Enterprise bargaining UNSW style against the union, the NTEU.

This also involves ADFA, ACT.

http://www.nteu.org.au/unsw/blog/view/post/postId/367

Please support some 70 academic and general staff who have been stood down without pay by UNSW VC Fred Hilmer for imposing bans on the recording and transmission of student results to the university.

Contribute to the special UNSW Local Hardship Fund.

Click this link to donate directly

https://www.nteu.org.au/shop_tools/donations/unsw

Posted 13 July 2010 by Ros O’Grady from University of New South Wales.

These protected action bans were necessary to get the VC to negotiate over long-contested conditions, on reinstating limits on fixed tern employment and the return of members to have union representation.

Negotiations are continuing.

The UNSW Student Representative Council organised a protest to support NTEU staff.

The CFMEU and other unions have declared support.

yraw voting-badge

His ‘crime’? Sticking up for his safety rights on site and then refusing to be coerced into an interview with the unfair Australian Building and Construction Commission.

For this, Ark now faces up to six months in jail.

But most Australians are still asleep to what the ABCC is or how it trashes the rights of ordinary working people like Ark.

If they learn the truth they will want to defend construction workers who operate in an industry where safety is a daily matter of life and death.

A tragic reminder of this came on Friday, when a construction worker was killed by a falling steel beam at Adelaide’s desalination plant site.

Rallies are being held around the entire country to mark Ark’s trial on July 20, 21 and 22, but we need a mass of people to turn up if Australia is going to actually sit up and take notice.

Your voice needs to be heard to end this injustice.

Workers standing up for their rights have changed Australia for the better throughout history and we need that to continue this week.

Rallies kick off in Ark’s hometown of Adelaide, starting from the Tent Embassy in Victoria Square at 8:30am.

There will be one near you, just check the full list of times and locations below.

Show your support for Ark and make the nation aware of what the ABCC actually does to ordinary construction workers.

We’ll be tweeting updates from the court, you can follow us on #dontjailark

July 20
Adelaide, South Australia -Tent Embassy, Victoria Square, 8:30am
Sydney, NSW – Sydney Town Hall, George St, 12pm
Melbourne, Victoria – March to ABCC offices, Cnr St. Kilda and Toorak Roads, 10am
Canberra, ACT – on-site meetings over the three days of Ark’s Trial
Perth, WA – March to office of ABCC, Perth Esplanade (near glass pyramid), 10am
Warrnambool, VIC – Cannon Park, 10am

July 21, 22:
Wonthaggi, VIC – Lions Park, 1:30pm (July 21)
Brisbane, QLD – Roma St Forum, 10am (July 22)
Gold Coast, QLD – Southport Broadwater Parklands, Gold Coast H’way, 10am (July 22)

Rights on site campaigns to abolish the ABCC

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/7590095/new-strike-hits-honda-parts-supplier-in-china/

Don Durfee, Reuters July 15, 2010, 3:54 pm
HONG KONG (Reuters) – A strike has broken out at a south China factory supplying parts for Japan’s Honda Motor, the latest in a string of stoppages by Chinese workers demanding a bigger piece of the country’s economic wealth.

The strike, at Atsumitec Co. in the city of Foshan, began on Monday, with 170 workers striking after management fired about 100, a worker who declined to give his name told Reuters by telephone.

“The local government has sent police to our factory and will be here in the afternoon,” he said.

A Honda spokeswoman in Tokyo said the factory supplies shift levers (gear sticks) to the car maker’s local plants, and said the workers had been on strike since July 12.

She said the action has not had any impact yet on Honda’s car-making operations in China, some of which were affected last month by strikes at other parts makers.

The new strike marks the end of a couple of weeks of relative calm for foreign-run Chinese factories, which saw several weeks of work stoppages in May and June by laborers demanding higher wages.

The government appears to be prepared to let such strikes continue as a way to let wages gradually rise, said Geoffrey Crothall of the China Labour Bulletin.

“I think it’s going to happen throughout the year. It’s not going away unless the government stops it. But it’s the government’s position that they really want to raise income level in order to support the consumption growth of the country,” he said.

“And we are seeing rising expectations on the part of workers — people know that other factories are having these pay raises and they will expect that from their own employers.”

TURBULENT JUNE

The strike follows a turbulent period in June, which saw hundreds of workers at a number of foreign-owned factories, many of those in the affluent Pearl River Delta, walk off the job demanding better pay.

Japan’s top automaker, Toyota Motor, was also affected by labor unrest, but is confident it can handle such situations going forward, a China-based executive told China’s official Xinhua news agency.

