Abstracts
Mario Becksteiner (University of Vienna, Austria)Claudia Bonk (Südwind, Vienna, Austria)Xuebing Cao (Keele University, United Kingdom) and Roger Seifert
(Wolverhampton University, United Kingdom)
Antonella Ceccagno (University of Bologna)Anita Chan (University of Technology, Australia)Chang Kai (Renmin University, Beijing, China) Chih-Jou Jay Chen (Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan)Ya-Han Chuang (Paris IV Sorbonne University, France)Suki Chung (Labour Action China, Hong Kong)Paolo Do (Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom)Hermann Dworczak (Austrian Social Forum)Peter Franke (Forum Worlds of Labour)Mary Gallagher (Department of Political Studies, University of Michigan, USA)
and Kan Wang (China Institute of Industrial Relations, China)Rolf Geffken (Labour Institute ICOLAIR Hamburg)Wolfgang Greif (GPA-djp Union, Austria)Miao Han (Durham Law School, United Kingdom)Jisu Huang (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)Andrea Komlosy (University of Vienna)Ka Mei Lau (Chinese Working Women Network, NGO)Astrid Lipinsky (Department of East Asian Studies, University of Vienna,
Austria)Suyu Liu (Linacre College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom)Tim Pringle (University of Warwick, United Kingdom)Thomas Sablowski (University of Frankfurt)Wolfgang Schaumberg (Forum Arbeitswelten, Germany)Jonathan Unger (Australian National University)Frido Wenten (University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies) &
Daniel Fuchs (University of Vienna)Bin Wu and Jackie Sheehan (School of Contemporary Chinese Studies,
University of Nottingham, United Kingdom)Jiankang Xu (Chinese Acdemy of Social Sciences)Keming Yang (School of Applied Social Sciences, University of Durham,
United Kingdom)
Mario Becksteiner (University of Vienna, Austria)
Social Partnership in (the) Crisis!?
The title has a double meaning. First I want to question whether social partnership as the still dominant form of industrial relations in Austria remains unchallenged during the biggest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s. In order to answer this question, we need to understand the core features of social partnership. As our research shows, the overhelming stability of social partnership in Austria is not so much based on the output of a negotiation system, but on the daily reproduction of a cultural dispositiv via hegemonic practices on all levels of industrial relations, the macropolitical(-economic)- , the branch-, and the corporate-level. These forms of practice can be grouped around the trustful relations between capital and labour and the security promoted by a dense net of labour rights. The concentration on mutual trust and right, a non-concflictual culture of industrial relations, was strongly linked to and formed in a period of prosperity, so called fordist capitalism including the dominant position of the macroeconomic and political systems. The transformation to a postfordist economy and society weakened the institutional influence of unions, but did not lead to an end of the cultural dispositiv of social partnership.
The second meaning of the titel refers to the actual crisis. On the surface of industrial relations, social partnership proved to remain stable. For a short period during the crisis, even the slightly eroding institutional power ressources of unions seemed to be renewed through the strong inclusion of unions into anti-crisis policies. Therefore, the current crisis does not yet articulate in a crisis of social partnership on the macropolitical level.
Looking at the corporate level, things are different. From the 1990s onwards, we can observe a erosion of the effectiveness of the two dominant forms of practice, trustful relations and the concentration on right. Mainly via the recomposition of temporal and spatial logics of corporations, and the change of managerial culture, “Betriebsräte” are pushed into a defensive position and function as a subordinated co-management. These neoliberal restructuring process on the corporate level challenges the cultural dispositiv of social partnership from below.
In sum, if we are talking about a crisis of social partnership in Austria, within the big crisis of capitalism, we must think about the crisis of social partnership as an uneven and combined development with different spatial levels and time levels. But the erosion and decomposition of the stable cultural dispositiv of social partnership is on its way, mostly hidden under a stable fassade of institutional continuity.
Claudia Bonk (Südwind, Vienna, Austria)
“Stop Toying Around!” – A Campaign for fair working conditions in toy industry
Toys we buy in Europe are mostly produced in China. Outsourcing production to low cost countries ensures toy companies very low production costs, mainly due to extremely low wages, which are realised by circumventing minimun wages, overtime premiums, and social insurance enrolments. In the fight for orders from European and US toy companies, factory managers agree to meet unrealistically short delivery periods and low unit prices, which lead to violations of human and workers’ rights of tens of thousands of workers in those factories.
Through international cooperation with Hong Kong Human Rights groups and European NGOs, consumers are made aware of the inhumane situation, under which conditions the toys our children play with, are produced. This way, solidarity between workers and consumers can be achieved. The European Campaign NGOs focus on the improvement of CSR policies of toy companies and on building pressure through the information of consumers, media, and decision makers. This could not be achieved without the information received from the Hong Kong and Chinese NGOs. They do not only research in toy factories, but also inform workers about their rights and thus empower them to fight for their rights themselves.
In this cooperation strategy, both groups work on their ends and do what they do best, thereby supporting each other and achieving results, that neither could on their own. Even though Chinese workers own efforts for the improvement of their rights becomes more and more effective and successful, campaigns like this hope to be able to make a contribution by convincing toy companies and consumers in Europe, who have benefited from low prices based on human and workers’ rights abuses in the past, that they also have a role to play.
