China's trade union has been very quiet

the ACFTU family hotel

Since last year I have been following the developments of China's only allowed trade union, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) quite closely. Under orders from the central government this collection of tea-drinking government officials were forced out of their offices as a part of the effort to make the society more harmonious.
Well, the migrant workers got some attention and especially the efforts to organize trade union branches at foreign companies in China got a lot of interest. Also internationally foreign trade unions watched breathless as their Chinese brethren organized Wal-Mart. Also were people from the ACFTU very active in organizing the discussion around the new labor contract law.
The question was then and still is whether this is a real change that might push the ACFTU into the direction of a real trade union, or whether it is some window dressing that will disappear when a new show has to take the stage. At least a part of the ACFTU-officials is rather enthusiastic about the new direction their organization has taken.
But since a few months, they seem to have fallen off my online radar screen. Media do not mention the ACFTU anymore and there is certainly a move back to the previous tea-drinking activities.
The question now is whether this is a temporary move ahead of the upcoming party conference in October, or whether the issue of labor issues has definitively fallen off the agenda of the central government.
The overload of priorities has already led to painful choices and for example the environment has drastically dropped on the list of priorities. Labor issues might as well be the next victim in the permanent push-and-pull between the central government and other governmental power brokers.

A not-so harmonious society - a book plan

When I finished some years ago my book on "The wild East. 15 misunderstandings on China and the Chinese" (only in Dutch and German, you see here the German cover) I vowed I would never write a book again. Not only did I find writing a book a gruesome lonely boring process that did not fit my character, it seemingly offered little advantages. Unless you have a Harry Potter it is certainly not a way to make a living and getting that little bit of money actually paid by European publishers is tougher than getting money out of a Chinese company.

The number of people that actually buy your book is, compared to the impact of activities like this weblog, very low.

What is nice is that in a book you can actually build up an argument, make a point, often better than in short internet entries. And there is of course the vanity factor: publishers know that people love to have a book on their name, even if it does not pay the bills. Some publishing houses actually let authors paid to make maximum use of this vanity factor.

Of course, vanity is no issue for me :-). But this week I had two conversations with publishers who gently pushed me to give the idea of a book a thought. And then without wanting it, the thought-process was triggered off.

Now, by accident I have also been writing a proposal to write a client report for an HR-company on labor issues and these two lines came together this week. The famous labor contract law and the trade union activities at Wal-Mart are both part of Hu Jintao's "Harmonious Society" and so I thought, tying up other elements of Hu's drive for this harmonious society might actually be a good concept for a book. When this client-report works out, I might already have a nice basis.

What is helping too is my current work at Chinabiz Speakers. Maybe few authors can make a living by writing books, but when you can be linked up with a professional speaking circuit, that does make a difference. Selling speakers who have some books on their name proves also to be easier.

Let's ponder a bit.

Strike hits German firm in Shenzhen

Chinese media report that over 5,000 employees, mostly female migrant workers, started a strike at a German producer of mobile phone components, Feihuang Electronic Factory at Shenzhen. The strike started at the evening of August 22 as a protest against proloning work hours and lowering wages, writes the China Tech News.

According to the workers, from last month on, the factory asked each of them to make 90 more chargers every hour and if they could not finish the task they needed to work extra hours, or they would not get the basic salary. From the evening of August 22 on, about 5000 workers began their strike and some of them reportedly broke into the facilities of the factory.

The factory has about 10,000 workers in total.

What did Mattel do to stop the toys? - the WTO column

Do not get me wrong. All the upheaval about the millions recalled toys and other quality-related issues regarding products from China is long overdue. Even a hundred TV-shows cannot hide that something is seriously wrong in the way quality control is done in this country. And yes, there is now a fair amount of China-bashing going on, but that is very well deserved China-bashing.

But the question what Mattel, and other companies, have been doing to stop this scandalous export of faulty products is a question that is all too easy ignored. Of course it is awful that millions of American children might be in danger when they bite on their toys, but has anybody already looked after the thousands of Chinese workers who have been painting those toys? They must have been exposed to much higher dangerous levels of lead than any of the children involved.

Quality and quality control ask for a comprehensive approach. When there is no guarantee that the working conditions at the suppliers are not adequate, the end products are also at risk, as we see now. Unfortunately, and it has been argued here and here over and over again, the strategy of policing your Chinese suppliers has been declared bankrupt. It is failing, has been failing for a long time, and might never have worked really well.