The report, unrelated to the labor action in Foshan, cited Liu Peng, Toyota Motor (China) Investment Co Ltd, saying the company was confident it could “properly handle labor disputes, which are increasingly being heard as Chinese workers become more vocal about their interests.”

“In the long-term, Toyota will also build a platform for better communication between management and employees,” Liu was quoted as saying.

ASSERTIVE WORKERS

The strikes also highlight how just-in-time manufacturing, now highly popular among western manufacturers, can put companies at risk because it allows little margin for error when supply chains get disrupted.

The strikes are a symptom of a broader trend that many investors will have to consider: a Chinese workforce becoming more assertive and selective, and sometimes inclined to protest by strikes, slow-downs and, most often, quitting.

“The chance of more strikes increases the more successful the previous strikes are. There’s been more and more communication between workers and advocacy groups,” said Duncan Innes-Ker, Beijing-based China analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit.

“The workers have networks to exchange information even when there has been a state media blackout. The example set in one place tends to encourage others.”

The wave of current unrest hit a peak in June, but reports tapered off at the end of the month. The last reported stoppage, at Japanese-owned Tianjin Mitsumi Electric Co, ended on July 3.

China’s domestic media have been largely mute about the strikes, apparently due to state censorship. But Xinhua has issued reports about the unrest on its English-language service.

Labour costs in China have been rising, partly encouraged by a government that wants to turn farmers and workers into more confident consumers, even as it tries to keep a lid on strikes.

Earlier strikes disrupted production at auto makers Toyota and Honda, and have laid bare the rising demands of China’s 150 million migrant workers, especially younger ones wanting to secure a foothold in urban areas.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard and Emma Graham-Harrison in Beijing and Chang-Ran Kim in Tokyo; Writing by Doug Young; Editing by Alex Richardson)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/technology/06iphone.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&src=busln

New York Times

IPhone Supply Chain Highlights Rising Costs in China

By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: July 06, 2010

SHENZHEN, China – Last month, while enthusiastic consumers were playing with their new Apple iPhone 4, researchers in Silicon Valley were engaged in something more serious.

They cracked open the phone’s shell and started analyzing the new model’s components, trying to unmask the identity of Apple’s main suppliers. These “teardown reports” provide a glimpse into a company’s manufacturing.

What the latest analysis shows is that the smallest part of Apple’s costs are here in Shenzhen, where assembly-line workers snap together things like microchips from Germany and Korea, American-made chips that pull in Wi-Fi or cellphone signals, a touch-screen module from Taiwan and more than 100 other components.

But what it does not reveal is that manufacturing in China is about to get far more expensive.

Soaring labor costs caused by worker shortages and unrest, a strengthening Chinese currency that makes exports more expensive, and inflation and rising housing costs are all threatening to sharply increase the cost of making devices like notebook computers, digital cameras and smartphones.

Desperate factory owners are already shifting production away from this country’s dominant electronics manufacturing center in Shenzhen toward lower-cost regions far west of here, even deep in China’s mountainous interior.

At the end of June, a manager at Foxconn Technology – one of Apple’s major contract manufacturers – said the company planned to reduce costs by moving hundreds of thousands of workers to other parts of China, including the impoverished Henan Province.

While the labor involved in the final assembly of an iPhone accounts for a small part of the overall cost – about 7 percent by some estimates – analysts say most companies in Apple’s supply chain – the chip makers and battery suppliers and those making plastic moldings and printed circuit boards – depend on Chinese factories to hold down prices.

And those factories now seem likely to pass along their cost increases.

“Electronics companies are trying to figure out how to deal with the higher costs,” says Jenny Lai, a technology analyst at CLSA, an investment bank based in Hong Kong. “They’re already squeezed, so squeezing more costs out of the system won’t be easy.”

Apple can cope better than most companies because it has fat profit margins of as much as 60 percent and pricing power to absorb some of those costs.

But makers of personal computers, cellphones and other electronics – including Dell, Hewlett-Packard and LG – deal with much slimmer profit margins according to several analysts.

“The challenges are going to be much bigger for them,” Ms. Lai said. Most other industries, from textiles and toys to furniture, are under considerably more pressure.

One way to understand the changes taking shape in southern China is to follow the supply chain of the iPhone 4, which was designed by Apple engineers in the United States, sourced with high-tech components from around the world and assembled in China.

Shipped back to the United States, the iPhone is priced at $600, though the cost to consumers is less, subsidized by AT&T in exchange for service contracts.

“China makes very little money on these things,” said Jason Dedrick, a professor at Syracuse University and an author of several studies of Apple’s supply chain.