Xuebing Cao (Keele University, United Kingdom) and Roger Seifert (Wolverhampton University, United Kingdom)
Chinese workers on strike: a study of recent Japanese car factory employees’ strike actions in Guangdong
This research examines Chinese workers’ strikes in foreign invested enterprises (FIEs) in 2010. The research addresses central concerns of industrial conflict and its resolution in the context of China’s dramatic economic development. It selects three Japanese owned car factories in Guangdong by studying the strikes in these plants between May and July in 2010. In these cases, worker mobilization and its resolution through collective bargaining demonstrate an exceptionally rare event in contemporary China. In particular as stagflation and unemployment become major policy concerns so worker responses formally through their unions and informally through unofficial action will grow and present a threat to social stability in some areas (Li 2011).
Workplace conflict in China’s private sector, especially FIEs, has been an increasing phenomena in recent years due to low level of wages and violation of labour regulations, since export-oriented manufacturing industries employ massive amount of cheap labour (Cooke 2008). But labour unrest is seen by the government as a serious threat, as strikes are regarded as illegal and usually end up in workers’ failure (Clarke 2005). The current industrial relations system does not authorize the official union organization, the ACFTU (All China Federation of Trade Unions), to effectively mobilize workers. As with other developments there are splits inside the Chinese communist party with a powerful lobby interested in more Western-style trade unionism and collective bargaining (Halabi 2011).
Despite the above difficulties, workers in the three plants were successfully mobilized on strike, and through collective bargaining workers were offered an immediate pay rise. Workers also invited independent legal consultants to help their negotiation, which was a new strategy that was tolerated by the government. Furthermore, these strikes triggered a chain reaction as workers’ unrest was spread out in many FIEs across China in the second half of 2010.
What is missing in the existing literature is the analysis of how workers’ spontaneous mobilization (Kelly 1998) and strikes are settled in China through formal collective bargaining process. Since FIEs are politically semi-detached from the Chinese system, the experimental worker mobilization would not be tolerated as easily elsewhere (Taylor and Li 2007).
Building on this statement, this project argues that the FIE workers in China have adopted new mobilization strategies, and collective bargaining is increasingly recognized by the government and employers for resolving workplace conflict. In addition, the strikes illustrate that government policy appears to be more tolerant to labour unrest in FIEs as long as the conflict does not threaten social stability and foreign investment (Perry 1993). This study will inevitably be contrasted with numerous studies into USA, UK and Japanese car workers and their tradition of unionisation and strike action (Katz and Sabel 1985; Turner and Bescoby 1961).
By analysing evidence collected from documents, interviews and questionnaire survey, the study proposes that the outcomes of these spontaneous strikes signal a new direction of workplace conflict resolution, in particular the use of collective negotiation and workers' independent legal consultant. As the government partially tolerated collective bargaining in FIEs, the policy significance shows that the export-oriented element of China’s economy needs to be supported by a well-functioned institutional industrial relations framework.
Antonella Ceccagno (University of Bologna)
Time space compression and migrant’s vulnerability dilatation. The sleep in workshops of Chinese migrants in Italy
Ceccagno (2007) and Pun & Smith (2007) have described manufacturing workplaces where Chinese migrants are employed by focusing on time and space dimensions.
Ceccagno has highlighted the compression of time in sleep in garment workshops operated by Chinese migrants in Prato, Italy. She has argued that in order to be competitive these workshops have introduced a radical reconfiguration of time. A sort of vacuum has been created around productive activities so that anything that could hinder production is kept out and if possible eliminated altogether. This reconfiguration of time takes the form of a radical compression of personal time and of time related to familiy life and children upbringing.
Pun & Smith have highlighted the reconfiguration of space in export oriented garment factories in southern China. They describe the dormitory labour regime as the result of a different use of space, adopted in export oriented factories in China, that provides production conditions that outcompete other systems.
This paper explores the organization of the Chinese migrants’workshops in Prato, Italy and shows that competitive advantages gained by subcontracting Chinese workshops and competitive advantages granted to Italian and Chinese manufacturers are in large part obtained through a compression of time and a reconfiguration of space within the workshops. It highlights similarities and differences between the dormitory labour regime described by Pun and Smith (2007) and the sleep in organization of time/space introduced in the Chinese workshops in Italy.
Besides compression of time and space, dilatation of Chinese migrants’ vulnerability and opportunities are crucial factors in creating a new labour regime which outcompetes pre-existing working arrangements. This paper explores migrants’ vulnerability as the result of pressures not only from the employers but also from the industrial district, the migration system and migration policies in Italy. It also casts light on migrants’ opportunities in Italy and in the industrial district and on how vulnerability and opportunities have contributed to modify the labour regime in the garment subcontracting in Italy.
Anita Chan (University of Technology, Australia)
International Trade Union Movement, China's Labor Protests and Prospectis for Collective Bargaining
Chang Kai (Renmin University, Beijing, China)
From Individual to Collective –Characteristics and Conditions of the Collectivisation of Chinese Labour Relations
After the implementation of the “Labour Contract Law” in China, workers’ awareness of association and action is significantly enhanced. Rights dispute is transforming to interests dispute. The strike wave in the summer of 2010 is an important sign of Chinese labour relations transforming from the form of individual to collective. During this transformation, there are two kinds of labour movements: institutional trade unions and spontaneous workers’ actions. Additionally, the state’s labour policy is correspondingly adjusted. This presentation will narrative and analyse above points.
