Strike Out

What the foreign media misses in covering China's labor unrest.

BY JEFFREY WASSERSTROM | JUNE 18, 2010

Since mid May, Chinese factory workers from several Honda plants in southern China have gone on strike, calling for higher wages, better working conditions, and, according to some accounts, the right to form their own independent labor unions. The first work stoppage was a May 17 walkout by roughly 1,800 workers at a Honda parts plant in the city of Foshan; another began in early June and involves employees at a factory in Zhongshan that makes locks for the auto company.  This week, another Honda supplier in Zhongshan shut down operations after workers went on strike for higher wages. Both Foshan and Zhongshan are in southern Guangdong province, a manufacturing hub and magnet for rural migrants across China seeking a better quality of life.

The first two plants to experience strikes are back in operation, thanks in part to pay raises and other concessions offered by Honda. However, it seems strikes are contagious. There has also been recent labor unrest in other parts of China, including a sit-in at rubber factory not far from Shanghai and a strike at a Toyota plant in the northern city of Tianjin.

Two things have been missed in much of the foreign coverage of these strikes and the government's response: the significance of workers toiling for foreign-owned companies, and the rich symbolism of the mid-May dates.

In China, the only legally recognized labor organization is the government-sponsored All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). But it has not played a central role in the current strike wave.  In fact, some Honda workers  who were dissatisfied by the settlement terms that the company offered them in late May have accused the official labor union, which is notoriously strike-averse, of siding with management.  Rumors even circulated that "thugs" (gongzei, literally "worker bandits") linked to the ACFTU had roughed up laborers at one plant.

Still, the latest round of labor unrest has been relatively free of violence -- on both sides.  The state has not used force to curtail the strikes (something it has done many times in the past); it has allowed the Chinese media more latitude than usual to cover the protests (though the mainland press has not discussed worker complaints about the ACFTU); and top government officials have even voiced support for the idea that the time has come for laborers to receive higher wages and better treatment (Premier Wen Jiabao, for example, gave a speech recently saying that, in return for their contribution to China's economic take-off, migrant workers deserved to be "cared for, protected and respected").

STR/AFP/Getty Images

 

Jeffrey Wasserstrom is professor of history at the University of California-Irvine and author of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know.

RSAFSOZ

2:09 PM ET

June 20, 2010

not yet

Chinese people did not wake up yet, no Chinese government, compared with the actual danger. sikis sex

 

FIRST ADVISOR

1:14 AM ET

June 22, 2010

Strike Out, by Jeffery Wasserstrom

If I was in some kind of feverish delirium, and handed this in as a report to one of my clients, they would, (a) refuse to pay me anything for it, and, (b) probably never call me again.

The differences described between the Chinese and international media, purported the theme or subject of the work, were trivial and insignificant. Zero mention was made of the need to prevent copycat strikes, that could easily become uncontrollable, justifying the censorship and self-censorship of the Chinese media, as preventing copycat actions often does in the USA. Either there is no conclusion to the report, or Prof. Wasserstrom believes a proper conclusion is a series of meaningless rhetoric questions, an advertising plug for his own occupation, and one sentence of a vaguely ominous, untenable and poorly supported threat of the sky possibly falling in the near future.

A high school student writing for the school newsletter could do better than this waste of time. For instance, the visible evidence is persuasive that the State Council cannot back down from statements made bolstering labor conditions and management improvements, and the authorities cannot use force or unjust law to prevent China's workers from forming their own new unions. I think that's a given.

Another reasonable conclusion is that 12-hour, six-day shifts are a major concern, especially combined with the stress of constant arguments to receive overtime pay. Stress is what leads to suicides, not low pay. Low-paid workers in America don't commonly commit suicide. Finally, it should be fairly obvious to everyone by now that factory workers with a high school certificate are not university graduates, and they are incapable of using cell phones and the internet like tools of organization as university graduates could, without concentrated training from some people, whether they be family, friends, or organized leaders. Across the vast terrain of China, that development would be a daunting ambition, that could take decades.

Prof. Wasserstrom needs to carry a microcomputer with electrodes that gives him an escalating shock every time he speaks or types the word 'even', and he needs to learn to not use 'certainly' and 'definitely' within 10 words of each other. The terrifying aspect of this report is the image that he lectures like he writes. I'm positive his students keep falling asleep.

 

EUGENE ONEIL

1:44 AM ET

July 18, 2010

Labor Unrest In China

As its economy continues to grow and income and social disparities become increasingly manifest, China is experiencing increased labor unrest. The Washington Post newspaper recently reported that in June, a strike turned into a protest at the Futai Textile Factory, located near the city of Guangzhou. lexmark refill ink Witnesses reported that several hundred police fired tear gas and swung truncheons against three-thousand workers. According to the Post, the workers chanted demands for higher pay and "pelted cars and buses with rocks, bricks and watermelon rinds." Unrest has grown in recent years in part because of mismanagement, corruption, and the government's failure to raise living standards for the poorest Chinese. In addition, Chinese workers are denied basic rights or mechanisms to resolve grievances. xerox compatible ink Among other things, China's government refuses to permit the establishment of independent, free, and democratic labor unions that could serve as meaningful channels for workers' grievances. These grievances include forced overtime, unpaid wages, and other labor rights violations.