Much of the value in high-end products is captured at the beginning and end of the process, by the brand and the distributors and retailers.

According to the latest teardown report compiled by iSuppli, a market research firm in El Segundo, Calif., the bulk of what Apple pays for the iPhone 4′s parts goes to its chip suppliers, like Samsung and Broadcom, which supply crucial components, like processors and the device’s flash-memory chip.

In the iPhone 4, more than a dozen integrated circuit chips account for about two-thirds of the cost of producing a single device, according to iSuppli.

Apple, for instance, pays Samsung about $27 for flash memory and $10.75 to make its (Apple-designed) applications processor; and a German chip maker called Infineon gets $14.05 a phone for chips that send and receive phone calls and data. Most of the electronics cost much less.

The gyroscope, new to the iPhone 4, was made by STMicroelectronics, based in Geneva, and added $2.60 to the cost.

The total bill of materials on a $600 iPhone – the supplies that go into final assembly – is $187.51, according to iSuppli.

The least expensive part of the process is manufacturing and assembly. And that often takes place here in southern China, where workers are paid less than a dollar an hour to solder, assemble and package products for the world’s best-known brands.

No company does more of it than Foxconn, a division of the Hon Hai Group of Taiwan, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer.

With 800,000 workers in China alone and contracts to supply Apple, Dell and H.P., Foxconn is an electronics goliath that also sources supplies, designs parts and uses its enormous size and military-style efficiency to assemble and speed a wide range of products to market.

“They’re like Wal-Mart stores,” Professor Dedrick said. “They’re low-margin, high-volume. They survive by being efficient.”

The world of contract manufacturers is invisible to consumers.

But it’s a $250 billion industry, with just a handful of companies like Foxconn, Flextronics and Jabil Circuit manufacturing and assembling for all the global electronics brands.

They compete fiercely on price to earn small profit margins, analysts say. And they seek to benefit from tiny operational changes.

When a company is operating on the slimmest of profit margins as contract manufacturers are, soaring labor costs pose a serious problem. Wages in China have risen by more than 50 percent since 2005, analysts say, and this year many factories, under pressure from local governments and workers who feel they have been underpaid for too long, have raised wages by an extra 20 to 30 percent.

China’s currency has also appreciated sharply against the United States dollar since 2005, and after a two-year pause by Beijing, economists expect the renminbi to rise about 3 to 5 percent a year for the next several years.

“It takes 3,000 procedures to assemble an H.P. computer,” says Isaac Wang, an iSuppli analyst based in China. “If a contract manufacturer can find a way to save 10 percent of the procedures, then it gets a real good deal.”

Contract manufacturers like Foxconn are now searching for ways to reduce costs. Foxconn is considering moving inland, where wages are 20 to 30 percent lower. The company is also spending heavily on manufacturing many of the parts, molds and metals that are used in computers and handsets, even trying to find larger and cheaper sources of raw material.

“We either outsource the components manufacturing to other suppliers, or we can research and manufacture our own components,” says Arthur Huang, a Foxconn spokesman. “We even have contracts with mines which are located near our factories.”

Many analysts are optimistic the big brands will find new innovations to improve profitability. But within the crowd, there is growing skepticism about China’s manufacturing model after years of pressing workers to toil six or seven days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day.

“We’ve concluded Hon Hai’s labor-intensive model is not sustainable,” says Mr. Wang at iSuppli Research. “Though it can keep hiring 800,000 to one million workers, the problem is these workers can’t keep working like screws in an inhuman system.”

This type of low-end assembly work is also no longer favored in China, analysts say, because it does not produce big returns for the companies or the country. “China doesn’t want to be the workshop of the world anymore,” says Pietra Rivoli, a professor of international business at Georgetown University and author of “The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy.”

“The value goes to where the knowledge is.”

Chen Xiaoduan contributed research.

China's workers protesting

“The signing of collective contracts is key to protecting workers’ rights as it … provides a legal framework for them to negotiate with employers,” ACFTU spokesman Li Shouzhen said at a seminar.

The channel gives workers greater bargaining power and will allow them to seek higher wages as well as have their rights better protected, without them having to go on strikes or taking other extreme measures, Li said.

But legislation will be needed first to make it mandatory for enterprises to set up such a mechanism, which is still lacking at most small and medium-sized enterprises, he said.

Read the rest of the China Daily report here

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-07/09/content_10084430.htm

China's workers protesting

Coca-Cola is a company that recognizes unions in many countries, including the USA where it is headquartered.

But in southern Pakistan, it is refusing to respect basic workers rights.

