China Labour Bulletin appears in the following article. Copyright remains with the original publisher.
Official Union in China Says All Wal-Marts Are Organized
By David Lague
International Herald Tribute and New York Times
Published on 13 October 2006
Workers have set up unions at all 66 Wal-Mart outlets in China, beginning what a Chinese union official described Thursday as a wider campaign aimed at other foreign companies.
Wal-Mart has long battled to ban unions from its stores and distribution centers, and Guo Wencai, a senior organizer of the government-sanctioned All-China Federation of Trade Unions, called the establishment of union branches at the Wal-Mart stores a "breakthrough" for organized labor.
Mr. Guo said at a news conference here that the success at Wal-Mart would be a springboard to similar efforts aimed at Eastman Kodak, Dell and other companies.
"We are going to exert very high pressure on all these types of companies until unions are established there," Mr. Guo said. "It is an irreversible trend." He said union membership would lead to better conditions for employees, including higher wages and safer workplaces.
The effort to unionize workers at foreign companies is strictly limited to expanding the membership of the officially sanctioned labor federation, which says it has 150 million members.
But some labor market analysts and human rights groups say establishing branches of the official union in foreign companies is aimed more at allowing the Chinese authorities to tighten control over the rapidly expanding private-sector work force.
Under Chinese law, employees are barred from organizing independent unions, and workers or activists seeking to challenge these rules are routinely prosecuted and jailed, according to human rights groups.
Already, many foreign businesses have allowed their workers to form unions in China. In the economic and technological development area of Tianjin, southeast of Beijing, union branches have been established at more than 300 foreign companies including the food giant Nestlé, Mr. Guo said. In Beijing, there are unions at 44 foreign enterprises.
The labor federation, with strong backing from the Chinese government, has applied intense pressure on Wal-Mart as the first phase of the wider effort to establish branches in all foreign-financed enterprises.
There are now more than 100,000 such companies operating in China, including businesses from Taiwan and Macao, according to government statistics quoted in the official media.
It is unlikely, though, that the existence of branches of the official union will lead to increased worker militancy. Labor activists at times accuse the labor federation of siding with management rather than acting as a champion of workers' rights. At best, they say, the official union sometimes tries to mediate disputes.
Labor unrest is common these days in China, particularly among the 150 million migrant workers, and some specialists suggest that an improved network of official union branches could assist the authorities in defusing protests that could potentially pose a threat to Communist Party rule. The heightened unrest is one reason that the Chinese government has announced plans for greater worker protection, including a crackdown on sweatshops.
"They are afraid that public protests or strikes might get out of hand," said Robin Munro, research director of the China Labor Bulletin, a workers' rights group in Hong Kong. "Hence, the big drive to impose unions and provide greater union coverage; I think this is seen as a way of crisis management."
Other analysts suggest that the authorities also want to expand the reach of the official union because the decline of state-owned industries has stripped away much of the Communist Party's traditional power base in the Chinese economy.
Wal-Mart, in keeping with its efforts to ban labor organizing among its work force in the United States and elsewhere, resisted official efforts to unionize until late in July, when workers at one of its stores in Fujian Province set up a union branch. Within two months, branches were established in other stores as labor federation officials and local governments encouraged workers to organize and promised that they would be protected if the company tried to retaliate.
Mr. Guo, the organizer of the official union, said about 6,000 of Wal-Mart's 30,000 employees in China were now union members and efforts were under way to improve their welfare.
A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart's international division, Beth Keck, said she was unable to provide the exact number of union branches at company stores in China. "But our position is very clear," she said. "We have committed to having branches in all our stores."
Mr. Guo said the labor federation would now assist workers in their negotiations with Wal-Mart management for new contracts and would seek to improve conditions for part-time workers.