Chih-Jou Jay Chen (Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan)
Growing Labor Disputes in China: A Comparison of Workers’ Protests in Different Sectors
Based on a news database the author collected and constructed, with more than 2,000 mass protest events in 2000-10, this paper describes the trend and characteristics of workers’ protests in China over the past decade. So far no public quantitative data exists on the frequency, intensity, or types of popular protests in China, but sporadic media reports with remarkable patterns of anecdotal evidence still provides useful information that calls for further analyses. This paper compares labor protests among different sectors – state, private, and the FDI sector. Among blue-collar workers’ protests, SOE (state-owned enterprise) workers were the pioneers and major force of China’s collective protests since the 1990s, while FDI peasant workers were latecomers who had not joined their protesting ranks till the mid-2000s. However, since 2004, there has been an unprecedented surge of mass protests by disgruntled peasant workers in FDI firms, mainly protesting against their foreign employers’ underpayment of wages or bad working conditions. Relying on the quantitative news events data, this paper examines key features of workers’ protests, including their claims (issues), targets, scales (number of participants), forms (tactics), policing and socio-economic indicators of protest localities. It analyzes the trend and characteristics of these labor-dispute features across different sectors, and highlights the associations between these features and socio-economic indicators of protest localities across China. This project provides a clear picture by collecting together the most compelling evidence about labor disputes and labor rights in China, and thus paves the way for future comparative studies between China and Europe.
Ya-Han Chuang (Paris IV Sorbonne University, France)
When Morality meets Right: Undocumented Chinese Migrant Workers’ struggle for legalization in France
Much has been written on the internal labour migration in China, but little light has been shed on the migrant workers towards foreign countries who often pay high risk or price to go abroad. Based on an 18-month ethnographic study on a group of Chinese migrant workers involved in a social movement organized by CGT, the biggest trade union in France, to demand legalization, this article aims at exploring the changing industrial relation, labor structure and its challenge of organizing migrant workers in France linked with China’ globalization.
The Chinese migrant workers in France are not a homogenous ethnic group; its population has enlarged and diversified as the economic reform in China accelerates. While the economic reform in 1978 has aroused revival of emigration from certain coastal rural regions, it has also opened up new regions and cities, pulling out deprived men and women to seek their living in western countries. Their involvement in the informal economic sectors with strong ethnic-based characters has formed an inverse globalization from “below”, conceptualized by trade union as “delocalization on site”. In France, structured by their unequal social and human capital in the job market, the migrant workers provide cheap workforce indispensable for the huge ethnic economic sector parallel to the mainstream one. However, trapped in the intersection of the tightening French migrant policy and the informal practice widely accepted in ethnic economy, often moralized by ethnic-Chinese employers, Chinese workers are rendered the most “underprivileged” among those who fight for legalization. The fight for citizenship rights thus overlaps with the struggle for labour right and urge the French trade union to challenge the golden law of informal economy: flexibility and morality.
Suki Chung (Labour Action China, Hong Kong)
Solidarity on Labour between Hong Kong, China and Europe: The Experience on Gemstone Campaign of Chinese Silicosis Workers
International solidarity has become critical in the present global context in which labour has been losing its bargaining power globally due to the neo-liberal policies of the governments and past years of expansion of flexibilization, outsourcing, reliance on migrant labour and systematic repression or avoidance of unions. It is urgent as well as opportune for workers in solidarity across national boundaries. In this article Labour Action China (LAC) gives insight into the special and successful solidarity between the labour groups in Hong Kong and Europe in supporting the grassroots struggles of Chinese gemstone workers who are victims of occupational diseases.
In the campaign for compensation and improving labour standards in China’s gemstone industry, we developed a three-dimensional strategy of organizing, campaigning and advocacy to build solidarity with Chinese workers, regulate the labour practices of Hong Kong companies and build alliances with civil society organizations, trade unions and politicians in Switzerland in the campaign on the Baselworld, the world’s largest jewellery trade fair. This three-dimensional strategy proves to have set an example of combining the collective actions and legal struggles (or so-called “fa-lu-weiquan”) of the workers in the production country – China, with pressure from the labour rights communities in the capital exporting place – Hong Kong, and pressure from the trade unions and NGOs in the trading country – Switzerland.
Chinese workers nowadays are increasingly setting the pace in advancing the domestic labour rights agenda, and they are winning important concessions from the government. Within this larger context of change, we perceive that outside actors/agents can still play an important role by assisting and complementing the efforts of Chinese workers. Our example demonstrates some of the possible elements that could make up a potentially powerful and effective coordinated strategy – one involving international NGOs and overseas trade unions – for promoting a real advance in workers’ rights in China.
Paolo Do (Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom)
The bio-political economy of knowledge. Cognitive capitalism, struggle and higher education between Europe and China.
Nowadays the economic growth of China is interweaved to the rapid expansion of its higher education sector. Within this framework we are observing an original phenomena: education seems not to be anymore the dispositive for upward mobility, quite the opposite, within the global economic growth, it is becoming a governance device for disposable workforce. The so called 'ant tribe', the new 'army of interns' of the Honda factories in Guangdong is showing the original poverty of a new generation of high skill migrant workforce.
However, looking at the South of Europe or Mediterranean area, it seems that we are facing a similar process. The Magreb revolutions, the 'indignados' in Spain and the Italian student movement show us the emergence of a generation composed by young students, precarious workers, unemployed, interns that is very similar to the new generation of educated Chinese workforce: without any social welfare, most of them have a degree but not a job.
This paper wants to analyze the social context of the workforce in the cognitive capitalism at the global level since the nearness between Europe and China beyond the classical international division of labour.
Today, the classical 'verelendung' is by no means an exclusion dispositive, on the contrary, I will show how the global financial capitalism is producing original forms of poverty, such as condition of new inclusion within the global economic growth, redefining the opposite relation exclusion/inclusion. Starting from research field that I did in China during the 2010/2011 I will introduce the concept of bio-political economy of knowledge interweaving poverty, struggles and knowledge economy between China and Europe.
