Chinese workers have been fighting for improved working conditions and higher wages. Strikes have increased as income inequality has grown in China. Workers at factories producing electronics for companies like Apple and Honda have organized strikes to protest issues like low pay, long hours, and health hazards. In response to public pressure and the threat of further labor unrest, companies have increased wages and the Chinese government has also raised minimum wage standards in recent years. However, significant issues around worker rights and protections remain.

1. China’s Workers Rising
March 24, 2015
Cathy Walker
Canadian Auto Workers (CAW)
Director, Health & Safety Department (retired)
To: Dr. Xinying Hu’s class
LBST 330-3
Simon Fraser University

2. Does increased
prosperity lead to
improved health and
working conditions in
China?
 Whose prosperity?
 Whose health?
 Whose working conditions?

3. What are the two types
of people in the world?

4.  And which are you?

5. Apple computers

6. Apple iPad

7. Who got an iPhone for
Christmas?

8. Who wants an iWatch?

9. It’s not just Apple
 We’ll focus on Apple because they are
the biggest, but the same pattern
repeats for the other big electronics
manufacturers

10. Who makes these great
gadgets?

11. Foxconn workers in
Guangdong, China

12. Motherboards etc.

13. What about China
before electronic
gadgets?

14. 1927 workers fought
back: Shanghai and
Anyuan miners’ strike

15. 1949 – 1978
workers’
state?

16. Urban danwei (work
unit) system
 Lifetime employment guarantee
 Housing provided and subsidized
 Food and fuel subsidized
 Medical care system provided
 Public school education free
 No firings or negative discipline
 Positive examples such as model workers

17. Workers had a lot of
power in a socialist
society Unions didn’t have
to protect people
from firing or unfair
discipline
 Management was
paternalistic
 Wage system was
very egalitarian
 But with later
privatization of the
SOEs: mass layoffs

18. Workers have been
striking in China
for years
 Strikes aren’t illegal in China
 In 1982 the right to strike was removed from
the constitution but there’s no prohibition on
strikes in law
 After reform, strikes about unpaid wages
and pensions, unfair layoffs, corruption
 Now, as the income gap widens in China,
there is more and more resentment

19. 1989 Tiananmen
 It was workers who
manned the
barricades on the
streets leading to
Tiananmen to protect
the students from the
army
 And it was they who
died in greater
numbers than the
students

20. Learn from Daqing

21. Fighting back in Daqing
 Daqing, 50,000 oil workers demonstrated, 2002
 Formed Daqing Provisional Union of Retrenched
Workers

22. What’s happening
today?
 Many SOEs (State-Owned Enterprises)
still good places to work.
 Joint Ventures with foreign capital,
depending on where and the industry,
can sometimes be good places to work.
 Private companies, wholly owned by
foreigners or domestic, can be very
unpleasant places to work. Workers
lives can be miserable.

23. Shandong province
heavy truck plant; SOE

24. GM Shanghai: 5,500
workers; joint venture

25. Since 1990s
Manufacturing Boom
 Workers needed
 Like the English Industrial Revolution,
workers recruited from the countryside
 China has had the biggest labour
migration in human history

26. Most workers have
migrated from the
countryside

30. Why move? Life on the
farm is tough

31. Government Response to
job security concerns
 2008 Labour Contract Law
 Provided for mandatory labour
contracts between individual workers
and employers
 After two short term contracts, workers
had no expiry date labour contract
 Word spread among workers about
these new worker rights

32. What happened in
October 2008?

33. What happened in
October 2008?
 Worldwide recession and it hit China
particularly hard
 Why?

34. Because of production
for export
 However, China recovered much more
quickly than elsewhere because of
government investment, stimulating
the economy and providing
employment
 But this led to serious reflection about
the need to develop the domestic
economy and domestic consumption

35. How do workers get
higher pay?

36. How do workers get
higher pay?
 Strike for higher pay

37. How do workers get
higher pay?
 Strike for higher pay
 Increases in minimum wage,
– context is interest by government in social
stability, that is, in preventing strikes

38. Increases to Minimum
Wage in China
 Government’s Employment Promotion
Plan minimum wages are supposed to
increase in accordance with local living
standards by at least 13 percent
through 2015 and be no less than 40
percent of the average local wages.
Minimum wages under such policies
increased by an average 12.6 percent
rate between 2008-2012.

39. Increases to
Minimum Wage
 The 2011-15 Five Year Plan stipulates
an average increase of 13% per year.
In 2013 the minimum wage increased
16% and in 2014 13.4%. While these
base wages are still low, these
increases are important.
 Where did the pressure for such
increases come from?

