Labor Activists and the New Working Class in China

Strike Leaders' Struggles

P. Leung

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137483508
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic Policy
• Index: Economics

This project provides an in-depth study of the role of worker-activist leaders in industrial strikes in China, a country where labor rights face significant challenges from state and industry suppression and by current lack of formal organization.

1

Understanding Labor Activism in China

Background

Class struggle is developing and intensifying in China. It has become more and more common for Chinese workers in the private sector to make use of factory strikes to advance their rights and benefits, and such protests are also becoming more confrontational. It is well acknowledged that both state and capitalist suppression against labor struggles are strong and prevalent in China, and there is no democratic workers’ union and few working-class organizations actively supporting these worker struggles. However, in spite of such unfavorable conditions, we still witnessed an outburst of industrial strikes in Chinese factories in recent years. By launching factory strikes as a way to challenge institutional suppression, the Chinese working class has constituted a powerful force to affect not only business operations but also the policy development of the Chinese state.

An Outburst of Factory Strikes in China

The workforce in China is the largest in the world, reaching 769 million in 2013.¹ In the last three decades, the export-oriented and labor-intensive industrialization strategy of China has subjected Chinese workers to one of the most exploitative labor regimes in modern history. Egregious labor violations are well documented in academic and journalist accounts (Lee and Shen 2011). Earlier literatures revealed that the new working class laboring in these production facilities were rather docile and obedient (Chan 2003). In earlier years, many worker protests in China were related to “privatization disputes” that were triggered during the process of and after the restructuring of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China (CLB 2008). However, in recent years, labor struggle is no longer uncommon for the new Chinese working class in the private sector. Chan (2010) reported that a new tidal wave of strikes has started in this group of workers since 2004. Researches have also pointed out that the protests of the new working class have followed a different trajectory from that of the veteran state workers in the North (Lee 2007).

In the past decade, it has become more common for the new Chinese working class to mobilize individual and collective actions to fight for their rights. There have been tremendous media reports covering the resistance of workers in the form of committing suicide, self-mutilation, or violent assault against employers. Besides, more and more workers are aware of their rights enshrined in the laws. They tend to pursue and defend their lawful rights by means of filing lawsuits against their employers. Collective struggle is also a commonly seen strategy for workers to fight for their rights. Forms of resistance include signing collective petition letters, work stoppage, strikes, blocking roads to local government departments, and street demonstrations. It is observed that labor activism in China has been undergoing a “radicalization” process in which strikes, street actions, and demonstrations are increasingly used (Leung and Pun 2009). Their protests tend to involve more people and endure longer. More high-profile actions in the streets are carried out. Chinese workers’ collective actions are consistently becoming more frequent and growing in proportion.

Although comprehensive figures on the number of strikes and worker protests are not made public, there is ample evidence that migrant workers are becoming more proactive in defending their rights. The Guangdong Social Science Academy conducted a study in 2005 researching six major city areas in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), in which it reports that “mass incidents in PRD are consistently increasing in number and in scale. They are becoming more organized and confrontational, sometimes protesters even impinge government buildings and ended in a violent clash with police. Labor disputes are the leading cause of such mass incidents” (Leung 2007). Such a view is also shared by the research findings of China Labour Bulletin (CLB), an independent labor NGO based in Hong Kong. According to the report “Unity Is Strength: The Workers’ Movement in China 2009–2011” published by CLB in 2011, several case examples showed the trend of intensification of factory struggles in recent years. For example, in the Dalian Development Area, between late May and the end of August 2010, a wave of strikes hit 73 companies, including 48 Japanese-owned enterprises. As many as 70,000 workers took part in the strikes, all demanding higher wages. In May 2010, the world-renowned 17-day general strike happened at the Nanhai Honda automotive component factory in southern Guangdong. Following that strike, a string of more than 20 protests and strikes occurred at auto parts suppliers in the PRD region in the two months from May 17, 2010 to July 16, 2010. The CLB report (2011:11) estimated that there were around 30,000 strikes and collective worker protests in China in 2009, and these numbers remained consistently high in the last two or three years.

Despite numerous barriers to the collective self-organization of workers, actions such as factory-level strikes, work stoppage, collective bargaining on wages, launching collective complaints, or resorting to media exposure or state apparatus are increasingly used by migrant workers to express their dissatisfaction and to demand change. Strikes and walkouts have become very common forms of extralegal means of collective struggle for Chinese workers (Pun and Xu 2011). The type of disputes has shifted from passive complaints against wage deduction and abusive management practices to more proactive claims demanding wage increase and reduction in working hours. In certain cases, workers even demand for the rights to organize an independent union. In the process of struggles, some workers are shrewd enough to seek external support and assistance from the media, lawyers, as well as civil society organizations. In other words, workers no longer resort to individual legal claims only to defend their rights; they have become more aware of organizing and mobilizing their fellow workers and even external forces in order to assert and achieve their collective demands. Workers have begun to realize that only by protecting their group interests can they protect their individual interests.