Hermann Dworczak (Austrian Social Forum)
Experiences of the WSF and ESF with Actions for Solidarity and International Cooperation
In his 10 years old history the World Social Forum( WSF ) and the European Social Forum( ESF) could gain a lot of experiences with international cooperation and solidarity. The range reaches from worldwide actions ( together with the US-peace movement) against the Iraq war over international action-days to ecological mobilisations( Copenhagen, Cochabamba, Cancun, and soon in Durban).
Parts of the Trade Unions work within WSF and ESF. The WSF and the ESF always try to work together with tradeunions- for the trade unions have a special social weight and many avtivists of the WSF and ESF are members of tradeunions. Sometimes these cooperation is possible, sometimes not- as a consequence of the bureaucratic top-leadership of tradeunions.
The most succesfull common mobilizations were:
- against the WTO summit in Seattle 1999
- the giant demonstration in Florence against the start of the Iraq war: 1 Million participated- the Italian trade unions mobillized 300 000 people
- the common fights of ESF and trade unions (f.e. seamen) against the " Bolkestein-guideline"- which was trying to change fundamentally the relationship of forces betwen capital and labour ( e.g.. to bypass the system of collective treaties in developed countries )
- the strikes and demonstrations in many countries in the last years against the open crisis of capitalism ( "We will not pay for their crisis")
Peter Franke (Forum Worlds of Labour)
„Forum Worlds of Labour – China and Germany“: Objectives and projects
The objective of this forum is to deepen the mutual understanding and exchange on worlds of labour in China and Germany, how they appear, function, are controlled and changed, have international impact, generate forms of representation and eventually permit a sustainable quality of life for people in China and Germany today and in future. The emphasis of the forum lies in facilitating and fostering space for grassroots’ cross border contacts and solidarity cooperation among individuals, groups and organisations working for social justice - irrespective of ideological and political orientation – in order to exchange experiences with handling socio-cultural and economic problems, to develop alternative agendas for the future and trigger off change processes in a global context and to inform the public.
The forum’s program structure provides the following framework with will be three main pillars, continuous information and knowledge exchange and publication, Encounters to exchange experiences and knowledge as well as for cooperation, Research, analysis and theory building. The justification for such a forum and its activities will be presented for diecussion.
Mary Gallagher (Department of Political Studies, University of Michigan, USA) and Kan Wang (China Institute of Industrial Relations, China)
Changes in the World's Workshop. The Demographic, Social, and Political Factors Behind China's Labor Movement
Since the beginning of Chinese labour legislation and reformist labour regulation in the 1980s, Chinese industrial relations have relied on regulation and legalization of individual labour relations. Contractual labour relations between an individual worker and a firm are at the heart of current Chinese labour law and are the source of most labour disputes. Collective contracts and collective bargaining have been marginalized, though legislation in these areas has increased recently.
The state’s focus on individual labour relations was not accidental, but rather was a strategy to limit collective mobilization of workers during a time of fundamental transformation of Chinese workers’ lives, political status, and welfare entitlements. The focus on individual labour relations is reproduced at various levels of the dispute resolution process, from the workplace to arbitration and then, finally, at the courts. Labour disputes that begin as a collective action against an employer are often broken down and “individualized” by the state apparatus. The focus on the individual at this level tends to weaken the power of workers’ legal mobilization.
In 2010, a large number of strikes in Chinese factories occurred and seemed to signal a new era in the Chinese labour movement. Collective mobilization of workers is increasing and workers are now more adept at linking individual grievances to broader, systemic problems. In this paper, we use interview data, case records, and focus group interviews with workers to piece together how individual workers with labour disputes are or are not mobilized to act collectively. We focus on several possible causal explanations for patterns of mobilization including individual worker characteristics, workplace institutions, and administrative/judicial institutions that affect the “collective mobilization” decision.
Rolf Geffken (Labour Institute ICOLAIR Hamburg)
Collective Bargaining, Individual Rights & State Control – A Comparative Analysis of German & Chinese Labour Law
German unions and German works councils and their collective bargaining rights are the key stone of German Labour Law and its enforcement in daily labour relations. Chinese unions play little role in the enforcement of labour standards, while administrative supervision plays a big role (on the paper). German state control in labour relations on the other hand plays a very little role even by law. On the other hand the real power of unions and works councils in Germany decline continously. Therefore for different reasons the use of individual labour rights in both countries seem to play the biggest role in enforcing labour rights. The grade of enforcement on the other hand depends on, whether the specific labour law is recognizing the structural weakness of labour. Viewing labour law as a part of civil law weakens labour law already before it starts to be enforced.
Wolfgang Greif (GPA-djp Union, Austria)
Labour Union Perspectives in China's Transforming Economy
Unions in China are powerful, without doubt. Any attempts however, to compare them with labour unions in Europe or other developed regions will fail. As part of the governing Communist Party the All-Chinese Trade Union Federation (ACFTU) and all its organisations on the different levels still function as a labour-oriented transmission belt, typical for socialist political systems. Their main challenge today: Guaranteeing social stability against the background of a rapidly growing gap between rich and poor in China’s transforming society or as the Communist Party would put it: helping that social harmony does not get out of control. But we can observe an increasing loss of influence in politics and society. Especially in the growing private sector of the economy Chinese unions lose ground dramatically. In order not to get completely marginalised in the private sector strongly driven by foreign companies the ACFTU needs to change towards a genuine representation of workers’ interests. This is a challenge that will definitely change the identity of Chinese unions fundamentally.
