EOpriv: NYTimes.com Article: Workers' Rights Suffering as China Goes Capitalist

[Dan Bell <dbell@kent.edu>]

http://email.nytimes.com/email/email.jsp?eta5

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Workers' Rights Suffering as China Goes Capitalist

By ERIK ECKHOLM



DONGGUAN, China — The two young women were strolling through a
sterile factory zone in China's roaring southeast, enjoying a rare
day off. "Trade union?" they repeated, puzzled, when asked about
workers' rights. "What's that?"

 Migrants from the same distant village, the women typified the
tens of millions who have flocked to China's coast to work in
factories that are mainly foreign-owned, producing electronic
goods, clothing, toys and other products for export.

 And like many of their fellow migrants, they are willing to work
12 hours a day or more for a pittance, living 12 to a room and
putting aside any questions about legal rights.

 One of the pair, Ms. Fu, who said she was 20 but looked 16, said
that in her toy-packing job she cleared $24 to $36 a month,
"depending on overtime." With orders recently down, she said, she
has been working only 10 hours a day and has started getting some
Sundays off.

 Ms. Fu, who declined to give her full name, said she was not aware
that her wages and hours violated local labor regulations. National
law sets a basic work week of up to 44 hours with at least one day
off, and the local minimum wage is $48 a month, plus higher rates
for overtime. "But we couldn't do anything about it anyway," she
added with a shrug.

 With the collapse of the state industries that once dominated
China, tens of millions of the workers who were long portrayed as
official masters of the Communist nation have been virtually cast
aside.

 Their official Communist-run trade union federation has often been
little more than a bystander as the old companies are dissolved or
sold.

 As private and foreign companies race ahead in newer industrial
centers like this one in the southeastern province of Guangdong, a
new kind of working class is emerging, one dominated by rural
migrants who have no tradition of unions or the security once
enjoyed in state enterprises.

 A large majority of the new companies have ignored the requirement
to unionize or have created puppet bodies, according to Chinese and
foreign labor experts.

 "The working class of China has been marginalized," said He
Qinglian, a social critic and author of "The Pitfall of China's
Development."

 For the Chinese leaders, who are trying to engineer the transition
to a market economy, both the old and new arenas of labor have been
sources of social instability. Already thousands of worker
protests, wildcat strikes and other disputes are reported each year
over everything from unpaid pensions to corruption to intolerable
hazards.

 Through rapid economic development, the government is hoping to
grow out of the problem as the benefits of a restructured economy
gradually spread. In the meantime President Jiang Zemin has taken
the step of trying to broaden the party's base by allowing in
capitalists, which some Marxists say will only further diminish the
officially hallowed status of workers.

 For now, inequality is growing fast, and in the years ahead, as
China further opens its markets under World Trade Organization
rules, labor strife — and questions from abroad about fair labor
practices — are likely to increase.

 The trade union federation includes many officials who yearn to
speak more forcefully for underdog workers. But a blizzard of
examples, many from the federation's own newspaper, shows that
unions are hamstrung by tight political control and by their
mandate simply to help workers adjust to change.

 The plight of workers and the constricted role of unions have also
become a subject of formal international inquiry now that China has
ratified the International Convention on Social, Economic and
Cultural Rights, which explicitly calls for free labor unions.

 China exempted itself from that clause, arguing that its
federation of unions already speaks for workers. All efforts by
workers to create independent groups have been crushed, with a
number of organizers sent to prison or labor camps.

 The minister of labor and social security, Zhang Zuiji, speaking
earlier this year, said China's workers enjoyed free association
"in conformity with Chinese conditions" and that "no one has been
detained or imprisoned for legitimate trade union activities."

 "All the rights and interests of workers have been protected," the
minister said, adding that the government was still working to
bolster the social security system and strengthen the role of
unions in helping laid-off workers adapt.

 Indeed, the All-China Trade Union Federation is now struggling to
regain members and to entrench itself in the foreign-owned and
private companies that have become the leading edge of China's
growth.

 In the 1990's union membership fell from 130 million to perhaps 90
million by 1999, according to a union official who spoke on
condition of anonymity. With a new campaign, the federation hopes
to sign up 20 million new members this year. Still, only about half
of the nation's work force today is in unions, the official said,
and a much lower portion of workers in private and foreign
companies.

 The trade union federation declined a request for an interview but
in a written response said it was working to increase union
coverage in private companies.