It’s an extraordinary story. Regular employees have been transferred to a fictitious labour contractor to prove that they don’t actually work for Coke. The fake union created by the company was exposed when its “president” admitted to not having attended its founding — and indeed denied that he was president. Coke is working hard to prevent the legal registration of the genuine union.

The workers are showing real determination, taking on one of the world’s largest and most powerful companies.

All they are asking us to do is to send a simple message of protest to the company.
Go to Labour Start (click on this blg or…)
http://www.laborstart.org/

For more on this dispute:

The Pause that Represses: Coca-Cola Pakistan Greets New Union with Death Threats, Abduction, Extortion and Dismissals …

http://cms.iuf.org/?q=node/415

Humphrey McQueen’s book “The Essence of capitalism The Origins of Our Future” 2001 Sceptre Books, is worth reading to understand Coke and capitalism.

first join a union

The Best Hated Man in Australia
The Life and Death of Percy Brookfield 1875 – 1921
by Paul Robert Adams

They don’t make politicians like ‘Jack’ Brookfield anymore.

From mining underground in Broken Hill he ‘rose like a meteor in public life’ to be possibly the most extreme anti-politician ever to be elected in this country.

The Great War and the years that followed saw unprecedented
political turmoil in Australia, and Brookfield was in the thick of it.

By the time he was fatally shot at Riverton in South Australia, Brookfield held the balance of power in NSW and had played major roles in many of the era’s main political and industrial events: the Big Strike, the plot of the ‘IWW Twelve’ to burn down Sydney, and the bitter national conscription debate.

‘Percy Brookfield was a giant among labour leaders.

In life, as in the manner of death, he made personal sacrifice the measure of his political commitment.

Morally and physically fearless, his probity withstood parliament.

Paul Adams has given us a biography as thoroughly gripping as it is thoroughly researched. Inspiration floods from its pages’.
—Humphrey McQueen

‘Both the radical life and untimely death of Percy Brookfield are the stuff of Australian labour legend. Finally, we have a biography that, while stating the case for Brookfield, richly contextualises and analyses his brief but turbulent career in trade unionism and radical politics. In this fine book, Paul Robert
Adams has created a vivid portrait of a militant working-class leader who inspired both great hatred and deep affection. The author creates a richly detailed portrait of an extraordinary place, the great mining town of Broken Hill, during extraordinary times, the First World War, the gravest crisis the world had ever known’.
— Frank Bongiorno

‘It is an extraordinary oversight that this man, with such a crucial role in state, labour and local politics, should have been overlooked for so long’.
—Erik Eklund

‘This is a book that should be read by all Australians interested in their nation’s history’.
—David Day

Dr Paul Robert Adams was born in Broken Hill.
He holds a PhD from The University of Sydney and currently teaches media at The University of New England.

CoverBrookfield
Puncher & Wattmann
ABN 94 002 569 507
httw: / /www.puncherandwattmann.com

Rights on site campaigns to abolish the ABCC

By Rob Durbridge AEU Federal Industrial Officer

The recent dispute over school league tables saw the
Australian Education Union and its associated unions
in all states and territories face directions and orders
by industrial tribunals to lift the moratorium imposed on
NAPLAN tests.

In the national jurisdiction these extended
to individual teachers and would have led to heavy fines for
contempt if they had been disobeyed.

In the event an agreement to review the My School website provided a settlement which has still to play itself out.

Fundamental issues were raised, such as the place of a teacher’s
professional role and the public interest in the face of an employer’s power to require work as directed. The Fair Work Act 2009 does not provide the means to resolve these issues on the basis of justice and fairness. State tribunals also showed themselves to be unable to come to grips with the issue. They were strongly influenced by the argument that state education departments stood to lose Federal funds if ‘partnership agreements’ entered into by bureaucrats to
implement national testing were not implemented.

The Fair Work Act and state laws need to be amended not just to
recognise employee and union rights but to prevent harm to children and the wider community.

The industrial relations laws of the states
need to give more scope for argument based on professional
responsibility when orders are sought to terminate industrial action.

Turning the clock back

Caning children was commonplace in schools in Australia until
the 1960s…it was teachers’ campaigns against corporal punishment which led to its banning in the face of considerable community and political opposition.

The ban on caning began in a similar way to the union moratorium
on NAPLAN tests…as an exercise of professional responsibility.

However, in states and territories where teachers are subject to the national industrial system their professional views were irrelevant in the cases brought to direct and order them to conduct the tests.

Failure to comply would have led to fines which were not
trifling…nearly $7,000 for each refusal to test or prepare to test
students, plus unknown amounts for contempt of the Court for not following its orders.

