Anita Chan

labor - How Wal-Mart helped to change the Chinese union

Anita Chan is fast become the leading expert on labor in China and in Yale Global she dives into the recent successes of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) at Wal-Mart:

An analysis of some 40 Chinese newspaper reports demonstrate that in targeting Wal-Mart, ACFTU has taken on a task not attempted since the early 1950s – grassroots union organizing. Wal-Mart miscalculated in thinking that it could use the same anti-union tactics in China that it does around the world. Had Wal-Mart bowed to the ACFTU demand three years ago to let the union into its stores, those branches would have been like most workplace unions in China. Set up jointly with management, the unions would have been subservient to management. But Wal-Mart’s refusal to accept any union provoked the ACFTU. Publicly announcing three years ago its plans to form union branches at Wal-Mart, ACFTU was determined to succeed.

For the first time the ACFTU started to organize labor without prior permission of the management.

Wal-Mart immediately went on the offensive. Management called big meetings, and according to Chinese newspaper reporters, announced warnings that employees who joined the union would not have their contracts renewed. But after a week, Wal-Mart capitulated. On August 16, it signed a memorandum with ACFTU which effectively allows a local union to go into the stores to propagate China’s labor laws, hold a multi-candidate union election for a union executive committee and a union chair, and represent workers in collective bargaining. Henceforth, declared ACFTU, the memorandum would become the template for setting up trade-union branches in thousands of other foreign-funded enterprises.