The impact of labor actions actively initiated by the new Chinese working class should not be underestimated. The emergence of factory strikes in recent years has propelled the management in many factories throughout China to remove various exploitative managerial policies, provide higher wages and better working conditions, and offer legal contracts to the majority of the workforce. However, the influence of workers’ collective action is not restricted only to the factory level. It also has significant policy-level impacts. It can be reasonably argued that the collective actions of Chinese workers have become a persistent external pressure that influences the government’s labor policies at both local and central levels. Labor resistance has helped promote the enforcement of existing labor laws, and has led to improvement in working conditions. Even though there was no labor movement directly demanding for new labor law legislation, as Silver and Lu (2009) point out, the threat of “ungovernability” posed by “unprecedented series of [strikes] and walkouts” in PRD factories in 2004 had been the key factor propelling the Chinese central government toward introducing the pro-labor new Labor Contract Law that went into effect in January 2008. CLB (2009) also states that the Labor Contract Law, together with several other national and local labor laws implemented in this period, represented concessions by the government to worker discontent and therefore marked a victory for the struggles of workers over the previous decade.

In spite of the state-cum-capital suppression, workers successfully induced changes to state policy and capitalists’ management behavior. Other than the pro-labor legislations in 2008, the ideological making of “building a harmonious society” promoted by the Beijing government can also explain the context behind the policy momentum of increasing minimum wage standards. Such phenomenon is actually in response to the sprouting labor unrest of the new working class in recent years.

Yet to Be an Organized Labor Movement

The new Chinese working class is in the process of transforming itself, as evidenced by the intensifying class struggle. However, even though protests initiated by workers in the private sector are getting more frequent and confrontational, without underestimating the impact of such struggles, these factory strikes are not without limitations. It is undeniable that the labor activism in China is still not yet an organized labor movement. Most of the strikes launched by workers are indeed (1) short-lived, (2) fragmented, (3) without association, and (4) limited in scope.

Worker strikes in China are usually weakly organized, difficult to sustain, and locally confined. Labor sociologist Lee (2007) points out that such mounting labor unrest in China is localized and for the most part factory-based action and disruption, with an eye to generating pressure on their management or local officials rather than creating lateral associations among workers. It is observed that most collective actions organized by migrant workers are generally only spontaneous reactions to specific violations of workers’ rights, most commonly the nonpayment of wages, or are triggered by specific management actions that unleashed long pent-up anger and frustration at low pay, poor or dangerous working conditions, and harassment and exploitation by managers or their agents (CLB 2009). Cross-factory and cross-region struggles, which are common actions for labor movements in other countries, actually seldom happen in migrant workers’ struggles, and there are no sustained contentious collective actions launched for workers’ rights and interests in general.

Workers do not form their own independent organizations for their struggles. There is a large labor organization in China, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), proclaiming a membership of over 280 million.² But this legally sanctioned trade union performs a role of backing up government policies rather than challenging or resisting the dominance of the state and capital over workers. This official union is obviously not taking up the role of organizing and resisting capital and state dominance, and we find no sign of any emergence or existence of independent membership-based worker organization in PRD. Because of a lack of genuine worker organizations directly engage in labor organizing, there is little systemic documentation or dissimilation of the process and experiences of these collective struggles. Struggle experiences are therefore largely accumulated from individual workers—through both organizers and participants, and their personal networks, but not in any institutionalized or systematic form.

As there is no formal representation of workers’ interests, negotiations are largely confined to individual factory level. Challenges to the regional or industrial-level capital or state agents are rarely seen. Most collective actions of workers do not seek to challenge the local nor the central government with regard to labor policies. Worker protests demanding general labor rights, such as the right to strike, freedom of association, or new labor legislation, were hardly seen. At this point of time, we still saw no collective worker actions that aim at making structural or institutional changes for wider class interests. A study by Stalley and Yang (2006) shows that incidents such as strikes or protests might be an indication of an impending or even ongoing social movement; it alone does not constitute a labor movement. Incidents of labor conflicts are numerous and widely distributed, but they may remain spasmodic and uncoordinated. It is clear that worker protests in China have not yet developed into an organized labor movement that survives and broadens beyond an immediate goal.

It can be concluded that class consciousness among the new Chinese working class is on the rise, but still remains limited. The existence of labor resistance does not necessarily imply that Chinese migrant workers have already become a class “for itself”. Karl Marx states that exploitation in capitalist production leads to workers’ struggles within the workplaces for improvement of working conditions and wages, and the consciousness formed from these experiences gives rise to workers’ organization and political struggles based on class interests. Economic struggles are seen in contemporary China, but class organizing is clearly absent. Collective actions launched by workers are largely not sustained and they are characterized by inter-regionally coordinated contentious actions. Undeniably, there are some fundamental weaknesses in the worker protest actions that prevent them from transforming into an organized labor movement to challenge the dominance of capital in the workplace, community, and society. More obviously, labor unrest is still confined to sporadic and scattered fights for material interests instead of being an organized political struggle. In this stage, the Chinese working class can only passively achieve minor gains and favors endowed by the ruling class. To gauge the potential impacts of the working class on future social, political, and economic changes, a holistic understanding of the current organizing and mobilizing mechanism of Chinese workers and its trend in the future is essential.

