From Iron Rice Bowl to Informalization: Markets, Workers, and the State in a Changing China

Chapter 8. “Where There Are Workers, There Should Be Trade Unions”: Union Organizing in the Era of Growing Informal Employment

Chapter 8 “Where There Are Workers, There Should Be Trade Unions” Union Organizing in the Era of Growing Informal Employment Mingwei Liu The growing informalization of the Chinese labor market (Mary Gallagher, Ching Kwan Lee, and Sarosh Kuruvilla, chap. 1 in this volume) has not only deeply affected workers but also seriously challenged the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), the single official workers’ organization in China. The extreme difficulty of organizing informal workers had resulted in a significant decline in union density in the 1990s.According to Mingwei Liu (2009), Chinese union density declined from 39.60 percent in 1990 to 26.27 percent in 1999; and in the privately owned enterprises (POEs) and township and village enterprises (TVEs), where there were a large number of informal workers, union density was merely 3.43 and 1.96 percent, respectively, in 1999. To respond to the changing labor market and to revitalize its role in the workplace, the ACFTU launched a nationwide organizing campaign in 2000 with the principle, “Where there are workers, there should be trade unions” (All-China Federation of Trade Unions [ACFTU] 2001). By the end of 2009, unions had been set up in 92 percent of the Fortune 500 companies operating in China, even in such notoriously anti-union companies asWal-Mart, and 80.15 million migrant workers, many of whom were employed informally, had become union members (ACFTU 2010).This apparent success occurred against a backdrop of steadily increasing Chinese union membership,which went from 87 million members in 1999 to 226 million members in 2009, reversing the marked decline in the 1980s and 1990s.The Labor Contract Law that went into effect on January 1, 2008, further reaffirms and strengthens a union role in the workplace. Moreover, based on recent union and labor legislation changes in 158 Liu Guangzhou and Shenzhen, even the China Labor Bulletin, the mouthpiece of a Hong Kong based labor nongovernmental agency (NGO) that used to be the biggest critic of the ACFTU, claimed that “a crucial turning point in the history of China’s trade union movement” had been reached (China Labor Bulletin [CLB] 2008). Nevertheless, in general, observers are still skeptical about the ability of the ACFTU to carry out reforms and to organize successfully. Indeed, given that independent trade unions are banned in China, union organizing there actually means setting up ACFTU branches bureaucratically at various levels, with the fundamental goal of not so much protecting workers ’ rights as strengthening the social control of Chinese Communist Party (CCP).Two widely reported recent labor-management conflicts—the strike at a Honda parts factory in Foshan and a series of worker suicides in Foxconn in Shenzhen—reflect the marginalization of management-controlled workplace unions in China (Barboza 2010; Bradsher and Barboza 2010). Despite this, organizing official unions does have a significant impact on the future of the Chinese labor movement in general and on the survival of the ACFTU in particular. More important, there are growing local variations in organizing within the ACFTU that may indicate the beginnings of a gradual and bottom-up transformation of Chinese trade unionism under the still stable communist authoritarian regime. Clearly union organizing in China is increasing.Yet not all the recent increases in union density can be ascribed to the national policies of the ACFTU. In my research,1 I found that the organizing strategies of regional unions (difang gonghui; see fig. 8.1 for a diagram of the simplified structure of the ACFTU)2 have been critical to the recent organizing successes noted in the media. However , not all the organizing successes reported are real successes because the actual organizing and bargaining outcomes differ based on both the strategy of the regional union and the nature of the employer response.A key implication of my findings is that it is important in today’s Chinese context to focus on changes in organizing approaches at the lower echelons of the ACFTU rather than treating it as a monolithic top-down organization with a unified strategy. Three Patterns of Union Organizing and Bargaining in China How can we best understand recent union organizing in China? How do the newly established trade unions perform? Have they made progress in improving working conditions, or is the recent organizing campaign just a bureaucratic and ineffective response of the ACFTU to the new environment? In my research , I found three patterns of union organizing and bargaining in China, [18.225.209.95] Project MUSE (2024-04...