In the light of that discussion it is shocking to see that Mattel get almost the role of a victim, in stead of that of at least a fellow conspirator.

I do not want to follow this line and put also a part of the blame with the consumer, who has been more than happy to get nice products for an every cheaper price. It is the task of the producers, Chinese and others, to make sure their workers and their consumers do not get hurt in the process. The Mattel-recall should be an opportunity to get safer products, both for the consumers and the Chinese workers.

That is most likely against a higher price, but that price the consumers should be willing to pay.

Fons Tuinstra

The qualified staff crisis

China's dazzling economic growth might get off track because of the dramatic shortage of qualified staff, the Economist quantifies. The shortfall: 2,200 new pilots a year. China has fewer lawyers than California. China is short of 160,000 GP's. About 75,000 new business leaders are needed in China in the coming ten years.
And the good people are still running away:

China is even suffering from something of a brain drain. In recent years the Chinese have been able to travel abroad more freely to study and acquire skills. But many do not return. A recent report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences found that between 1978 and 2006, just over 1m Chinese went to study overseas and some 70% of them did not go back. The brightest are often tempted to stay abroad by local employers, because the competition for jobs has become global.

The article says that pay-rates for senior staff in many parts of Asia are higher than for similar jobs in Europe. I have seen no evidence of that (and the Economist just states this as a fact) and until recently at least in China MBA-graduates with some experience earned much less than in Europe and the US.
Much more at the Economist.

No taxi's in Zhengzhou

no passengers today in Zhengzhou

Zhengzhou is suffering from a city-wide strike of taxi drivers since 30 July, Global Voices reports. Reports are appearing on the internet, but traditional media seem to have been hit by a blackout.
None of the reports indicate when the cause of the strike could be, but it action seems to be rather successful. The local government is trying to get taxi's from elsewhere to to fight the strike.

Planning a city tour on Monday

I have been organizing a city walk in Shanghai for a Dutch group of trade union people in October last year and that success story has been going around a bit. Now a group of Belgian trade union people has been visiting their brethren in China at the ACFTU and want me to take them around also on Monday afternoon in Shanghai.
There is nothing against that apart from the sweltering heat. Shanghai is not the place you want to go around very much at this stage. And I do want to pick their brains about their experiences before they are taken away for excessive exposure to the Shanghai summer. No sign it might even rain before August is due.
Maybe a tour through Shanghai bars? Looking for more useful ideas.

Only six face jail in Shanxi kiln scandal

Only six lower-ranked official will face criminal prosecuting, Shanxi government officials announced on Monday, writes Howard French in the International Herald Tribune. Not surprisingly, angry citizens are not pleased.

The announcement ... unleashed a torrent of strongly critical commentary on the Internet, with thousands of people in news discussion groups and on blogs denouncing what were widely perceived as light punishments, and questioning the failure to pursue criminal charges or allegations of corruption.
A serious political incident was first turned into a serious criminal case, and then slowly transformed into a matter of ordinary malfeasance," wrote one online commentator. "Once all of these rustlings are over, the same things are bound to happen again."

Update: Was obvious wrong here. One has been sentenced to death and 28 to jail, says the BBC.

Large strike against French cement maker

Over 3,000 cement workers are involved in a strike that has already lasted for two weeks, reports the China Worker. The Sichuan Shuangma Investment Group, a listed company, ran into trouble as the French cement maker Lafarge took over the factory in the town of Erlangmaio in a Rmb 300 million deal.

In order to implement compulsory redundancies, the management of the Shuangma group offered each worker compensation at RMB 1380 for each year of employment.
As part of the compensation deal workers will lose all entitlements to their pensions, social insurance and medical insurance, even if they have worked for this former state-owned company for over 20 years. It is reported that these terms were a prerequisite for the takeover from Lafarge’s side.

Lafarge is working in China through a joint venture with the famous Shui On Group from Hong Kong. The town has virtually closed off from the outside world and internet has been disconnected in an effort to try and stop news from leaking out, the publication says.
More details here.

Looking for job in China?

Poor labor conditions have caught the attention in China and it does not look it is going away very fast. Global Voices points at this report in Moobol.com on a illegal black cotton factory in Wuhan. A picture says more than words.