The Puzzles We Are Facing

Worker struggles have been developing and intensifying in China, but they are not yet an organized labor movement. There are three primary questions we need to understand:

(1) What are the major mechanisms that lead to the collective mobilization of factory workers in strike actions? More specifically, without an organization, how can an action be organized?

(2) Why these strike actions can be made possible? To be more specific, without worker unions, and in the face of state and management repression, what kinds of conditions enable these strike actions to emerge and be sustained?

(3) Why these strike actions have not yet transformed into an organized labor movement?

Other than these three questions, the following subquestions will also be answered in this book: Are these collective actions of workers really spontaneous and uncoordinated in nature? Where do the organizing resources come from? Does the legal intervention approach in defending labor rights imply workers’ reluctance to engage in direct confrontational actions? How can genuine leadership make a difference to labor actions? How can the workers accumulate their struggle experience and achievements? Furthermore, what are the agency factors advancing and constraining the development of class struggles of the new Chinese working class? What are the potentials and limitations of the current model of labor struggle for bringing about an organized labor movement in the future?

Existing Explanations Are Not Satisfactory

State repression, internal fragmentation of the working class, workers’ lack of class consciousness, workers’ lack of resources, lack of leadership, state’s skillful use of benefits and legal system to ameliorate workers’ misery are often described as major impediments for the development of the labor movement in China (Cai 2006; Chan 2008; Perry 1993; Pun 2005). However, the existence of numerous labor protests and strikes shows that workers can overcome at least some of these impediments. Exploitative working conditions could induce labor struggles. State repression is often regarded as a key factor that limits worker struggles in China from developing into an organized labor movement (Fan 2004). Formation of independent worker organizations is forbidden by the Chinese authoritarian state. However, the political forbiddance alone cannot explain the weaknesses inherent in worker organizations. Historical experiences in other countries show us that the freedom of association was a result rather than a precondition of worker and social movements. In the case of China, the question remains: Can an organized labor movement be formed even if the barrier on independent organizing is lifted? The lack of an organized labor movement in China cannot be explained solely by political constraints.

Kevin J. O’Brien: Rightful Resistance

The notion of “rightful resistance” advanced by O’Brien (1996) is applied to explain the kind of popular resistance that aggrieved citizens employ to challenge government commitments and established values in order to persuade ruling elites to support their claims. The concept of “rightful resistance” is derived from research on popular resistance in rural China and then applied to explain similar forms of resistance in other settings. For O’Brien (1996:33):

Rightful resistance is a form of popular contention that: 1) operates near the boundary of an authorized channel, 2) employs the rhetoric and commitments of the powerful to curb political or economic power, 3) hinges on locating and exploiting divisions among the powerful.

Rightful resisters engage in disruptive collective actions and social protests in order to voice their discontents, but they do not challenge the legitimacy of the political economic system. In other words, they do not elicit an open defiance of the authorities. Open confrontation and unlawful social actions that might “weaken their standing and alienate their backers” are usually avoided. Instead, rightful resisters normally “frame their claims with reference to protections implied in ideologies or conferred by policymakers.” The contentious actions of rightful resisters usually combine legal tactics with political pressure; they assert their claims largely through approved channels and “use a regime’s policies and legitimating myths to justify their defiance.” Because rightful resisters need to seek the attention of the elites, their resistances are invariably noisy, public, and open (O’Brien 1996:34). Even though rightful resisters uphold and restrict their claims within existing social policies and laws, O’Brien (1996:54) reminds us protesters may also “graduate from combating illegal mistreatment to combating legal mistreatment.” Proactive protesters have the potential to assert new rights by staking their claims to higher-level people’s democratic principles and progressive institutional models in other sectors adopted by the party-state.

The notion of rightful resistance explains well the mechanism of popular resistance of rural China in the past two decades. As current worker resistance in China is mostly economic struggles rather tha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1   Understanding Labor Activism in China
• 2   The Macro-Setting: The New Working Class under Chinese State Capitalism
• 3   The Micro-Setting: Strikes of Jewelry Workers in PRD
• 4   The Organizing Mechanism of the Strikes
• 5   Leading Strikes in China: The Critical Role of Labor Activists
• 6   The “Citizen Strike”: Sustaining the Organizing Core
• 7   Conclusion: The Way toward an Organized Labor Movement
• Appendix   Background of the14 Jewelry Worker Activists
• Notes
• References
• Index