The union also faced hundreds of thousands
of dollars in fines for organising and for contempt. The evidence
for these crimes was being collected by the Fair Work Ombudsman
operating as an industrial police force.

Other than possible action by the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO)
all these proceedings have been terminated by the tribunal or the
employer. In the Federal Court this involved both parties agreeing
to bear their own costs. However, the FWO has foreshadowed
that it will write to the union in relation to alleged breaches of the
Fair Work Act by the Victorian and ACT branches. The FWO will
ask the AEU to “show cause” in relation to the breaches. It is not
clear under which section of the Act the FWO can require the AEU
to “show cause.” The FWO (“ombudsman” previously being a title
for an agency to stand up for individuals against abuse by the state) also continues to “monitor” the behaviour of the AEU and its
members for “compliance” with the law as revealed in its
correspondence.

Forcing professionals to deny their vocation

These issues should not just concern teachers. All workers exercise judgement and experience at work, over safety issues for example.

Forcing teachers to act against their professional judgement over
children’s education is no different to directing nurses to administer questionable medicines to children. If they refuse because medical opinion and their judgement tells them that some could suffer a reaction they would be in the same boat as the teachers in the
NAPLAN test cases. Ultimately they would be forced to choose
between the medicine or a crime.

In the teachers’ cases, professional opinion and international
experience were solidly behind the union’s argument that data
obtained through standardised tests should not be published in a
form which allowed the media to construct league tables of schools.

Academic, systemic and even government policy stands firmly
against league tables; in health terms they are toxic to students.

Yet teachers’ refusal to participate in tests which have been proven to provide the basis for league tables was judged “industrial action” and the system was moving inevitably towards fines.

The Fair Work Act does not allow for public interest arguments or
consideration of the merits of refusal by an employee to work as
directed.

If the action is taken while an industrial agreement is in
force, regardless of whether the subject of the dispute was included in bargaining or the agreement itself, any refusal or encouragement of refusal is illegal and must be stopped and, if it is not stopped, must be punished. (S 418 and S 419 of the Fair Work Act 2009)
A mockery of Fair Work standards

Minister Gillard, as Minister for Employment Relations, is primarily
responsible for this mockery of ‘fair work’ standards in the Fair
Work Act sections dealing with industrial action.

She is also the Minister responsible for the operations of the Fair Work Ombudsman which launched prosecutions in the Federal Court.

As Federal Education Minister it was Gillard who arm-twisted state
and territory government ministers to prosecute the unions under
the threat of funds to education systems being cut for breach of
performance of National Partnership Agreements on Transparency
and Reporting.

The origins of much of the ‘Fair Work’ legislation do not lie in
ALP or ACTU policy.

They are the result of meetings between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard in August 2007 and major employer
organisations which resulted in the “Policy Implementation Plan”
to manipulate ALP policy adopted at the ALP National Conference
only months before.

These meetings with employers, including (ironically) the Mineral
Council and the Australian Industry Group, saw Julia Gillard declare there would continue to be a “strong cop on the beat” in the building and construction industry and over the whole workforce.

Work Choices restrictions on employment rights would continue.

This occurred behind unions’ backs while they were flat out
organising the “Your Rights At Work” Campaign in workplaces
and communities, a campaign acknowledged as one of the main
reasons for the defeat of the Howard Government.

Rudd and Gillard agreed that the Work Choices changes to the
constitutional powers of the Industrial Relations Commission would be continued so that arbitration on the merits to prevent and settle industrial disputes would not be possible by the new Fair Work Australia tribunal.

The rights and obligations of corporations and their employees
became the basis of the jurisdiction.

The Fair Work Act – not fair, won’t work

The legislation on which the new tribunal operates to deal with
industrial disputes does not give discretion or take into account
public interest…Section 418 simply says that FWA “must make an
order that the industrial action stop” if industrial action is
organised” during the life of an agreement…that is, generally in a
unionised workplace.

There is no discretion, no rights for time to prepare a case, no
allowance for expert evidence, no legal scope is given to show that
something is dangerous or against the public interest.

It must all be done quickly so work resumes on the employer’s terms…if it hasn’t been decided in two days, then the tribunal is required to make an interim order to stop industrial action.

This was what faced members
of the tribunal and the Court in the NAPLAN cases, who often
showed considerable understanding and even sympathy on the
professional issues. But it’s not about the settlement of disputes on just terms, it’s about the interests and rights of the employer.

The NAPLAN moratorium cases are living examples of how the
“master and servant” laws of the 19th century returned under
Howard’s Work Choices and Gillard’s Fair Work Act. There were
some improvements in the Fair Work Act, notably in the area of
statutory individual contracts, but the result is still worse than the
Reith legislation prior to Howard’s rush of blood in 2005 when the
Coalition gained control of the Senate.

