Strikes in China's export industries in comparative perspective

China Journal

Volumn , Issue 65, 2011, Pages 27-51

  Chan, Anita ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMPARATIVE STUDY; EXPORT; INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT;

CHINA;

EID: 79551665895     PISSN: 13249347     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/tcj.65.25790556     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. For further reasons that these two regions and Vietnam and China as a whole are worth comparing, see William S. Turley and Brantley Womack, "Asian Socialism's Open Doors: Guangzhou and Ho Chi Minh City", in Transforming Asian Socialism: China and Vietnam Compared, edited by Anita Chan, Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet and Jonathan Unger (Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999, and St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1999), pp. 44-73.
2. Liu Jianqiang, "Gongren bagong buduan, yuanzi dui xin laogongfa wujie jiashen" (Workers' Strikes Non-stop Due to Misinterpretation of the New Contract Law), Zhongguo Qiyejia (China Entrepreneur), 14 February 2008.
3. See Benedict J. Kerkvliet, "Workers' Protests in Contemporary Vietnam", in Anita Chan (ed.), Labour in Vietnam (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Press, forthcoming 2011), Chapter 6, Table 6.1.
4. "So vu dinh cong nam 2009 chi bang 30% nam 2008" (Number of Strikes in 2009 Are Just 30% of 2008), Laodong, 5 January 2010.
5. "Vietnam Records 200 Strikes in January-June: Ministry", Investment in Vietnam, www.investinvietnam.vn/Default.aspx?ctl=Article&tID= 0&pID=120&aID=1931 (accessed 24 July 2010).
6. Jiang Huizhen, "Strike Waves in Vietnam: Some Taiwanese Businesses Consider Divesting", Zhongguo shibao (China Times Daily), 1 August 2006.
7. Lianhe zaobao wangxun (United Daily News Net), 29 October 2007.
8. Anita Chan and Wang Hongzen, "The Impact of the State on Workers' Conditions: Comparing Taiwanese Factories in China and Vietnam", Pacific Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 4 (Winter 2004), pp. 629-46.
9. Most of these interviews with management were arranged by Wang Hongzen, and the two of us carried out the interviews together in both countries.
10. Shenzhen laodong zhengyi zhongcai wang (Shenzhen Industrial Dispute Arbitration Network), www.szlaodong.com/laodongzhengyidiaojiezhongcaifajieshi/, accessed 15 April 2010.
11. See, for example, Zhongguo xinwen zhoukan (China News Weekly), 26 November 2004;
12. Baoxun (Comprehensive News), 2 November 2004;
13. CSDN net, 18 January 2006; China Labor Watch, 28 August 2004, 1 January 2005.
14. Zhongguo xinwen zhoukan, 26 November 2004.
15. One of the lawyers was Gao Zhicheng, a well-known human rights lawyer who, for his efforts in a different case, was sentenced in December 2006 to three years' imprisonment for incitement. After he was released, he disappeared into detention again in March 2010.
16. The minimum wage was different for other regions: 790,000 Dong ($50) for Hai Phong, Ha Long, Da Nang, Nha Trang, Vung Tau and Can Tho, and 710,000 ($45) for other areas.
17. Wang Hongzen, "Asian Transnational Corporations and Labor Rights: Vietnamese Trade Unions in Taiwan-invested Companies", Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 56, No. 1 (2005), pp. 43-53.
18. For a comprehensive discussion of the causes leading to strikes in Vietnam, see Benedict J. Kerkvliet, "Workers' Protests in Contemporary Vietnam".
19. Martin J. Mauro, "Strikes as a Result of Imperfect Information", Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 35, No. 4 (1982), pp. 522-38.
20. Chris King-Chi Chan, The Challenge of Labour in China: Strikes and the Changing Labour Regime in Global Factories (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010), pp. 82-121.
21. For example, "Guangdong Foshan subai yuangong bumang Jiangxin dulu wu xiaoshi" (Several Hundred Workers in Guangdong Foshan Dissatisfied with A Drop in Wage Went to Block Roads), Yangcheng Evening News, 27 December 2008.
22. For a discussion on Chinese workers' lack of comprehension of the relationship between working hours and wages, see Anita Chan and Kaxton Siu, "Analyzing Exploitation: The Mechanisms Underpinning Low Wages and Excessive Overtime in Chinese Export Factories", Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 42, No. 3 (June 2010), pp. 167-90.