If the Chinese unions do not succeed in such a relaunch allowing for the articulation of interests in a world not harmonic at all, industrial conflicts will increase not only in multinational companies and will also get more violent. The creation of an appropriate framework to solve conflicts of interests via legal institutions and/or social dialogue arrangements will be crucial in the course of economic transformation. Some developments in transition societies in Central and Eastern Europe starting in the 1990’s might be regarded as negative example: Union representativeness remained only partly in the reduced state-owned sector but declined dramatically in many private sectors resulting in very limited power to act of the unions at national, sector and company level. If this scenario also unfolds in Chinese society, the present powerful role of unions will be history. Let’s hope that this will not happen again in the future and that the Chinese path of transformation will not cause such a marginalisation of unions. Only then a social market economy might remain a realistic perspective for the world’s future leading economic power.
Miao Han (Durham Law School, United Kingdom)
A Comparative Study of Working Women Protection between China and Europe: A Legal Perspective
With the fast development of feminism in Europe since the 1960s, the female labour force participation has markedly grown up. Cross the continent, during the last three-decade economic reform, China has also experienced the increasing number of the female labour force participation, which is believed to be a great achievement of reducing gender gap in China. However, as demonstrated by existing studies and the practice of activists, we find there is a gap between the regulatory regime at the international level on the labour market and the domestic legal protection on female labour. The significance of this issue is enhanced by different legal effects in implementation between international law and domestic legislation. Accordingly, this paper will deal with individual legal frameworks of the EU, the UK and China, aiming to access particular issues affecting working women.
To begin with, legislation is of the top importance. Not only will this paper highlight relevant laws and regulations in both China and Europe, but also will explore factors attributing to the differences. As far as China is concerned, the legal system is incredibly pragmatic. Besides Provision of Working Women Protection, plenty of laws and rules have stipulated particular provisions relating women workers, including rights protection regulation, labour contract law, insurance law, and pension act. Besides written rules, our case studies will provide vivid examples as complement. In other words, to understand the legal frameworks, emphasis should cover all the relevant articles scattered in different laws, rules, and regulations, as well as usage in practice. On the other hand, legal and social remedy is essential to employment relationship. Therefore, this paper will subsequently introduce and access varying mechanism arrangements for protecting female labour participation from China to Europe. Particularly, the design of institutions is not of no consequence. Contrary to sophisticated organizations, institutions in China are distinctively characterised by innovation in the context of economic transition. And thus, a proposal will also be made to improve institution building concerning working women protection in China, especially by means of the NGOs.
Jisu Huang (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)
The Contemporary Chinese Working Class: Impression and Reflections
The article includes four parts. In the first one, the author reviews the working class in modern time with special reference to its relationship with the Chinese Revolution. He then moves on to the Mao Era, and discusses the then status of the working class, and its relationship with the party-state. The second part is devoted to the years of “reform and opening to the outside world”, which had seen a relative decline in the 1980s and an absolute slump in the 1990s, of the urban working class. Special mention is made of the roles played by political and cultural elites in the process. In the third part, the author talks about the so-called peasant-workers or migrant workers, and discussed the implications of their cheap labor, endurance of hardship, optimism and enormous population size to China and other parts of the world. However, the generational replacement of peasant-workers, according to the author, seems to mean that the barbaric capitalist approach to China’s development is no longer sustainable.
Andrea Komlosy (University of Vienna)
Global Commodity Chains and Work Organisation. The Example of the Textile and Garment Industry in the Shanghai Region
This contribution is based on a field research, carried out in the town of Shanghai and in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces in July 2011. My aim was to follow the production line to one of the places, where the mass production of textiles is concentrated today.
I.
Although the Chinese government is supporting a shift from labour intensive industries towards more capital and technology-oriented industries, textiles and garments still play a major role, making up for 8 % of the manufacturing output value, employing approx. 20 million persons. State policies comprise credits, which are harder to get for textile and garment firms, labour laws and the introduction of a more effective social security insurance system on a compulsory basis (2008ff). All these measurements are pushing costs for companies up, discriminating textile-garment vis-à-vis machinery, electronics and others. Given the fact, that labour and social laws in China differ between towns and provinces, labour legislation also offers a means of directing investment within the country („Go West strategy“) as well as encouraging relocation in low-cost countries abroad. Labour legislation is not only a means of social policy, but of regional and industrial policy as well.
While sewing and the production of knit-wear does not offer big potentials to raise labour-productivity, spinning, weaving and knit-weaving allow to introduce advanced technologies and high end products. Sewing and knitwear finishing therefore is facing outsourcing from the coastal provinces to the Chinese interior, or to Vietnam, Cambodia, or Indonesia, where labour cost is much cheaper.
The field research carried out in six companies (2 Chinese low-end SME, 1 big Chinese knit and sports-wear company in the course of upgrading, 2 specialized Korean subsidiaries for high quality technical textiles, 1 German high-tech company selling textile machines in China) clearly demonstrated the ongoing bifurcation.
- The two companies that represent extended workbenches for Western and Japanese buyers, one specialized on apparel sewing, the other on sock knitting, are likely to face closing down. Companies that specialize in low skill - cheap labour contract production are under big pressure: As long as the labour laws are not properly controlled, they are able to survive; in the long run they will have to restructure or close down. Hundreds of low skill firms in the coastal regions already went bankrupt.
