Workers are finding their voice to fight for rights in China

22 Nov, 2010
China Post

SHAJING-- In many ways, Lan Yimin represents the new generation of Chinese factory workers.

In this May 26 file photo, Chinese workers assemble electronic components at Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn's factory in Shenzhen, in the southern Guangzhou province. Chinese workers' growing awareness and their willingness to take action are slowly pushing up wages and improving conditions in the manufacturing industry. (AFP)

She wants fair working conditions. Time off to socialize. And a job that pays enough so she can open a milk tea business one day.

Lan, 22, is one of millions of migrant workers powering the electronics, furniture and toy factories in China's Pearl River Delta. While she's following in her parents' footsteps on the assembly line, unlike them, she's less willing to “eat bitterness” — as the Chinese call it — and toil away for meager pay and benefits. She has more job options and better access to information. And as China's economy booms, her generation is becoming bolder.

“The young generation has a wider social circle; we talk more about factory conditions and we know more about our legal rights,” Lan says at a workers' center in the industrial town of Shajing, where she attends seminars on handling late wages and contract termination.

Workers' growing awareness and their willingness to take action are slowly pushing up wages and improving conditions in the manufacturing industry. The Chinese government already moved to increase salaries and labor standards a few years ago. Now it is trying to maintain a delicate balance of improving income levels for workers while not scaring away foreign corporations with higher labor costs.

As wages and other costs rise here, U.S. companies will have to decide whether to take their production to other Asian manufacturing hubs or increase prices for American consumers.

This year, strikes at Honda factories and a spate of suicides at Foxconn — a maker of electronics for U.S. companies such as Apple and Dell — raised alarm among corporations and the government that the era of the docile worker had ended. Strikes still happen each week in China, labor rights groups say, but the government doesn't allow them to be reported. The labor unrest is even inspiring strikes in Cambodia and Vietnam, whose workers say they're emboldened by their Chinese colleagues' examples.

For now, factory workers in China “are only making economic demands, not political,” says Chang Kai, a labor relations expert at People's University in Beijing who has assisted workers with strike negotiations.

In China, “If the government does not treat the workers' struggle for collective bargaining seriously, if it decides to treat these demands as political, then this will turn into a political struggle,” says Han Dongfang, a labor activist deported to Hong Kong for his role in the Tiananmen Square protest of 1989.

To a certain extent, the Chinese government is tolerating worker unrest because it recognizes that higher wages translate into more spending that can stimulate the economy. The government wants all residents to share in the country's economic growth, says Juzhong Zhuang, deputy chief economist of the Asian Development Bank, because “high income inequality can lead to social problems that undermine long-term economic growth.”

The challenge is that the government wants to “offer more protection for workers, but it is also exposed to a lot of pressure from companies” resisting change, says Debby Chan, a project officer for Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM), a workers' advocacy group.

After this year's labor unrest, the government is stepping up efforts to unionize companies, says Lesli Ligorner, a Shanghai-based partner at Paul Hastings law firm who represents multinationals doing business in China. The idea is that if workers join the state-controlled All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) — the only union allowed in the country — they'll have an avenue other than strikes to air their grievances.

Yet having more companies establish unions does little good if those unions don't represent workers, says Han, who founded Hong Kong-based worker advocacy group China Labor Bulletin. “If I'm thirsty and you give me another cup with no water in it, I'll still be thirsty.”

Until major change occurs, and until workers have viable options to air their complaints, strikes will keep rising, predicts Li Qiang, founder of China Labor Watch, a group with offices in New York and Southern China.

No official numbers are available on strikes. But labor cases heard by arbitration committees more than doubled from 2000 through 2007 to 350,182, according to Chinese government data. In 2008, arbitrated cases surged to 693,000 after laws took effect making it cheaper for workers to pursue arbitration and requiring employers to provide written contracts.

In the Pearl River Delta — known as the factory of the world — a labor shortage is giving migrant workers leverage to negotiate better wages and benefits. Evidence of this can be found along Southern China's dusty streets.

In Dongguan city, where three of every four residents are migrant workers, for-hire signs taped to telephone poles compete for people's attention. Brightly colored banners hang from factory gates; one offers 1,300 yuan a month, about US$200, for eight-hour workdays, 26 days a month.

While TAL has added employees to its busy production lines, it's been harder to recruit them because of the labor shortage, admits Roger Lee, the company's chief operating officer.

Labor costs have surged 25 percent this year due to rising wages and benefits, forcing the company to become more efficient.

Yet even with productivity improvements, higher costs mean “we ultimately have to pass along” certain expenses to clients, Lee says. U.S. retailers then have to decide whether to raise prices for consumers.

Unsafe working environments and inadequate pay are common, according to Li, of China Labor Watch. U.S. companies share responsibility, he says, because “they're encouraging the exploitation of Chinese laborers by hiring factories based on the lowest price and the fastest production.”

This criticism, however, ignores the fact that U.S. companies are investing more money and resources to monitor their suppliers, says Drew Thompson, director of China studies at the Nixon Center, a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank. “By and large, American companies are doing it right.”

Still, labor experts generally agree that China has a long way to go in improving working conditions. And the surge in job-related strikes and lawsuits may signal that workers are no longer willing to stand idly by.