Update: Got some more words anyway. CSR Asia translated the store and you can find it here.

A critical look at the media in the Shanxi kiln affair

Southern Weekend, after earlier look at the Shanxi brick kiln affair in detail, had a thorough look at the role the Chinese media played in this case. (Here translated by the China Media Project.)

Two things in particular concerning the media's handling of the Shanxi Kiln Affair are inexplicable. One is the shallowness of reporting. Much news in the case early on was slapped together from unverified popular rumors and Web chatter. Subsequent reports failed to go deeper into the heart of the story, generously yielding free space for the subsequent “authoritative” version [offered by officials]. Secondly, after the affair broke, the media quickly turned the focus of the news story, neglecting investigation of the enslaved workers and their families, and of the tyrannical boss and the power clique that protected him. The focus turned [instead] to officials and law-enforcement as they worked to clean up the situation. [See ESWN translation of Southern Weekend report here]

More details at the CMP.

The Shanxi brick kiln affair

Southern Weekend details the month-old affair that shocked China and the world (here in a translation by ESWN). A must-read for those who are interested in those events beyond the headlines.

Hongdong has made the preliminary decision to sanction Guangshengsi town mayor Xu Jintie. When Xu was interviewed by the Southern Weekend reporter, he said: "We definitely have an unavoidable responsibility. We have to accept our responsibility."
Then the Southern Weekend reporter asked this grassroots official: "If you were dismissed from your position, how would you feel?"
The mayor lowered his head for a long time and said nothing. When he raised his head again, he was crying.

Harmony not on the agenda of the US trade unions

The Los Angeles Times brings an almost hilarious report on the visit of an trade union group from LA, associated with the AFL-CIO, seeking a sistership relationship with the Shanghai trade union.
A nice East-meets-West story, where both parties have even no clue who they are meeting. For the time being, the Chinese concept of a harmonious society seems not yet to catch on in the US delegation.

That approach is in keeping with the Chinese government's push to create a "harmonious society." But it was clear that the Chinese were, both literally and figuratively, speaking another language from the Americans."We come here and they're talking about harmony," said Durazo. "Harmony? With someone who's just thinking about maximum profit? We just can't think that way."

Working for a Chinese law firm

You thought that only migrant workers had problems in getting paid by their Chinese bosses. Well, according to this US lawyer Jeff the same happened to him when he worked for a Chinese law firm, the Zhong Lun law firm in Beijing. Unlike most migrant workers, this lawyer stared a weblog to document his complaints. That has now been discovered by one of the partners in his law firm and she is now rather angry:

I have seen your blog. You are the biggest liar I have ever seen in my life. You are seriously sick and need to see a doctor. By the way, I am not threatening you. I am going to sue you - that is exactly what I am going to do, and I will sue you for a huge amount of damages.

I'm going to watch this for a while.

The value of a trade union in a coal mine

Historian Wu Si

Historian Wu Si looks at the backgrounds of the Shanxi brick kiln scandal in Southern Weekend (here in a translation of Danwei). At the tail of the story he illustrates how the arrival of a trade union in the Zaozhuang coal mines made a difference:

Wu: Last year I wrote an article that calculated the wage difference between Zaozhuang coal mines with and without a labor union. Before the labor union came, the workers were exploited terribly. Five years after the union arrived, workers' wages had risen 32%. Labor unions are one form of political power, and political power is worth money. It can be eaten - it was worth 32% of their former wages. The second question is whether the boss suffered after the wages were raised. Did profits drop? In those Zaozhuang mines, profits did not drop.
I've asked two bosses what would happen to their companies if, in the next five years, their employees' wages were to rise 30%. Would they forfeit market competitiveness? They said that the competitive edge that China has in the world market, particularly its cost advantage, is not just a point or two.
Today, Chinese products can be dumped on the world because of that labor cost advantage. This upsets workers in other countries, and has even caused problems to international order.
I've calculated that if China were to increase the salary of its 100 million migrant workers by 32%, this would bring to their families benefits worth 5 times what canceling the agriculture tax brought. This money would be transformed into spending power. One problem China has today is overproduction. Even if its competitiveness on the world market is weakened, the benefits of spurring domestic consumption are enough to make up for it.