- Those textile firms in the coastal regions that are able to upgrade their position in the commodity chain by covering high end production, branding and merchandising, by improving material quality, machinery, working skills and process control and eventually outsource labour-intensive productions to cheaper sites will be able to meet the challenge of restructuring. We can find this type of company in the spinning and in the weaving sector, delivering highly qualified yarns and fabrics for fashion wear, home textiles and technical applications. The high-end sports and leisure ware company in Jinshan town, Shanghai represents the way the government is planning to restructure the textile sector. The company was founded in 1993 as a private company, enjoying high support and protection by the local government, however. It comprised departments for knit-weaving fabrics, which are processed to final products in the cutting and sewing departments. The products are ordered, purchased and sold under the brand of the buyers’ firms. Show room and video performance show a broad variety of well-known Western brands. When the profits diminished because of rising labour cost, the management introduced a design department, hence increasing the company’s control over the production line and expanding into more know-how-intensive operations, attracting buyers on a more profitable basis. According to the General Manager, they plan to start developing products, branded under their own name. In the meanwhile the emphasis is put on high quality yarns, e.g. yarn from the Austrian-Chinese Lenzing-Nanjing Fibres Company. Relocation is carried out in order to transfer labour-intensive processes into the interior, where a subsidiary was opened in Anhui province in 2007. In 2011 another subsidiary will start in Indonesia. Then the workforce will comprise 5000 in Jinshan town, 3000 in Anhui and 2000 workers in Indonesia, combining different categories of workers, subdivided by operations in the production process, wage, qualification, social security benefits or - from the company’ perspective - cost differentials. This strategy is supposed to support the upgrading of the Shanghai locations, allowing the company to enter into a better position to control and profit from the textile commodity chain.
- The upgrading of the textile industry is equally pursued by foreign owned companies, choosing China for the relocation of production sites because of costs and access to the Chinese market. My visit in two Korean owned firms producing cord tire and airbags for the automotive sector showed the possibilities and limits of this strategy.
- The upgrading of the Chinese textile industry offers markets for western suppliers of machinery. They help Chinese or foreign companies producing in China to enter high quality production. Hence we face a transfer of technology. However, it became obvious that the requirements of training and maintenance often conflict with the working conditions (long working hours, little incentives, dormitory-regime, frequent change of work-place) on site.
- Other industrial branches purchasing inputs from Chinese textile companies, resellers and supermarkets all over the world can take advantage of a new supply situation in China. European textile companies will face stronger competition, however, and possibly loose those market niches, which had helped them to survive in recent years.
II.
A second part is dedicated to the comparison of European and Chinese paths of industrial development in historical terms. At the end the question is raised if China will follow the European model, i.e. transform workers into agents of economic growth by forms of democratic and consumers’ participation.
In Western Europe the period of wild capitalism lasted approximately 60 years, before social security for workers was introduced in late 19th century (Germany and Austria-Hungary: 1880s). Raising wages and better social security regimes, which are being introduced in China from 2006 onwards, will enable workers to participate in economic growth. How will Western buyers and consumers cope with this situation, which will deprive them from easy profits and bargains? Will the Chinese political elite support Chinese workers' interests against the global traders?
A compromise for the textile and garment sector is in sight: Global sourcing is redirected into the Chinese interior, in combination with the relocation of some industrial processes into neighbouring South Asia. The Chinese household registration system guarantees, that the separation between high and low welfare regions and high and low workers' wages will be maintained. If this compromise comes true, China's coastal region might indeed follow the Western European of workers' emancipation. They would equally follow the Western European model of workers' social inclusion on the back of workers in peripheral regions contributing value to the commodity chain without participating from its benefits. It is most likely that this offer might satisfy the global buyers.
Ka Mei Lau (Chinese Working Women Network, NGO)
The Voice and Demands of Women Workers in China
Inside the enormous world factory, the women workers remained speechless, silent and weak. In the dark and shabby factory, the machines were humming loudly in the poor working environment, surrounded by the impolite accuses of the supervisors. Swallowing the disappointment towards the unjust treatment, the women workers’ hands continued to move quickly, out of the worries that they could not manufacture the required output in time. ‘Obedient’, ‘flexible’ and ‘conflict avoidant’ seemed to be the best adjectives for these women workers.
However, this kind of ancient, imaginative impression towards women workers in the factories in China is not applicable anymore to the current situation and mentality of women workers’ in China today. Women workers of this generation have their demands and expectations towards their future. Their dissatisfaction has conquered their helplessness. They try to use various methods to express their disappointment and anger. They refuse to comply with the undesirable working conditions and terms, and strive to create and actualize their hopes and dreams for the future. The women workers do not necessarily advocate by conventional, strategic organized action, instead, they surge for expressing themselves and change. They shout, “I want to stay in the city!”, “I don’t want to be a robot! I want a meaningful life!”, “I’m tired, I need to rest!”... ... Their demands and opinions are becoming visible. All these demands do not only reveal the women workers’ dissatisfaction towards the status quo, but also their refusal of cooperation towards this cruel reality. In this presentation, we would like to show the voices and demands of the women workers in China nowadays, as well as how they cope and react to the adverse working and living conditions.
Astrid Lipinsky (Department of East Asian Studies, University of Vienna, Austria)
From nügong to dagongmei: Chinese women coping with the right to work
While the google-search of nügong 女工 gives a result of over 10 Million entries, dagongmei 打工妹 has less than half of this number. On the other hand, looking for nügong in Chinese academic journals does not longer hits much literature. Articles on dagongmei are rather not related to their work, but to sexual abuse and to the exploitation of minors. The All-China Women's Federation does not provide proof for her assumption that dagongmei has developed into a honorable women workers title.