40. Foxconn
 Enormously profitable Taiwanese
company
 More than 1,000,000 workers in China

41. Most Foxconn factories
in SE cities

42. Most SE plants
 Low wages
 Poor benefits
 Long hours
 Forced overtime
 Monotonous work
 Strict discipline
 Called ‘blood and sweat’ shops in China

43. Southern Weekly
undercover report, 2010
 Story picked up by rest of media in
China and reports were closely
followed

44. Shocked the nation
 People were glued to their television
sets and newspapers
 Foxconn was roundly condemned and
many did not attribute the ‘blood and
sweat’ shop conditions to Foxconn
alone, but abhorred the conditions in
so many factories

45. Workers finally got a
30% - 70% wage
increase
 Not because of the effort of the union
in the workplaces because it was a
fake union run by relatives of
managers; it was public pressure
 Not only product knock-offs are fakes

46. Specific ill health
problems at Wintek,
Apple supplier
 N-Hexane
 Why? It evaporates faster than
alcohol so company could speed up
production
 137 workers chemically poisoned

47. Wintek workers
 Problems began in 2009, became
public in 2010, company said stopped
using n-hexane in 2009 but one worker
died
 Workers offered compensation

48. Where does much
environmental ill health
come from?
 From the workplace
 Toxins and contaminants are most
concentrated in the workplace and are
exported to the surrounding
environment
 Workers are indeed the ‘canaries in
the coal mines’

49. Explosion at Foxconn
in Chengdu, May 2011
killed 4, injured 18
Factory made iPads

50. Polishing iPads
 Aluminum dust was explosive

51. Video of Foxconn
workers in Chengdu
 http://video.nytimes.com/video/2012/0
1/25/business/100000001313019/mad
e-in-china.html
 Made in China
 Behind Apple’s products, harsh
working conditions
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKB
Y94l0ewo
 PBS: workers in China

52. Since 2010 wage
increases, production
has shifted
 Why?
 Wages are cheaper
 Foxconn plants moving inland
 And other companies on the coast are
manufacturing Apple parts
 For example, Pegatron, another
Taiwanese company is manufacturing
in Shanghai

53. China Labor Watch
reports on Pegatron
http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/report/68

54. Pegatron and overtime
 Average work week: 60+ hours a
week
 52% of workers more than 90 hours
overtime a month
 Why? Wages aren’t high enough so
workers work overtime in over to meet
basic living standards.
 BBC report in 2014 reduced overtime
worked.

55. But most workers don’t
despair, they fight back
 Honda auto parts plants workers
organized in the summer of 2010
 They had been working alongside
Japanese workers paid many times
(50X) what they received

56. So they organized and
struck for change &
improvements

57. The parts plants
workers stuck together

58. Effect of Just-in-time
production: shut down the
Honda assembly plants

59. They received top level
support

60. Premier Wen Jiabao
 Urged better treatment for the nation's
vast army of migrant labourers.
 “Rural migrant workers are the main
army of the contemporary Chinese
industrial workforce. Our wealth and
our tall buildings are all distillations of
your hard work and sweat,” Wen told
a group of migrant workers in Beijing,
the People's Daily reported the
following day.
 Wen was the first high ranking official
to comment publicly about strikes and
the current labour situation.
 At the end of the meeting, which got
top billing on national TV, he said,
“The government and all parts of
society should treat young migrant
workers as they would treat their own
children.”

61. The Honda parts workers
won a 24% wage increase
 Negotiated by Renmin University professor
 Photo: Nov. 2009 conference organized by
Chair of the Guangzhou Trade Unions.

62. Workers can communicate
by cell phone:
voice or text

63. Strikes spread to other
Honda parts plants and
they won 45% increase

64. Workers can communicate
through the internet

65. And the strikes spread
elsewhere
 E.g. Tianjin Mitsumi Electric workers

66. Support for strikes?
Why now?
 Wages have fallen from 17% of total
economic output in 1980 to 11% in
2008, creating resentment among
workers who feel they are owed a
bigger share of China’s new wealth.
 At the same time there are many more
wealthy people. The gap between rich
and poor is as much as the U.S.