Inflation triggers off alarm

Rising food prices have triggered off alarms and according to the official news agency Xinhua and local authorities have till Thurday to provide news for an increase of the minumum wages. In an AP dispatch:

Chinese leaders have been alarmed by a spike in inflation that saw the price of eggs rise 37.1 percent in May from their price in the same month last year. Meat and poultry were 26.5 percent more expensive in May compared to a year ago.
The increase "would have a great impact on low-income families," the Xinhua News Agency said.

It is unclear what the effect could be. Minimum wages tend to be rather low anyway and compliance is another problem. The figures for the inflation seem pretty high, compared to what I have seen in Shanghai. Just like the minimum wages, figures for inflation might vary greatly between regions.

Modern missionaries - the WTO-colum

(later in Chinabiz)

What have media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and US trade union leader Any Stern in common? Both of them came to China with a mission, and both have seen some - but it limited - successes. Murdoch wanted to introduce modern media to China, Stern wanted to help the Chinese trade union to organize Wal-Mart and maybe more. In both cases the question is: what will happen to their heritage when they have obtained Chinese characteristics?

China has a pretty mixed reputation when it concerns receiving foreign guests. Early Jesuits were gladly offered a place to stay in Beijing, but in the 19th century the heads of foreign missionaries occasionally were chopped off. Both gentlemen seem to fit excellent in that missionary tradition that has dominated the relations between China and the rest of the world for centuries. Mr. Murdoch came closest in getting his head chopped off, at least in the early 1990s when he denounced authoritarian governments like that in Beijing. Those days are long forgotten and after some years of unease, Mr. Murdoch became good friends with those same people he sought to overthrow earlier in his life.

What Stern and Murdoch have in common with the earlier generations of missionaries is that making money is not topping their agenda, but more a more ideological drive is bringing both to China. Mr. Stern is educating China's trade union in grass root organization skills, skills they first applied last year when they organized the US retailer Wal-Mart. In the end a better-organized trade union in China might help to raise the Chinese wages and that might indirectly be beneficial for Mr. Stern's members back in the US, but that seems a target for the long haul. Most business people are more driven by quarterly figures and that makes them rather different from the missionaries, modern or old.

Mr. Murdoch is equally in the media business for the very long haul, if any, as he has discovered the hard way. While much of his efforts to educated the state-owned news media had been gratefully accepted, earning money himself has - possibly forced by the difficult circumstances for foreign media to work in China - obtained a lower position on his agenda too. Each of his media projects in China was seen as a sure winner but invariably ran into problems with backstabbing regulators, lackluster attention from the consumers or a combination of both. The recent launch of his elsewhere successfully social network MySpace has not been the instant success in China it was expected to be.

What both gentlemen have in common with the earlier generations of missionaries are their sky-high expectations on how they can change China. Changing China was high on the agenda of missionaries, as it seems to be on the agenda of Stern and Murdoch. Both work in industries that are heavily dominated by government-driven political agenda's and in both cases it looks very unlikely they might even make a dent in China's spurt forward. At best China will reuse some of the tools they offer and use it for their own purposes. They might leave behind some nice churches and maybe that is rewarding enough.

The illusion of being able to make a change in China keeps the missionaries running and makes them sometimes admirable people. It does not mean they will be successful.

Fons Tuinstra

The slaves from Shanxi - follow up

"Can we take this Henan child with us?" I asked. "That is unacceptable. I spend 400 yuan to buy him."

ESWN translates more of the media reports on the Shanxi-slaves here. The issue is - rightfully - still high on the agenda.

Just settled down in Brasschaat, Belgium for the coming weeks. Struggling with bad connectivity and and host of thousands of RSS-feeds and twitters I have to go through. Will try to catch up by Monday.

Update I: Shanxi governor offers his apologies.

Update II: First two official arrested.

Update III: ESWN translates a case story of a now famous kiln in Hangdong county.

Mixed media reaction on slave trade

ESWN points at a variety of media trends concerning the reports on the recent found slaves in Shanxi kilns. Online media have been asked to cool down and only bring positive news. Local media cannot bring their own news but have to rely on the official news agency Xinhua.
But that agency is aggressively going after the local authorities who have condoned or even profited from the slave trade and in some cases supported it.

Even as the principal criminals at the illegal brick kilns are severely dealt with, we must hold accountable and punish severely in accordance with the state laws and disciplinary rules all those cadre leaders who refused to see or hear anything occurring within their jurisdictions and neglected to carry out their duties.