The paper discusses the future of the nügong/dagongmei concept by making use of the series of protective laws that were addressed to women workers in the 1990s. Can such regulations, especially in their province-level implementing guidelines, be adopted to recent economic developments? Finding show that although the Women's Rights Protection Law (funü quanyi baozhangfa) is often cited, women workers regulations are more on the protection of their female „special weaknesses“ than on rights' empowerment. The Women's Rights Protection Law includes a section on „women and work“. It is also the most recent of China's women workers legislation, having been revised in 2005. The law is analyzed for its adoptions, if at all, to recent economic developments, and for the picture of the working woman it establishes.
Suyu Liu (Linacre College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom)
Adverse-direction Migration of Chinese Nongmingong and the Unemployment in European Agriculture: A Preliminary Research
The phenomenon of Nongmingong (migrant workers from rural areas) in China attracts a wide attention from researchers, trade union and the government. However, relevant little attention has been paid to the adverse-direction migration of Nongmingong in the period after the world-wide financial crisis. This adverse-direction migration means the rural migrant workers, who were staying in the urban areas and employed in the industry of production (the second industry), moved back to the rural areas (usually where they originally came from) and the agriculture (the first industry). This adverse-direction migration is mainly caused by the wave of bankruptcy of many labour-intensive factories in South and Southeast China, due to the financial crisis shocks their main consumer markets (the US and Europe).
Therefore, in order to reduce the pressure of unemployment in the rural areas, and also to exploit the relevantly cheap labour who has gained some capital, technology and knowledge during their urban working life, the Chinese government initiated the ‘Build the Socialist New Countryside’ Campaign. One of the core objectives of this campaign is to enhance the quality/standard while reduce the cost of Chinese agricultural products, and hence increase the competiveness of Chinese agricultural products in the international market. According to the statistics from Chinese Ministry of Commerce and China Customs, Europe is one of the largest importers of Chinese products. We also find that the exportation of Chinese agricultural products to the Europe was increasing in the recent years.
In most European countries, the arable lands are owned by private landlords and the labour are employed and paid by their work, which is different from the Chinese system, in which the state owns the land and peasants work and rely on the products from the land. Therefore, it is predicable that the influx of Chinese agriculture products may increase the unemployment in the European agriculture in the short run. Being confronted by the challenge of unemployment, the trade union of the agriculture in European countries may choose to accept lower wages and try to persuade the government set more strict restrictions on the importation of agricultural products, especially from China. Not same as in the past, trade unions can also adopt some external factors, such as the environmental issues, to create stronger pressure on the government. This can be partially demonstrated by the increasing number of disputes between China and Europe on importing Chinese agricultural products. However we are still not sure whether in the long run the government of European countries will finally comprise to the agricultural trade union, since setting stricter restrictions can result to higher subsidies to European agriculture, and that will bring strong pressure to the public finance.
Tim Pringle (University of Warwick, United Kingdom)
The Forces of Labour in China: Constraining Capital?
Mainstream commentators have become used to portraying the Chinese working class as victims of reform rather than agents of change. In spring 2010, young workers at a Honda parts factory sparked a national strike wave that finally shattered this stereotype of passivity. Unfortunately Western media – with some notable exceptions – responded to these events with exaggeration and misinformation. The strikes were frequently portrayed as ‘unprecedented’ and the New York Times even reported appeals for independent trade unions, reducing the sophisticated collective tactics of the strikers to those of the desperate suicide bomber acting alone or on instructions from above.
This paper explores the roots of last year’s strike wave and discusses the consequences. I argue that what is happening in China is neither unprecedented nor simply a response to the global economic crisis. Economic reform since the 15thParty Congress and China’s subsequent membership of the WTO have created the conditions for class struggles which, in turn, puts pressure on the state-run All China Federation of Trade Unions to reform – especially in the field of collective bargaining. While it may be the case that China’s nascent labour movement is on the verge of coalescing into a conscious political force – history teaches us to exercise caution with regard to such predictions – it is on the shop and office floor that the increase in militancy is producing the most important results, not only by improving wages and conditions, but also in nurturing and training labour movement and trade union leaders for the future. This paper analyses these processes of change, identifies ongoing constraints on further progress and discuss the opportunities for providing external support to Chinese workers as they move to the forefront of efforts to contain global capital accumulation.
Thomas Sablowski (University of Frankfurt)
Workers struggles and capitalist crisis management in Europe
The present crisis of the European Union is the combined product of a global crisis of capital accumulation, uneven development and the internal contradictions of the Economic and Monetary Union and the Stability and Growth Pact of the EU. The debt crisis is now turning into a political crisis in several countries, leading to the emergence of democratic mass movements. However, the left and the trade unions are disoriented and divided with regard to an adequate strategy to deal with the crisis.
Wolfgang Schaumberg (Forum Arbeitswelten, Germany)
Developments in China and Germany: Another World is Possible?
The question is: Are there any experiences of wage-dependent people in China & Germany that encourage future chances of co-operation of social activists against the power of transnational corporations, banks and their governments, for “another world”, without exploitation?
Some current developments in China look very hopeful, but there are contradictory experiences, too, which lead to many questions concerning the different reception
by the workers…
Compared with developments in Germany, there are many differences, especially if we consider the historical experiences. But e.g. “corporate identity” cannot easily be achieved any more by the management in both countries…
The Chinese example shows how capital connects people worldwide.
