Labor rights few despite landmark ruling
Robert Saiget
Agence France-presse
3 February 2005
A judicial ruling that freed 10 employees jailed for organizing a factory riot brought hope to 30 million migrant workers in Guangdong province.
But few believe it will change their sweatshop-like working conditions.
On December 31 an appeal court in Dongguan suspended jail terms for the 10 workers who had been convicted and sentenced to up to 3½ years for starting riots at two Taiwan-backed shoe factories in April 2004.
The workers, all from central Hunan province, were upset after the factory withheld salaries and cut back on overtime.
The Hong Kong-based China Labor Bulletin, which helped organize the workers' legal defense and lobbied for their release, said the court's reversal could signal the government's intention to promote better labor rights in the mainland.
"This reversal of the sentencing of the Stella International shoe factory workers represents a landmark in the history of the modern labor movement in China," it said.
"Although this case is a milestone on the journey towards workers' rights in China, we should not forget that the appeal court still maintains that the 10 Stella workers are guilty of their alleged offences," it added.
The court did not specify why the defendants were released, but their lawyer contended that the riots were spontaneous and the state had no evidence they were planned.
During 25 years of market economic reforms, China's central government has largely ignored workers' rights in its drive to attract foreign investment, create jobs and develop the economy.
Workers in China are outlawed from forming independent trade unions, while labor activists have been routinely jailed as threats to "state security."
Some 140 million migrant workers eke out a living in often extremely poor conditions across the country. Guangdong alone has some 30 million of them, with five million in Dongguan.
Stella International, which runs several factories in Dongguan's Dalingshan village, employs up to 30,000 workers who manufacture shoes for name-brand companies such as Nike, Timberland, Reebok and Clark.
Company officials declined to comment on the court's decision, but workers welcomed it.
"We have all heard that they were released. This is good for us," a worker surnamed Zhang said at Stella's Xing Ang factory.
"But things have only got a little better since the incident." Zhang, 26, said that he still works six days a week, 10 hours a day.
He takes home about 1,000 yuan (HK$942) a month. Zhang said, however, that his pregnant wife, who also works at the factory, has been promised a three-month maternity leave, a rare benefit in a non-state-owned factory, although mandated by law.
"The workers who were sentenced, were released so this shows that our factory respects human rights," another worker named Zhou said.
"Most workers here want to work overtime so it really isn't a question of being forced to work overtime.
"If the factory asks us to work overtime, we are willing to do so."
The lawyer of the jailed workers, Gao Zhisheng, said none of them was given their job back after the ruling and all had returned to their home towns.
What has surprised many is that the Stella factories are better than most in the region, and although their working conditions are strict, unemployed people line up outside factory gates for jobs.
"I've been in Guangdong for about three years now and I've worked in other factories, but I want to work here [at Xing Ang] because they only have to work six days a week," Chao Sanhe, 22, a migrant worker from northern Shaanxi province, said.
"I worked in a furniture factory. It was dirty, paid badly and sometimes I worked 15 hours a day, seven days a week. They never gave us a day off."
China's Basic Law sets out the rights and benefits workers should enjoy and is based on a 40-hour, five-day week.
Labor groups, including the UN's International Labor Organization and the top US trade union, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), have long urged Beijing to better protect workers' rights as it has embraced capitalist economic reforms.
"If workers in China cannot gain their basic rights and a fair share of the profits and productivity they help generate, human rights abuses and inequality will continue to grow around the world," AFL-CIO president John Sweeney said last month.
"If China, as a new global manufacturing center, rejects freedom of association, other developing countries will be pressured to follow suit" in order to compete with China's low manufacturing costs, he warned.