Other media tend to follow this "official" line and go for the attack. I guess we see here the harmonious society in action.

China's upcoming labor shortage

Asia Times quotes more extensively from a CASS-study on China's upcoming labor shortage, we already mentioned in May.
New it the association the report makes with the so-called "Lewisian turning point":

"Lewisian turning point" is based on a theory of Nobel laureate Arthur Lewis (1915-91), who said a developing country's industrial wages begin to rise quickly at the point when the supply of surplus labor from the countryside tapers off.

Fathers looking for their children in Shanxi

China Digital Times points at yet another online movie by "daughtersofchina" on YouTube, this time about the action of fathers who have been looking for the enslaved children in Shanxi province. Rather shocking images.

Update I: ESWN translates a CCTV-feature on the issue.
Update II: And even more at Danwei.

Slave row deepens

Despite efforts by the central government to give the slave issue a positive twist, public anger is only increasing, fed by reports in the local media, writes Reuters. The call to resign for those official who are responsible for the slave labor is increasing.

The Southern Metropolis Daily, a popular tabloid, said the same local officials who were now parading themselves as rescuers of trapped workers had long turned a blind eye to the trade...
"The dereliction of local government departments and even collusion between officials and criminals is plain to see," said one local newspaper commentary reproduced on the Web site of the People's Daily (www.people.com.cn).
Other critics said the abuses highlighted the disintegration of local government in the countryside.

Henan slave master caught

Heng Tinghan, who is accused of holding slaves to work in his brick kiln in Shanxi province, has been arrested, media report. Reuters:

He has become a central villain in a national drama over possibly hundreds or more teenage and adult "slaves" forced or cheated into grueling labor in kilns, mines and foundries across Shanxi and neighboring Henan province...
"I felt it was a fairly small thing, just hitting and swearing at the workers and not giving them wages," Heng said, according to the Shiyan Evening News.

Child labor on the rise

picked up from Shanghaiist

Child labor is suddenly an issue in China, where it traditionally was not. Children - especially if you only have a few - are too valuable not to send to school. That is suddenly changing, partly because of a research report into companies that produce products for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The rumor was first denied, then admitted and so now there is a real issue.
Access Asia's Paul French focuses on the issue of the labor shortage in Guangdong:

What a visit to Guangdong would tell you is not a story of worker shortages, but rather one of misallocation. Factories with poor conditions often have no shortages, while cleaner, better and newer factories struggle to staff-up... CSR reps, journalists and sourcers visiting factories around Guangdong report that the age of workers appears to be getting worryingly low, as the search for low end assembly workers intensifies. Add to this some more bad news in the run up to the Olympics (see our advertisers nervous about Darfur piece last week) with stories on the BBC, in the Guardian and from lobby group Play Fair 08 claiming to have found children as young a 12 producing Olympics merchandise in Guangdong (click here). All very worrying.

Even worser charges come from Shanxi province where a group of angry parents have set children free that were used for slave labor. Forty of them were rescued from brick kilns. The action came with a petition on the internet and was earlier this week taken up by the state media. From the AP-report:

It said up to 1,000 boys were being held, but that Shanxi and Henan police had shoved responsibility for investigating onto the other side.
"Our children's safety is everything, but who will help us? With governments on both sides passing the responsibility, where can we go for help?" the petition said.

More at the Wall Street Journal.

Paul French is also a speaker at our upcoming speakers bureau. If you want to book him for a lecture, do let us know.

Outsourcing: the good, the bad and the ugly - the WTO-column

Much has already been said about the lengthy battle surrounding the draft labor contract law in China. A lobby, headed by US labor groups and Chinese academics like professor Liu Cheng, have put especially the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai in the position of the villain, accused of trying to to undermine efforts of the Chinese legislators to protect the rights of Chinese workers. By maintaining sweatshop conditions among their suppliers, foreign companies only focus on their own profitability, is the argument.

When you get into such a PR-crisis as Amcham Shanghai did, setting a successful counter-strategy is tough. When Yahoo came under fire because it helped the Chinese authorities to jail the Chinese journalist Shi Tao, they simply kept silence or tried to avoid the issue. The issue is still haunting them. Perhaps, when you action is really indefensible, like in Yahoo's case, shutting up is perhaps the only strategy. But while the way Amcham Shanghai has been dealing with their input for China's labor law certainly does not deserve a prize in a beauty contest, keeping silent only adds to the impression its stance is indefensible. That might be the wrong signal.