It is history that this mistake cost Howard the 2007 election, and it
reminds unions that a lot is still to be done to achieve the objectives of the “Your Rights At Work” campaign.

The ALP needs to learn in an election year that the defeat of UK Labour had a lot to do with the loss of support from traditional constituencies like teachers who were treated with arrogance by the Blair and Brown governments.

Unions need to remind the ALP that the defeat of the Howard
Government had a lot to do with the campaign to win rights at
work, a goal which is yet to be achieved. !

Published in Search news.

yraw voting-badge

By Anita Chan (China Daily 06/18/2010)

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2010-06/18/content_9987347.htm

June 18, 2010

Workers of several factories in Guangdong province have been drawing global attention over the past couple of weeks.

First, there were reports of workers jumping to their deaths in a factory of Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer.

Around the same time, some 2,000 workers went on a two-week strike at a Honda component manufacturing factory, halting production in four Honda assembly plants.

The two were unrelated incidents but the causes were similar -
low pay, long working hours, absence of channels to redress their
grievances, and trade union branches that exist only in name.

The methods chosen by the workers to protest against their plight were very different – Foxconn workers committed suicide out of desperation, but despite consequential international publicity their co-workers did not seize the opportunity to organize themselves in protest.

The Honda workers, on the other hand, were well organized, strategic and assertive, demanding sizeable wage increases, proposing a pay scale and a career ladder, electing their own representatives, re-electing office-bearers to their union branch and demonstrating solidarity and a determination to win.

The passivity of the Foxconn workers is not
new. Migrant workers generally accept their fate, and protests only
flare up when work begins to stretch their physical tolerance to the
limit, or when their legal rights are violated and wages not paid.

In contrast, the Honda workers went on strike to demand higher wages and better working conditions, something that is unprecedented among Chinese migrant workers.

Their employer apparently had not violated
the law by paying them a wage below the legal minimum level.

They were fighting proactively for their interests rather than for their minimal legal rights.

The All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) has realized that the Honda strike is a different form of labor protest, not least because it goes to the heart of a problem – what is the union’s legitimaterole. Its impact is potentially enormous.

At Foxconn, the union did not even come forward to make a statement.

And at Honda, the union blatantly sided with the local government,
which in turn was on the side of the employer. In both places, the
workplace unions fitted the stereotypical image that migrant workers have of the official unions – that they are “useless”.

There are a handful of city-level and workplace unions in State
enterprises or large joint ventures that play an intermediary role
between the management and workers. They have softened some of the harsher edges of management practices. They are even able to informally negotiate better wages for workers, which are then
formalized by so-called “collective consultation agreements”.

In contrast, in foreign enterprises in Guangdong’s Pearl River Delta
region, union representatives (where they exist, that is) are assigned by the local governments, whose paramount interest is to attract foreign investment. These governments, historically, are former production brigades or communes or townships, which now rent out land to companies and appoint a few local union-ignorant people to run the trade union offices. Even some higher-level union officials dismiss them as “fake unions”.

The ACFTU has a herculean task ahead if it wants to fulfill its
assigned role of representing workers or, if it falls short of this
mission, to at least be able to maintain social stability. To do away
with the “fake unions”, the local trade union offices should be put
under the jurisdiction of the upper-level union instead of local
governments. The ACFTU should allow workers to elect their
representatives to their workplace union committees, too, as has
happened in a very modest number of firms. Only then can the union branches demonstrably represent workers’ interests rather that the employers’ or governments’.

Foreign investors will not easily give up the low-wage,
longer-than-normal-working-hours policy they have been practising in China. The ACFTU has had in place for many years a policy of urging workplace unions to sign collective contracts with the managements.

But the unions in China do not have much experience in dealing with capital and management. This shortcoming was recognized by an editorial in the People’s Daily on June 9.

Therefore, the ACFTU would do well to open up and exchange experiences with unions in other countries. Though this trend has already begun, the process has to be expedited if Chinese unions are to learn how to conduct collective bargaining effectively. To ensure success, the ACFTU will have to join hands with global unions as capital plays off countries against each other.

Fortunately, China’s labor laws are favorable to workers. Moreover,
the workers are willing to become members of the ACFTU – the Honda workers who went on strike now want to hold a new election to their union branch committee.

This demand should not be confused with workers seeking an alternative union, a point that is often misunderstood by foreign observers. The right to have a democratic re-election is within the purview of China’s Trade Union Law. The ACFTU will win the trust of Chinese workers by supporting such elections, which would help place labor relations on a legitimate, constructive footing. A union committee recognized by workers as their own is a pre-condition to successful collective bargaining.

