The following is an interview carried out by Ding Xiao, a reporter with the Radio Free Asia Mandarin Service. China Labour Bulletin has translated it into English.
Three to four thousand workers at Kunming Municipal Textile group, deeply dissatisfied with the plant's restructuring programme and the fact that the workers were excluded from the restructuring process, staged a four-day strike before getting any response from management and city officials. The employees now await an April 1 decision on compensation terms and other issues.
Kunming Textile employees were upset with a series of measures on wages passed at a meeting of the Employees' Representatives Committees, held on 6 March, at which no workers from the plant's main factories were present. They started working off the job on Monday, March 13.
Yunnan Textile Plant was a state-owned enterprise, set up in 1934 and restructured as a state-owned holding company with a limited liability company structure in 1996. There are five companies in the group which employ more than 4,000 workers.
Beginning on 13 March, workers at the various factories in the group downed tools, and on individual initiative (Editor's note, there was no strike leader) gathered in front of the main plant, demanding to talk to management. As of 16 March, the relevant authorities had yet to address the series of issues that had been raised by the workers.
The workers at this state owned enterprise said the factory had laid off workers with compensation plans that were lower than the usual levels offered to other workers from state-owned enterprises, and they would be unable to live on the amount they received. Ms Tan, a forty-plus-year-old plant employee said,"After the reform programme, we will receive 881 yuan for each year of work in the factory as compensation and that is calculated up to 30 October 2004. How can we survive outside the factory on such a small amount?"
And for those who are kept on at the company after the restructuring, the terms of their contracts are very harsh. Ms Zhou, one of the employees, said,"Those workers who currently work eight hours a day will now have to work 12 hours a day and that is to take effect immediately under the reform programme. Wages will not be increased but the work load expands a great deal, so many of the workers will petition the authorities, protesting against this arrangement."
As for the unfair distribution of shares, the workers said management's action was not transparent and they suspected that some shares were going secretly into management hands. Ms Tan said,"Middle and senior management are getting the shares they want. If they buy one million shares, they are given another million. But as for the shares that were originally intended for the staff, they are saying that the plant is not doing so well."
She said the issue that has deeply offended the staff was the fact that only a few middle and senior management staff were allowed to attend the Employee Representatives' Committee meeting last week at which the future livelihood of thousands of workers was decided.
"Only senior management cadres attended the Employees' Committee meeting. They cannot speak on behalf of the employees. The ideas expressed in the Employees Committee are not the opinions of the majority of employees. That paper probably looked like it was the real thing, but it was only the form, not the content," Tan said.
In addition, the official union had not attempted to help the employees obtain better benefits. On the contrary, it secretly signed an agreement with management early on, while the workers were kept in the dark. According to one worker,"In 2004, when they approved the restructuring, they signed contracts between the workers and the factory. But now they've changed the status of the employees. It's amazing! So now the workers have neither an employment contract with the restructured company, nor are they employees of the original state-owned enterprise. Employees of this state enterprise are only now seeing the light. They don't know who they're working for."
The Kunming Municipal government has gotten involved in the affair. A deputy secretary general of the Party Municipal Committee brought a team to the factory on Thursday to listen to what the employees had to say. The team said that the government would come to a decision on the restructuring before April 1, and requested that the employees go back to work.
The employees said that they would return to work ahead of the meeting and wait until April 1 to decide on the next step. Ms Tan said,"The workers behaved pretty well. If they (the government) said they would give an answer on April 1, then they (the employees) couldn't continue to stir things up. If we should go to work, then we go to work. But I don't know what we are going to do next."
Others had a different view. Workers had the right to strike.“This is a right laid out in the constitution. We have the right to work, and the right not to work. The employee is the one who decides," said one worker who was not identified.
Source, Radio Free Asia (16 March 2006)