labor - President Hu forced trade union into action

The recent spike in activities of China's only trade union has been triggered off by a presidentail order, media report. The ACFTU was able to organize workers at Wal-Mart. Now 16 eeoutlets of Wal-Mart have been unionized.
In China such a move had hardly any meaning, as the trade union only organizes the annual trip and will help management to maintain a "harmonious society".
My earlier column on how migrant labor is changing under the pressure of a relative shortage of workers has triggered off some debate. One thing is for sure, my suggestion that the professionalizing of the recruitment process might lead to a kind of collective agreements is not shared by the experts in China. For the Chinese edition of the wage indicator are we now discussing whether we should add a question on collective agreements (whatever shape they could take). At this stage we have decided not to include such a question.