Anita Chan is a research professor at the China Research Centre,
University of Technology, Sydney.
China Daily 06/18/2010

China's workers protesting

‘Position Statement of Old Revolutionaries on the Present Upsurge of Worker Action in China
by Li Chengrui, et al.’

Translator’s note: “Regarding the present upsurge of worker action in China, liberals have used their discursive power in the overseas media to frame the strike wave as a tale of workers’ struggle for ‘independent unions,’ as if this were a repetition of Solidarnosc.

What do Chinese workers want? What is the direction of the Chinese workers movement?

Those who support the movement and are concerned about the fate of the working class should provide an account matching the reality of the movement. This letter of support provides a perspective different from those predominant in the mainstream media.”

Uphold the Constitution, Respect and Ensure Human Rights,
Support Honda Workers’ Just Struggles,
Condemn Foxconn’s Inhumane Management
(June 6, 2010)

To:
General Secretary Hu Jintao and Members of the Central Party Committee,

Chairman Wu Bangguo of the People’s Congress

Premier Wen Jiabao, Vice Premiers, and Members of the State Council

Compatriots throughout China, and all Media Outlets:

There have recently occurred numerous incidents in our country that signal intensified social contradictions. According to media reports, Shenzhen-based Foxconn with Taiwanese investment have treated workers as machines (or worse, just spare parts!) to generate profit for the company and instituted an inhumane management system that destroys the health and spirit of workers to the extent that some have felt that life is not worth living.

Thirteen workers in this company have jumped to their own deaths in a short period of time.

Their tragic deaths break our hearts. It is a situation that has shocked the world!

Based in Foshan, Guangdong, Honda Auto Parts Manufacturing Co., Ltd. is a Japanese-owned company. While the capitalist owner has made a huge profit, the wages are too low to support workers’ livelihoods and the company’s union does not represent the interest of the workers. Nearly two thousand workers have gone on strike in their struggle for wage increases and to initiate a reform of the union.

But the Japanese management only agreed to a small increase, far from what the workers have asked.

Moreover, the management unjustifiably demanded workers to sign a “no strike” commitment and threatened to fire workers who take part in the strike. They indeed fired two leaders among the workers.

Other incidents in the media also show increased conflict between capital and labor. Some workers in Chongqing Qijiang Gear Transmission Co. Ltd were forced to work overtime during weekends and died from overwork. The long-term exhaustion, low pay, and management corruption led workers to strike.

Close to 1,700 workers from Taisheng Furniture Company, based in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, had a three-day strike to protest against overstress and low pay.

Over a thousand workers in the spare parts factory that supply Beijing-based Hyundai went on a strike to demand a pay raise. Workers at Lanzhou Vinylon Company went on strike because they cannot sustain a basic livelihood.

In Datong City (Shanxi Province), the state-owned enterprise Xinghuo Pharmaceutical Company was forced into bankruptcy and its laid-off workers had their numerous petitions refused. Following this, over 10,000 people staged a sit-in at the municipal government building; some of them were beaten up by armed police.

Workers on strike from Pingdingshan Cotton Spinning Mill (Henan Province) were brutally beaten by thugs brought in by police vehicles, resulting in injuries of many women workers.

In Shenzhen workers who are taking the lead to demand back pay or protect workers’ rights have had their names placed on various blacklists, which makes it difficult for them to obtain employment. These are just some of the recent incidents that illustrate the scope of the problem.

On the whole, the bourgeoisie have transferred the burdens of the economic crisis onto the workers and have waged a more fierce attack on them. The working class is forced to rise up and resist.

But as workers have become a weak social group in recent years, and with the deprivation of basic rights prescribed by our country’s constitution, they are in the sad situation where their deaths are unanswered, their strikes unsupported, and their grievances unheard.

According to our country’s constitution, particularly the four basic principles and the basic rights accorded to citizens, we issue the following appeal to address the current situation and problems.1

First, we should firmly support workers in Foshan Honda and other factories in their just struggles for survival and against oppression.

Article 33 of our country’s constitution states, “the state respects and ensures human rights.”

The right to strike is an inseparable part of human rights and is also a basic civic right prescribed by constitutions around the world.

We firmly support all reasonable demands that Honda workers have raised so as to change their harsh working conditions and low wages.

We are strongly opposed to the management’s threat to fire workers. The two leaders who were fired should be immediately given back their jobs.

We believe that our call will be supported by all those who uphold the authority of the constitution, respect human rights, and stand for justice.