 "At present, violations of employees' rights in private firms are
to some extent widespread," the federation wrote, with problems
including the refusal of companies to sign labor contracts, illegal
docking of wages, excessive hours, terrible work conditions and
frequent injuries.

 Whether the trade union federation, as it reaches into the private
sector, can develop a more independent voice is a question that its
own officials are debating, and one that will affect the country's
future stability.

 "If the trade union federation remains simply a political tool and
doesn't play a more positive role in defending worker interests,
then it will be increasingly difficult to defend its exclusive
status," said a Chinese scholar of labor affairs who spoke on
condition of anonymity.

 Li Qiang, who worked for several years as a clandestine labor
organizer in China before fleeing to exile in the United States
last year, said that "Chinese workers are beginning to understand
their own rights." He pointed to the steep rise in lawsuits over
labor issues and the frequent, if suppressed, efforts by factory
workers to organize independently.

 "If the government doesn't do a better job of promoting worker
rights," he warned in an interview in New York, "we could see a
real explosion of worker protests."

 By all accounts, wages and conditions in factories run by major
Western corporations and joint ventures tend to be better than
average, in part because of the foreign outcry over sweatshop
labor, which has led some Western companies to monitor the
practices of subsidiaries and direct contractors, although rarely
the behavior of subcontractors.

 By contrast, conditions in Hong Kong, Taiwanese and South Korean
companies as well as private Chinese companies are often worse,
with widespread violation of overtime limits, minimum wage laws and
safety rules, say Chinese and foreign experts.

 "The conditions that many of these workers face today are no
better than the conditions that Marx described in `Das Kapital,' "
said Ms. He, the author and social critic, who lived in the special
export zone of Shenzhen until leaving this summer for the United
States after suffering police harassment.

 Coastal cities like Dongguan are laboratories for China's labor
relations in the future. Within the borders of Dongguan, which has
blossomed as a satellite of Shenzhen, thousands of companies,
mainly owned by Asian investors, have created large industrial
parks to produce electronic goods, clothing, shoes and other
products for export.

 Large zones of Dongguan present a strangely vacant landscape,
dominated by large fenced-in factory complexes.

 On Sunday, the sole day off for those who get one, the streets are
filled with strolling young men and women, many in factory uniforms
and all wearing ID tags for their foray outside the gates. Cafes,
bookstores and other normal trappings of urban life are nowhere to
be seen.

 "Mostly you don't have the energy to go out anyway," said Dang
Jianjun, 22, a migrant from Shaanxi Province who came to Dongguan
in 1997 and landed a job in a Taiwan- owned electronics factory.

 For almost two years, Mr. Dang operated a large metal press for
12- hour shifts, seven days a week. Then, at 2 a.m., bleary-eyed,
he slipped and the hot press dropped onto his hands.

 While the factory paid immediate medical costs, responsibility for
long-term compensation lay with the local government labor bureau,
which offered him a one-time settlement of $14,500. "I didn't feel
that was enough," said Mr. Dang, gazing down at the two stumps he
has for hands.

 Throughout China the drive to improve worker protection in private
industry has been undercut by frequent collusion between local
government officials and factory managers, a union official said.

 With local governments desperate to stimulate investment and
generate taxes, officials have often proved willing to overlook
infractions of labor laws and have allowed factory managers to set
up virtually powerless unions headed by their cronies or in some
cases even their wives.

 "The supply of labor vastly exceeds the demand," said Zhou Litai,
a lawyer in Shenzhen who has made a specialty of representing
factory workers maimed on the job, "and if you're an official who
wants to keep jobs in your district, then you pay attention to the
interests of the owners."

 The two young women who strolled in Dongguan one Sunday landed
their factory jobs earlier this year through fellow natives of
their village in Hubei Province.

 The woman walking with Ms. Fu, who gave her name only as Ms. Feng,
said she made $36 a month at her electronics plant if she worked 12
hours, seven days a week. She said workers feared that they would
be fired if they complained about conditions.

 Was there no state-sponsored union in their factories, as required
in principle? "Oh, yeah, I guess maybe we do have one of those,"
Ms. Feng said after a moment's reflection. "When the management has
some new demand or request, they call us together for a meeting."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/22/international/asia/22CHIN.html?ex=99949296
1&ei=1&en=928e8e3847123732

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Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company



--
Dan Bell
International Program Coordinator
Ohio Employee Ownership Center
Kent State University
Kent, OH 44242
(330) 672-0333 << New direct number!
(330) 672-4063 fax
dbell@kent.edu
http://www.kent.edu/oeoc/
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