An organization like Amcham brings together a great variation of companies, huge, small from almost every conceivable industry. Their opinions on how to deal with labor in China might vary equally, creating a problem whatever position Amcham would take. There would always be a larger portion of the membership disagreeing. Microsoft simply has fewer possibilities to squeeze its suppliers than Wal-Mart.

I think the lobby in favor of a stronger labor law has done itself a disservice by simplifying the debate to a pro-labor and pro-company stance, while ignoring the differences between companies.

Nike is a good example company, despite their dependence on a large number of Chinese suppliers, trying to turn around the current dilemma. Nike has about 800,000 workers in its global supply chain, says this article of the Financial Times, Most of its products come from China.

The company says it will set up an educational programme on workers' rights to freedom of association, to be implemented in all of its contract factories by 2011, the date the company has set for reaching sales of $23bn (€17.1bn, L11.6bn).
Hannah Jones, Nike's vice-president for corporate responsibility, said the brand was now placing a greater effort on promoting "systemic" change in its supply chain, which would include strengthening the ability of factory workers to speak out on their own behalf about problems. "We believe constructive dialogue between workers and factory management leads to better conditions," she said.

Clearly Nike is trying to set a new standard now policing the suppliers failed to work. How that will work out in China, where the government and its only trade union ACFTU has just announced they want collective bargaining for all companies in place in a few years time, is very unclear. For sure we have some interesting developments ahead of us and it would be interesting to see whether Amcham Shanghai would see a role for itself in this new process.

Fons Tuinstra

Making the costs of labor law violations higher - Liu Cheng

The Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club (SFCC) make tonight its come-back after a long recess with an interesting evening on the draft Chinese labor contract law. Professor Liu Cheng debated with lawyers from Chinese and foreign law firms about the law. His main argument is that enforcing the law by making breaking the labor law more expensive, is the only way the market will listen.
One of the main opponents of the labor law, the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, was absent in the debate, although the organization has been vilified by professor Liu and others in public. Paul French, a former treasurer of the SFCC, called Amcham even a "bunch of wankers" in a recent analysis of the labor law, a qualification Amcham obvious did not wanted to rectify tonight.
Baker & McKenzie lawyer Jeffrey P. Wilson - who spoke neither on behalf of Amcham nor his law firm - pointed at a whole range of lose ends in the law and argued that most of the regulations to protect Chinese workers were already in the current law; he also saw in enforcement the largest problem.
The third panelist, Ma Jianjun, a partner of Jun He Law Office in Shanghai, brought up an interesting point in the relations between the only allowed Chinese trade union, the ACFTU, and the international trade union movement. The ACFTU collected last year four billion US dollar in contribution from employers. The trade union can get according to the law two percent of the payroll. According to Ma that constitutes a conflict of interest, since trade unions are internationally net supposed to be paid by the employers.
Although I know from my previous trade union experience that there are collective labor contracts - no laws - where employers are required to pay part of the trade union budget, most trade unions would be funded for most of their budget by fees of their members, and kicked out if they would not perform.
Professor Liu Cheng acknowledged the problem but said the ACFTU would have at this stage more urgent problems to solve: "maintaining the social stability and a sustainable development".
(A translation of the third draft of the labor contract law will be available here tomorrow.)

How to retain your Chinese staff

Shaun Rein

Smart remarks by Shaun Rein in Forbes on how to retain your managers. Retention is not about money alone:

1. Get rid of the glass ceiling for your Chinese staff and eradicate double-tier payment systems.
2. China's baby boomers find job satisfaction more important than money (although money still counts).
3. Chinese employees want continuous training and education.

More here.

Collective bargaining introduced by 2010 - ACFTU

All companies in China will have a system for collective bargaining and collective labor contracts in place by 2010, a high level official of China's only allowed trade union ACFTU has said in a press conference, according to the China Daily.

Zhang Qiujian, a senior official with the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, said at a press meeting in Beijing that the federation was firmly committed to helping workers in all companies, including State-owned, private and foreign-owned, to fight for decent wages.

By the end of next year, already 60 percent of the workers should have collective contracts, she added. Already over 100 million workers are covered by collective contracts.

