments to negotiate with the workers.

* Workers’ demands became broader and more sophisticated.

Previously, disputes were mostly related to clear-cut violations of labour rights, such as the non-payment of wages, overtime and benefits, but in the last two years collective interest-based disputes came to the fore, with workers seeking higher wages and better working conditions, and protesting arbitrary changes in their employment status and pay scales.

One of the major causes of discontent was, for example, attempts by managements to circumvent the new Labour Contract Law by forcing employees to relinquish long-term contracts and rejoin the company on short-term contracts or as temporary labour.

During this period of enhanced worker activism, however, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions was conspicuous by its absence from the scene.

The ACFTU launched high-profile campaigns to unionise the Fortune 500 and to conclude collective labour contracts at all Walmart stores in China but this did little to help the workers concerned.

Union membership increased to 212 million, and yet, the vast majority of workers still distrusted the management-controlled enterprise unions and felt alienated from the remote and bureaucratic local-level unions.

CLB asks whether China’s workers and trade union are destined to drift even further apart or is there some way they can overcome their mutual suspicion and mistrust and work together.

It suggests that if the union can summon the political will to stand side-by-side with the workers in their disputes, there is hope for the future. But, if it continues on its current path it will become just another government department, largely irrelevant to the fundamental needs of the workers it is supposed to represent.

Going it Alone: The Workers’ Movement in China (2007-2008) http://www.clb.org.hk/en/files/File/research_reports/workers%20movement%2007-08.pdf is available as a 57-page PDF on the CLB website.

Alternatively, listen to CLB’s latest podcast introducing the report on the website now.

Workers in Korea fight a very important struggle against the burden of the capitalist crisis.
They need our solidarity from all over the world.
From Australia Asia Worker kinks
http://aawl.org.au/node/88

Union repression in Korea is among the worst in the world.
The International Metalworkers´ Federation is calling on the Korean government to end labour rights abuses in Korea and bring the country´s labour laws in line with core labour standards so that all workers enjoy the rights to freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining.

In the last year attacks against trade unions in Korea has increased, in terms of the number of arrests of labour leaders and in severity of prison sentences.

There has also been a marked increase in cases of physical violence carried out by police against workers on strike or participating in demonstrations. The Korean government is moving to further limit the rights of workers by expanding the number of workers who are to be officially categorized as “essential services” as well as lengthening the time temporary or contract workers remain on contract.

The International Metalworkers´ Federation is calling on the Korean government to end labour rights abuses in Korea and bring the country´s labour laws in line with core labour standards so that all workers enjoy the rights to freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining.May 09, 2009 – Kristyne Peter

www.imfmetal.org