But organizing international solidarity is not easy, as the traditional unions fight for “national identity”, and a political class-consciousness, “working class identity”, does not emerge automatically…
Jonathan Unger (Australian National University)
The Evolving Conditions of Chinese Migrant Workers and the Effects on Labour Disputes
A rapidly increasing number of migrant workers no longer can be considered as rural residents temporarily away from home. Instead, many millions are settling permanently into urban settings. Compared to earlier cohorts of migrant workers, they are more experienced, better informed, better connected and have more long-term expectations. As residence restrictions have relaxed, they are not as vulnerable as they were in previous decades, and as labour shortages have begun to develop, they cannot so easily be replaced by employers. The nature of labour disputes at private and foreign owned factories is beginning to change as a consequence of all of these factors.
Frido Wenten (University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies) & Daniel Fuchs (University of Vienna)
Changing Class-Relations in China: Prospects of Workers’ Autonomous Agency
From a perspective of Political and Autonomist Marxism, we will argue that China's developmental trajectory since the onset of socio-economic reform in 1978 has been considerably shaped by a re-composition and agency of the Chinese working class.
The first part of the presentation will put forward preliminary theses on how the emergence of both a new economic rationality in China and major strategic developmental shifts were driven by changes in class composition and workers' subjective agency. Three major developmental periods can be identified – 1978 to 1992, 1992 to 2002, and 2002 to present – marked not only by changes in government leadership but by major changes in working class-composition at their beginning, and intensified labour unrest towards their end. In the second part, we will look more closely at contemporary practices of the working class – especially since the strike wave of 2010. In doing so, we also intent to explicate what an Autonomist Marxist perspective has to offer for a deeper understanding of changing labour relations in China.
Bin Wu and Jackie Sheehan (School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom)
Immigration status, mobility and vulnerability of Chinese migrant workers in the UK: findings from the East Midlands on the impact of recession and PBS
This paper explores the impact of two recent changes in the legal and employment environment of Chinese migrant workers in the UK, the global recession which at the time of writing continues to affect the UK, and the shift to a points-based system (PBS) of immigration. Our findings are that PBS has resulted in some perverse outcomes in terms of encouragement of undocumented employment and increased obstacles to documented status for Chinese migrant workers, with some features of PBS shifting the already asymmetric power relationship between employers and documented migrant workers so far in employers’ favour that the result borders on bonded labour. Conversely, undocumented Chinese migrant workers are in some respects better off, as their greater mobility enables them to change jobs frequently in search of better pay and conditions. Taking the whole pattern of labour supply and demand into account with regard to Chinese businesses, undocumented workers tend to have greater labour-market power than do their documented counterparts under the present immigration regime.
Jiankang Xu (Chinese Acdemy of Social Sciences)
Spanning the “Caudine Forks” and the China Roads towards Socialism
In the perspective of Marx’s great transformation of social formation, the china roads towards socialism mean its historical journeys zigzagging from a laggard agricultural power in feudalism in the middle 19th century to a great modern country in socialism. The processes of transformation occur in the capitalist world system. The long conflicts coming from the revival, development and emancipation of the Chinese people against the oppression, subversion and domination of imperialism construct the fundamental contradiction, penetrating overall courses on the China roads.
The yardstick to review the zigzag characters of the China roads come out with a space-time frame of reference in terms of the Epoch of World History. The dialectic of the unity of opposites, incarnated in both the logic course of historical materialism and idiographic historical course in the development of human society, should be investigated carefully. Marx’s concerns of historical conditions, permitting Russia’s holistic spanning the “Caudine Forks” of capitalism during the late 19 century, finally failed to be realized. Notwithstanding, the spanning development or transformation, and the shift of geographical distribution in terms of epochal center should be a scene of thematic importance for historical materialism.
In the brand-new historical environment of imperialism, the main theme of post-revolutionary period for an underdeveloped socialist country in the East to reform and opening concerns how to extract the harvests of human civilization through learn from the West while keeping the socialist road from toppling, in order to span round about the “Caudine Forks” of capitalism. The way out of such a dilemma comes to a settlement in the historical dialectic, I call it “spanning round about”, the complexity that periodically interweaves the passive course learning from the West during its great-moderation and the active course self-organizing when the West encounters structural crisis.
Keming Yang (School of Applied Social Sciences, University of Durham, United Kingdom)
Which side are you on? China’s Communist state between the capitalists and the workers
Accompanied China’s rapid economic growth has been the transformation of the nation’s social structure. Having almost no connections with the old generation of capitalists, people from all walks of life have formed a new generation of capitalists (owners of privately owned businesses). In the meantime, the political status of the workers has declined dramatically from ‘the masters of the new society’ to the employees threatened by job insecurity, lack of welfare, or poor working conditions. Which side is China’s Communist state on when there are conflicts and disputes between the workers and their bosses? Or will it take a stance somewhere in between? This is a very important question because the answer to it will help us understand how the disputes have been handled by the Chinese state and what that means for China’s political development. My discussion will be organized in the following dimensions: (1) Ideologically, how has the Chinese state circled the square of allowing the growth of a capitalist class while claiming to represent the interests of the workers? (2) Politically, how has the Chinese state shifted the balance of political power and status from the worker’s side to the capitalist side? (3) Organizationally, how have the local organizations of the Chinese state, including labour unions and Communist party branches, dealt with the disputes between the capitalists and the workers? My analyses and discussions will draw on data collected or published in national surveys of private enterprises, my fieldworks, and case studies published by researchers in and outside China. I argue that to represent and satisfy the conflicting interests of both the capitalists and the workers would be one of the greatest challenges to the legitimacy and stability of the Communist state, and I would discuss a few possible scenarios.
Universität Wien
Universitätsstrasse 7/2. Stock
1010 Wien