Second, we should demand Foxconn and other similar enterprises to immediately stop their inhumane and harshly exploitative management methods.

We demand that the management respect workers’ integrity and dignity, obey the state laws, improve working conditions, strictly implement a 8-hour working day, and compensate workers for overtime.

They must ensure that workers are paid wages that are enough for their own sustenance and their reproduction.

This is the only way to ameliorate labor-capital conflicts and reduce or prevent the so-called “psychological” problems.

To elide the fundamental labor-capital contradiction by one-sidedly emphasizing “psychological counseling” is to intentionally cover up the contradiction and to confuse cause with effect.

It has been reported by the media that some who committed suicide also showed signs of bodily injuries caused by beating. There was also suspicion of some being pushed off buildings. These already warrant a criminal investigation.

Government agencies should deal with it seriously and find out the truth.

Third, unions should clearly stand on the side of the working class to represent and uphold the interests of the working class as prescribed by the constitution.

If any union organization ignores the constitution and “take the boss’ shillings and do the boss’ bidding,” then they will be spurned by the working class.
The leadership of the union in each enterprise must be democratically elected by its members. Relatives and representatives of the bosses should not be allowed to take any leadership position in the union.

If such a case is found, it should not be approved by the union at higher levels. The union at higher levels should instead help such enterprise-based unions organize an all-members meeting and help rebuild each enterprise’s union through democratic election.

Fourth, government at all levels, particularly the local government, should protect civic rights by strictly following the law, earnestly resolve labor-capital conflicts, and ensure citizens’ freedom of speech.

Government should administer according to the law and should prevent and stop incidents that violate basic civic rights prescribed by Article 33 of the constitution and other related regulations. It should actively deal with cases of labor-capital conflicts according to the law.

Ignoring workers’ reasonable demands either through inaction or siding with management should be resolutely corrected. In order to ensure people’s right to information and right to supervision, media should be allowed to freely and truthfully report on labor-capital conflicts and other cases and convey people’s voices without obstruction and interference.

Fifth, we call for the restoration of the working class as the leading class of our country and the re-establishment of socialist public ownership as the mainstay in our national economy.

Article 1 of our country’s constitution states, “The People’s Republic of China is a socialist state led by the working class on the basis of a worker-peasant alliance.”

Article 6 of the constitution states, “The basis of socialist economy of the People’s Republic of China is socialist public ownership of means of production, that is, all people’s ownership and laborers’ collective ownership.” “In the primitive phase of socialism, the state should build an economic system with public ownership as the mainstay and co-development of the economy through other ownership forms. Distribution should be based mainly on each according to his/her labor, with co-existence of other distributive methods.”

The Chinese Communist Party must be the real vanguard of the working class, strengthen its leadership of the people’s polity, and reinforce the people’s democratic dictatorship.

We call for a reestablishment of public ownership as the principal part of the national economy.

Only in this way can workers, peasants, and people in general become masters of enterprises and the country and truly implement a distribution system primarily based on labor contribution.

At present, it is imperative to improve working conditions and increase wages and benefits in the private economy (funded by domestic and foreign investments).

It is completely just to actively support workers’ struggles towards that end. But in so far as the capitalist privately-owned economy rather than the socialist publicly-owned economy dominates, the working class cannot change their weak position under structures of exploitation, nor the unfair distribution system and the disparity between the rich and poor.

Under this condition, it is also impossible to transform our export-oriented economy to one that is independent, self-reliant, and seeks to satisfy the material and cultural needs of people in the country.

Based on the present conditions, it will only be through a long-term struggle that the working class can restore its leadership position and the national economy can be transformed into one primarily based on public ownership.

We have the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and have the constitution, particularly the four basic principles at its core, as our legal instrument.

All members of the Communist Party and all people should abide by the constitution. The socialist modernization that we uphold fits the interest of the broadest range of people and corresponds with historical development of mankind. If all people who support socialism, love their country, and abide by the constitution are united and persistent, then through a long-term struggle, we will be able to realize our goal.

Signatories:

Li Chengrui (Former Director of the State Statistic Bureau)

Gong Xiantian (Professor of Beijing University)

Han Xiya (Former Alternate Secretary of the Secretariat of All-China Federation of Trade Unions)

Liu Rixin (Former Researcher at the State Planning Commission)

Zhao Guangwu (Professor at Beijing University)

1 The four basic principles include socialism, people’s democratic dictatorship, the leadership of the Community Party, and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.

The statement above was first published by China Study Group on 13 June 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes. The Chinese version is available at Critique & Transformation.
URL: mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/china150610.html

China's workers protesting