23. See also Pun Ngai and Lu Huilin, "A Culture of Violence: The Labor Subcontracting System and Collective Action by Construction Workers in Post-Socialist China", The China Journal, No. 64 (July 2010), pp. 143-58.
24. For example, "Yuangong jiti shangfang tao gongzi, zhengfu juche gongdao ping minfen" (Employees Collectively Ask for Wages, The Government Adjudicates to Quell People's Wrath), Guangdong laodong bao (Guangdong Labor Newspaper), 1 March 1999.
25. "Laboring over Workers' Rights", Beijing Review, 25 December 2003, pp. 46-47.
26. Guangzhou Daily, 14 August 2007, p. 2.
27. Simon Clark, "The Changing Character of Strikes in Vietnam", Post-Communist Economics, Vol. 18, No. 3 (2006), pp. 351-52.
28. Anita Chan and Wang Hongzen, "The Impact of the State on Workers' Conditions".
29. Agence France Presse, 18 October 2008; Beijing Times, 18 October 2008.
30. Information from a telephone conversation with a veteran staff member of a Shenzhen labor NGO, 3 November 2010. Despite the accommodations, official violence still sometimes flared up and ended with arrests. See, for example, Nanfang dushi bao (Southern City Daily), 26 November 2008.
31. This was exactly what happened in the two cases of strikes described in Chris King-Chi Chan and Pun Ngai, "The Making of a New Working Class? A Study of Collective Actions of Migrant Workers in South China", The China Quarterly, No. 198 (June 2009), pp. 287-303. Workers knew that they would not get the support of the local government and had to take to the streets and blocking roads, triggering a large police presence that resulted in violence and arrests.
32. See, for instance, Ching Kwan Lee, Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), Chapter 5.
33. My contacts at grass-roots Chinese labor NGOs observed that this is the general situation.
34. Feng Chen, "Trade Unions and the Quadripartite Interactions in Strike Settlement in China", The China Quarterly, No. 201 (March 2010), pp. 104-24.
35. Zhongguo jingying wang (Chinese Management Net), 20 September 2010.
36. Don Lee, "Multinationals Take a Longer View of Vietnam", Los Angeles Times, 11 April 2009.
37. Edmund Wehrle, "'Awakening the Conscience of the Masses': The Vietnamese Confederation of Labour, 1947-75", in Anita Chan (ed.), Labour in Vietnam, Chapter 2.
38. For instance, Jiang Mingdao, former chair of the Shanghai Municipal General Trade Unions, whom I had the opportunity to meet in the early 1990s, was fighting at that time to get the Shanghai government to index wages against inflation.
39. Anita Chan and Irene Nørlund, "Vietnamese and Chinese Labor Regimes: On the Road to Divergence", The China Journal, No. 40 (July 1998), p. 184.
40. Anita Chan and Irene Nørlund, "Vietnamese and Chinese Labor Regimes", p. 184.
41. Anita Chan, Richard Madsen and Jonathan Unger, Chen Village: Revolution to Globalization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), Chapter 15.
42. Anita Chan, "Unionizing Wal-Mart's Chinese Stores", in Anita Chan (ed.), Wal-Mart in China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, forthcoming 2011).
43. China Labor News Translations (CLNT]), "Promising Wal-Mart Chair Resigns Over Collective Contract Negotiations", 22 September 2008, www.clntranslations.org/article/34/promising-walmart-trade-union-chair-resigns- over-collective-contract-negotiations (accessed 14 April 2010).
44. Lee Chang-Hee, "Recent Industrial Relations Developments in China and Viet Nam: The Transformation of Industrial Relations in East Asian Transition Economies", Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 48, No. 3 (2006), pp. 415-29.
45. Lee Chang-Hee, "Recent Industrial Relations Developments in China and Viet Nam: The Transformation of Industrial Relations in East Asian Transition Economies", Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 48, No. 3 (2006), pp. 415-29, Ibid.
46. For example, Radio Voice of Vietnam, "New Model Needed to Ensure Labor Harmony" (http://english.vovnews.vn?Utilities?PrintVietn.aspx?ID= 99832), 12 February 2009, accessed 22 April 2009.