SFCC discusses the labor contract law

prof. Liu Cheng

The Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club organizes next week Wednesday a panel on China's draft labor contract law with professor Liu Cheng. Liu Cheng was one of the key debaters in the past few years on how the labor law should look like. He has been very outspoken in criticizing the American Chamber of Commerce for trying to water down the draft law.

He is joint by Ma Jianjun, a labor expert of the Jun He law firm in Shanghai.

From the fact that nobody from the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai is there, I assume that they have refused to participate, since I'm quite sure they have been invited. That might make the debate a bit one-sided, but you cannot force accused institutions to defend themselves.

The meeting starts at Wednesday May 30 at 7PM at the Foreign Culture Club at Jululu 889. Timely reservation is advised because of the limited seating here.

International trade unions split on China

The current visit of "Change to Win", a coalition of US trade unions to China will most certainly enter the history books of the future. Lead by Teamster president James Hoffa, for the first time a major international trade union delegation met with top-officials of the Chinese ACFTU, the party-led trade union. Other trade unions are not allowed in China.
Over the past decades the international trade unions supported, be it marginally, dissident-led labor groups in Hong Kong and southern China with Han Dongfeng as their main icon. As the ACFTU started to unionize Wal-Mart last year and made careful moves into becoming a real trade unions, the rest of the world - employers and trade unions alike - watched. The ACFTU was only acknowledged by a few marginal trade unions and - remarkable enough - the Japanese.
The ACFTU mainly had a ritual function inside state-owned companies, were when possible also set up in foreign joint ventures, but were fast losing membership. Traditionally companies outside the big cities and in private companies had no trade union.
As the political agenda of a "harmonious society" of president Hu Jintao got into place, the ACFTU has to do what it had never done: act as a trade union. While still rather uncommon, it looks that also collective bargaining as a negotiation tool will become more common in the future.
The US labor movement has over the past decades lost most of its power and has split in two over the past few years. The larger AFL-CIO still holds a firm anti-China position and has asked for trade sanctions against China.
The Change to Win alliance has taken a radical different position. From the Washington Post:

"This new direction that we're taking is propelled by the new challenges we face in a new world economy," Greg Tarpinian, executive director of Change to Win, told reporters. "Our mission is to fight for the American Dream and we don't believe we can fight for the American Dream and restore the American middle class without linking up with Chinese workers."

The US mission in China had very obvious a domestic target, as this quote shows. The wider debate will also spill over in the rest of the trade unions and push their China discussion from a Hong Kong, dissident oriented into a Beijing, official one. While I do acknowledge the good things that have come from Hong Kong, it is about time to change.

Meeting on labor law in Brussels

prof Jude Howell

The Brussels China Forum and the China Platform organizes on Thursday 21 June a meeting in Brussels on China's labor law, with a few excellent speakers:

• Professor Chang Kai of the People's University in Beijing and author of the labor law


• Professor Jude Howell of Sussex University, author of "New Democratic trends in China? (unfortunately not yet at Amazon) on the reforms in China's trade union ACFTU.


• Professor Anita Chan of the Australian National University, who wrote extensively about the ACFTU and CRS in China

China: a fast moving labor market

While Teamster president James Hoffa and a delegation of American trade unionists are traveling China, it is certainly not only them on the move, although they certainly reserved their spot in the history books, according to AP:

Teamsters president James Hoffa and other leaders of the Change to Win federation of unions arrived in China on Friday, ending a decades-old boycott by U.S. labour groups, many of which still reject the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, which closely follows government and Communist party orders.

We are trying to catch up with the companies, says the delegation to whoever wants to listen. The US magazine Newsweek covers the dispute over the Chinese labor law, where US companies are accused of watering down the labor for their own profits with the catching headline: Profits over Principles.

When critics accuse U.S. companies of moving jobs to China to exploit cheap labor and sweatshop conditions, businesses always argue that their presence has helped improve labor standards and even forward democracy. Now the same companies that pat themselves on the back are lobbying to weaken a draft Chinese labor law—and workers' rights activists are calling them hypocrites.

And while at the US-side employers and trade unions fight for media attention, the Chinese labor market takes its own turns. We reported already about the upcoming shortage on Chinese migrant workers. The National Geograpic describes very colorful how the shortage of cheap labor drives Chinese companies literally into the last parts of Zhejiang province that have not yet been industrialized. Chinese media repeat that message on the shortage of workers, educated or not, and the rising wages.