What I Do With My Free Time

I had a plan to pose as the scion of a wealthy American textile family, set up meetings to discuss sourcing opportunities with manufacturers, and then go poking around some of the massive factories in the Pearl River Delta's “special economic zones” (SEZs) on my way out of China. As of 2001, nearly five percent of the entire world’s goods were manufactured in the Pearl River Delta (worth US $265 billion), and it continues to grow at a rate over 15% per year. Introduce the unbridled forces of global neoliberal capital to an impoverished, near-limitless workforce enjoying all the individual liberties of a bureaucratic Communist state, a lot of cheap action figurines are going to get made.

Alas, the ruse proved to require a bit more effort than I was prepared to invest, and instead the afternoon before my flight out of Hong Kong I met up with Geoffrey Crothall from China Labor Bulletin (CLB). Founded in 1994 by labor activist Han Dongfang – whose abortive efforts to form the Beijing Autonomous Workers’ Federation during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 made him one of China’s most wanted political dissidents – CLB is widely regarded as the leading independent voice for workers’ rights within China. For more on Han Dongfang, check out the interview in New Left Review (and, while you’re at it, almost anything else in that “Movement of Movements” series is worth reading). Below are some summarized notes, not a transcript, of our conversation.

(I realize this may seem incredibly nerdy and of only moderate interest to many of you; the next post will involve far less weighty material, I promise.)

What sort of work is CLB doing now?

Basically there are two sides to our work. The first deals with individual workers’ rights and is primarily done through our litigation program. Workers face huge obstacles with regards to employment discrimination, non-payment of wages, disability benefits, and responding to privatization of formerly state-owned companies. We’ve had some successes at the District Court level and we've also gotten workers out of jail when they’ve been arrested illegally. The second is collective workers’ rights, which essentially means encouraging collective bargaining.

What does collective bargaining look like presently?

Well, there’s the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), which is the sole official union in China, with about 130,000,000 members. Employers finance the union at a rate of 2% of payroll, which by US standards might seem like a great thing, but then they also wield complete control of the organization. Union representatives are usually managers; if they’re not, they wouldn’t dare go against them.

Would the ACFTU ever, say, call for a strike?

No, never. The right to strike is actually a grey area. It was part of the Constitution until the early 1980s, then was removed, but a strike itself isn’t illegal. It’s complicated.

But there are still work actions happening?

There are 1,000+ worker strikes and sit-ins happening every single day in the Pearl River Delta. Some of our information we get from government statistics – which report tens of thousands of worker disputes going through the official arbitration procedures – but we also get calls from all over China from Han Dongfang’s weekly radio show [broadcast on US-government funded Radio Free Asia].

What’s the government’s reaction to all this?

Officially, the line is that these are ‘manifestations of internal contradictions within the people that naturally occur during a period of economic transformation and reform.’ It is the role of the Party to alleviate and channel that tension.

Wow, they talk just like Cultural Studies grad students! My friend Max suggested the government was pretty much untroubled by individual labor disputes at this point; that what they’re really opposed to is the formation of any sort of broader organization or framework that might ultimately rival the Party. What’s your take on it?

I think that’s pretty much spot on. [Pause]. And I should say that CLB is not advocating the establishment of independent labor unions, which is illegal. We’re saying that there’s a great opportunity here [with the implementation of China’s new “Labour Contract Law” on January 1, 2008] for the AFCTU to start acting like a real union.

Do you really think the ACFTU can become a real voice for workers? Does the Labour Contract Law indicate a genuine shift on the government’s part towards a more tolerant attitude on trade unionism? [Until recently, CLB maintained any engagement with the ACFTU was futile].

[Carefully] With any organization, political and economic changes engender new opportunities. The new labor law does offer a lot of new opportunities. At least on the municipal level, we think there’s definitely room now to pressure ACFTU officials and engage with them. There would be a lot fewer strikes if they make these unions legitimate vehicles for workers to air their grievances. [Somewhat quieter, almost as confession] But the legal changes we’ve seen so far aren’t really anything beyond tokenism… it’s by no means a transformation towards liberalism.

What position should the international labor community take towards the ACFTU then?

We’re a domestic NGO in China. We work from the bottom up. We leave the big decisions up to the international labor movement. There’s room for a wide range of strategies, and really we’re not in a position to tell the labor community what to do. They’re accountable to themselves and their own members.

If you’re interested, check out China Labor Bulletin’s most recent report, “Speaking Out: The Workers’ Movement in China 2005-2006,” or the other reports on the website. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions' (ICFTU) position on the ACFTU is also online.