47. Jie Shen and John Benson, "Tripartite Consultation in China: A First Step Towards Collective Bargaining", International Labour Review, Vol. 147, Nos. 2-3 (2008), pp. 232-48.
48. Chang Kai, "Gongren jiti yishi yu laodong guanxi zhuanxing" (Workers' Collective Consciousness and Changing Industrial Relations), http://new.21ccom.net/articles/zgyj/ggzc/article-2010091819365.html (accessed 5 November 2010).
49. Ronald Brown, "China Labour Dispute Resolution", Foundation for Law, Justice and Society, 2008, p. 1 (www.fljs.org/uploads/documents/ Brown%231%23.pdf) (accessed 6 November 2010).
50. The great increase in cases may also have been caused by other factors such as the Contract Law that came into effect at the same time. Ye Minghua, "Shenzhen shi shangbangnian laodong zhongcai'an bizeng 243%" (In First Half of This Year Shenzhen City Labor Arbitration Cases Jumped 243%), Chinese Labor Dispute Net, 13 August 2008, www.btophr.com/b-article/19514.html, accessed 23 October 2008.
51. Van Thu Ha, "Viet Nam", Rights for Two-Thirds of Asia: Asian Labor Law Review 2008 (Hong Kong: Asia Monitor Resource Centre, 2008), pp. 224-26.
52. Scholars writing about "rights defense" in China tend not to make this distinction. For instance, Yongshun Cai, "Social Conflicts and Modes of Action in China", The China Journal, No. 59 (January 2008), pp. 89-109;
53. Hualing Fu and Richard Cullen, Weiquan (Rights Protection) Lawyering in an Authoritarian State: Building a Culture of Public-Interest Lawyering, The China Journal, 59, January, 2008, 111-27.
54. There are, however, signs that the problem of wage arrears has improved, partly because the government has begun to take a stronger stand against it. This is based on observation by a Shenzhen labor NGO staff member.
55. Chris King-Chi Chan and Pun Ngai, "The Making of a New Working Class?".
56. Aaron Glantz and Ngoc Nguyen, "Happy Meals, Unhappy Workers", Corpwatch, www.corpwatch.org/print-article.php?id=13358 (accessed 15 March 2006).
57. Notably, state guidelines require each enterprise to develop its own salary tables and scale, to be filed with the local government department for approval (Van Thu Ha, "Viet Nam", p. 222).
58. Information from a human resource manager of a large Taiwanese supplier (Interview conducted by Wang Hongzen 30 November 2006 in Taiwan).
59. China Labor News Translations, "A New Precedent: Shenzhen Furniture Factory Worker Wins Two Years of Overtime Back Pay", November 2007;
60. "Shenzhen Labor Activist Attacked", December 2007; "Labor NGOs in Guangdong Province", January 2008. All available at http://www.clntranslations.org/archive/, accessed 2 December 2009.
61. China Labor News Translations, "Chinese Labor NGOs and Free Legal Services Always in a Precarious Situation", January 2010, http://www.clntranslations.org/archive/, accessed 22 October 2008.
62. For instance, in 2006 workers in a Danish-owned firm in Shandong Province went on strike to set up a workplace union. The workers had to struggle with the management, the district government and the trade union for several years, until the owner closed down the factory. This long story is documented in China Labour News Translations, in "Workers Fight to Save their Union Activists", 16 October 2008;
63. and "Ole Wolff Union Struggle, Part Two", 10 March 2009, at http://www.clntranslations.org/archive/, accessed 17 November 2010. Another well-documented case involved Uniden, a Japanese firm.
64. See, for example, South China Morning Post, 21 April 2005.
65. "Bentian bagong zuixin jinzhang - yuangong beida" (New Development with the Honda Strike - Workers Beaten Up), 30 May 2010 at http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/1297177460, accessed 2 June 2010.
66. Norihiko Shirouzu, "Honda Offers Strikers in China 24% Pay Boost", Wall Street Journal, 31 May 2010.
67. John Chan, "China: Honda Lock Strike Continues", 15 June 2010 (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/chin-j15.shtml), accessed 24 June 2010.
68. This information is based on oral reports by four Zhongshan University graduate students in October 2010 on what happened at the plant after the workers had returned to work. The students had been to the plant several times between June and October and had interviewed quite a few workers, the local unions and some officials.