China Labour Bulletin is quoted in the following article. Copyright remains with the original publisher.
Daisy Zhong
23 August 2010
The mainland's sole official trade union will pay staff in its branches from next year and will gradually allow more leaders of the grass-roots unions under its umbrella to be elected by workers' representatives.
Such reforms, aimed at making local unions more independent of their members' employers, are being drafted in the third amendment of the Trade Union Law, said Liu Jichen , head of the legal work department at the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU).
But Liu stressed that no matter how independent the unions were, they should not deviate from the leadership of the Communist Party. "Even with the direct elections [of union chairmen], no mode is allowed other than the current unified trade union system, where grass-roots unions are led by their higher authorities," he said.
The latest reforms are a response to the wave of strikes that rippled through foreign-owned factories in the manufacturing heartland in the south this year, casting doubt on the ability of the mainland's flawed trade unions to represent workers.
"Very few workers trust the union, and they don't think it represents their interests," said Geoffrey Crothall, a spokesman for China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based workers' rights group.
He said the ACFTU was making a concession to the workforce because of fears that social conflicts might escalate.
Apo Leong, a consultant to the Asia Monitor Resource Centre, another labour rights group, said election reform was being brought in "to accommodate outside and inside pressure - the harsh criticism against the ACFTU".
The trade unions are all part of the ACFTU and are seen as branches of the government. Most of their leaders are Communist Party appointees or managers from the companies to which they are linked.
The Labour Law says a union's funding must come from the company, putting unionists fighting for workers' rights in an embarrassing position, because their own salaries are paid by the firm's management.
Leong said a strike at a Honda components factory in Foshan was a test case that proved the country's trade union system was malfunctioning.
The chairman of the trade union at the factory, where workers went on strike in May, was also the plant's deputy manager, and other union representatives were also senior managers.
So it did not come as a surprise when some workers said trade union staff had beaten them, while others said they had no idea who their representatives were or what they did at the factory.
Academics say that because trade unions are accountable to the government and the company instead of to workers, their main role has been to maintain social stability and encourage workers to produce more - and they have become ineffective in defending workers' rights.
As the authorities have no intention of easing their own control over trade unions, their only option to accommodate workers' concerns is to reduce the influence of the companies' managements on the unions.
One way is to have all local union staff paid by the ACFTU instead of the companies. Other reforms could include extending the collective bargaining system, which provides a platform for workers to negotiate salaries with management, from the enterprise level to the industry level.
The ACFTU also plans to enhance the "democratic management" of local trade unions. The amended law will allow workers' representatives to choose their union leaders from among candidates endorsed by the union, instead of official appointees or company managers.
The method has been tried in some well-off areas in southeastern China since as early as 2003, although some academics have expressed doubts about just how democratic the elections there are.
Leong said such elections were far from fully democratic.
"Good governance needs openness and transparency, as well as awareness from workers," he said, but many elections were "just an act".
He also said that those elections would only be promoted at the local level, not at the city and provincial levels, where tight government control still prevailed.
In another reform, trade unions higher in the hierarchy will be able to send leaders to grass-roots unions and pay their salaries, rather than have leaders appointed from within the local union.
Leong said the reforms were steps towards more grass-roots democracy that would free unions from the influence of management and go some way towards resolving the conflict of interest. However, the government-sanctioned unions would remain a far cry from the independent unions seen in many other countries.
He said that when Communist Party policy conflicted with workers' interests, it was always the workers' rights that were sacrificed. One example was keeping wages low to attract foreign businesses, which was counter to workers' interests.
This meant that even if a trade union was independent from management, "it still won't be able to function properly, because it is still not independent from the party".
Crothall said that in the current political environment, a truly self-governing trade union, free from both management and government control, was unlikely to emerge.
"It's too politically dangerous," he said.
So the best that workers could hope for would be "a democratically run trade union within the ACFTU", he said.
Daisy Zhong
23 August 2010
The mainland's sole official trade union will pay staff in its branches from next year and will gradually allow more leaders of the grass-roots unions under its umbrella to be elected by workers' representatives.
Such reforms, aimed at making local unions more independent of their members' employers, are being drafted in the third amendment of the Trade Union Law, said Liu Jichen , head of the legal work department at the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU).
But Liu stressed that no matter how independent the unions were, they should not deviate from the leadership of the Communist Party. "Even with the direct elections [of union chairmen], no mode is allowed other than the current unified trade union system, where grass-roots unions are led by their higher authorities," he said.
The latest reforms are a response to the wave of strikes that rippled through foreign-owned factories in the manufacturing heartland in the south this year, casting doubt on the ability of the mainland's flawed trade unions to represent workers.
"Very few workers trust the union, and they don't think it represents their interests," said Geoffrey Crothall, a spokesman for China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based workers' rights group.
He said the ACFTU was making a concession to the workforce because of fears that social conflicts might escalate.
Apo Leong, a consultant to the Asia Monitor Resource Centre, another labour rights group, said election reform was being brought in "to accommodate outside and inside pressure - the harsh criticism against the ACFTU".
The trade unions are all part of the ACFTU and are seen as branches of the government. Most of their leaders are Communist Party appointees or managers from the companies to which they are linked.
The Labour Law says a union's funding must come from the company, putting unionists fighting for workers' rights in an embarrassing position, because their own salaries are paid by the firm's management.
Leong said a strike at a Honda components factory in Foshan was a test case that proved the country's trade union system was malfunctioning.
The chairman of the trade union at the factory, where workers went on strike in May, was also the plant's deputy manager, and other union representatives were also senior managers.
So it did not come as a surprise when some workers said trade union staff had beaten them, while others said they had no idea who their representatives were or what they did at the factory.
Academics say that because trade unions are accountable to the government and the company instead of to workers, their main role has been to maintain social stability and encourage workers to produce more - and they have become ineffective in defending workers' rights.
As the authorities have no intention of easing their own control over trade unions, their only option to accommodate workers' concerns is to reduce the influence of the companies' managements on the unions.
One way is to have all local union staff paid by the ACFTU instead of the companies. Other reforms could include extending the collective bargaining system, which provides a platform for workers to negotiate salaries with management, from the enterprise level to the industry level.
The ACFTU also plans to enhance the "democratic management" of local trade unions. The amended law will allow workers' representatives to choose their union leaders from among candidates endorsed by the union, instead of official appointees or company managers.
The method has been tried in some well-off areas in southeastern China since as early as 2003, although some academics have expressed doubts about just how democratic the elections there are.
Leong said such elections were far from fully democratic.
"Good governance needs openness and transparency, as well as awareness from workers," he said, but many elections were "just an act".
He also said that those elections would only be promoted at the local level, not at the city and provincial levels, where tight government control still prevailed.
In another reform, trade unions higher in the hierarchy will be able to send leaders to grass-roots unions and pay their salaries, rather than have leaders appointed from within the local union.
Leong said the reforms were steps towards more grass-roots democracy that would free unions from the influence of management and go some way towards resolving the conflict of interest. However, the government-sanctioned unions would remain a far cry from the independent unions seen in many other countries.
He said that when Communist Party policy conflicted with workers' interests, it was always the workers' rights that were sacrificed. One example was keeping wages low to attract foreign businesses, which was counter to workers' interests.
This meant that even if a trade union was independent from management, "it still won't be able to function properly, because it is still not independent from the party".
Crothall said that in the current political environment, a truly self-governing trade union, free from both management and government control, was unlikely to emerge.
"It's too politically dangerous," he said.
So the best that workers could hope for would be "a democratically run trade union within the ACFTU", he said.