67. Gap between rich and
poor enormous

68. China’s Gini Coefficient,
20 years ago: 0.45
2012: 0.73
(0 is best, 1 is worst)
 Top 1% owns 1/3
of wealth
 Bottom quarter of
population own
1% of the wealth

69. In Guangdong Province
alone in 2010
 There were 90 work stoppages to
demand wage increases mainly in joint
ventures or auto parts and electronics
industries of the Pearl River Delta
(near Hong Kong)

70. Today Chinese workers are
fighting back
 Number of protests (gov’t calls them ‘mass incidents’)
continues to grow
 2005: 87,000
 2008: 127,000
 2009: 240,000
 Typically fighting expropriation of homes and land for resource
developments (dams, mines etc.) or construction
 Industrialized regions 50% of ‘mass incidents’ were over wage
arrears, workplace closures, layoffs
 2014 report says 2010, 2011 and 2012 leading years for mass
incidents, numbers growing

71. Today, in some areas,
workers have more power
 Elimination of the agricultural tax (over
5 years, now completely gone)
 Migrant workers still have title to land
and the right to return
 After being cheated in the economic
meltdown in fall 2008-early 2009,
many went home and stayed
 Thus creating the most important
weapon labour has, a labour shortage

72. Those that returned to
the city (or never left)
 Have seen Paris and don’t want to go
back home
 They live in the cities and want a better
life:
– Housing, not just dormitories
– With kitchens, not just cafeteria food
– Consumer goods like what they produce
 In order to achieve these goals they
need higher wages.

73. Since 2010 wage
increases, production
has shifted
 Why?
 Wages are cheaper
 Foxconn plants moving inland
 And other companies on the coast are
manufacturing Apple parts
 For example, Pegatron, another
Taiwanese company is manufacturing
in Shanghai

74. China Labor Watch
reports on Pegatron
http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/report/68

75. Pegatron and overtime
 Average work week: 60+ hours a
week
 52% of workers more than 90 hours
overtime a month
 Why? Wages aren’t high enough so
workers work overtime in over to meet
basic living standards.
 BBC report in 2014 reduced overtime
worked.

76. Today the strikes and
demonstrations
 Are by employed workers
 And are not just fighting for unpaid
wages, to receive the minimum wage,
to receive pay for overtime worked
 But are about real increases, real
improvements to wages and working
conditions
 Labour shortages and labour courage
have brought this about

77. Reported
strikes

78. SOE miners struck over unpaid
wages in Shandong Province,
January, 2015: 5 months back pay

79. 200 strikes
and protests a
month, 2015
 Up from 60 a month
two years ago
 Geoffrey Crothall,
China Labour Bulletin
(Globe & Mail, March
19, 2015)
 http://maps.clb.org.hk/st
rikes/en
 Yue Yuan Strike, Dongguang

80. Hangzhou workers
struck Hewlett Packard
January 2015

81. Issues for HP Workers
on 3 week strike
 Employees at the networking
equipment manufacturer were
particularly opposed to:
– the nomination of a new chairman
– the firing of a worker representative
 and demanded more involvement in
company management and decision
making.

82. There are many
more workers than employers

83. Who will lead the
Chinese workers?
 What about unions in China?
 There’s one union, the All-China
Federation of Trade Unions which in
practice, varies widely according to the
industry or location.

84. ACFTU
 One party and one
union
 All-China
Federation of
Trade Unions
 No independent
unions

85.  “30 years ago everything was made in
Japan; 20 years ago everything was
made in Singapore and Taiwan; 10
years ago everything was made in
China; and now everything is made in
Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh.”

86. Unions in the past:
1949-1978, Role:
 Organized the ping
pong tournaments
 Helped out sick
people
 Promoted
production and
model workers
 Promoted good
nutrition “The
union gave us
eggs.”

87. How should people in
Canada respond?
 By communicating with the ACFTU,
engaging in exchanges and dialogue
 By being frank about how unions work
in Canada in a capitalist society: how
we organize workers; how we
represent workers on the shop floor;
how we bargain contracts; and how we
strike to win our demands from
employers

88. Vancouver & District
Labour Council
 Visited Beijing in 2006
 At the same time as the Walmart
organizing

89. Visited their
workplaces

90. Met new friends

91. Beijing MFTU Visited
Vancouver in 2007
 We gave them a warm welcome, gave
them presentations and training

92. And we took them to a
picket line

93. Beijing MFTU
 BEIJING, Sept. 1, 2010 (Xinhuanet) -- Amid rising concerns over trade
unions' role in better protecting workers' rights and interests, the Beijing
municipal trade union's move to liberate grassroots trade union chairs from
their economic dependence on employers marks an important step forward.
 The capital's trade union will establish a special fund to pay grassroots
[workplace] trade union leaders. That will hopefully make grassroots trade
unions more independent in their negotiations with employers, when workers'
rights and interests are violated.
 Before the 1980s, State-owned enterprises offered welfare packages to take
care of almost everything in workers' daily lives. Trade unions then were
actually the ones providing welfare services. Now, different forms of private
businesses have become an important part of the country's economy.
Employers can ignore or even violate the rights and interests of workers
when their major concern is to pursue maximum profits. There are instances
of employers firing trade union leaders who pressured them over workers'
rights and interests. Trade union leaders can even side with employers
instead.
 As such, the Beijing union is working for the direct election of union leaders or
have such leaders sent by higher-level unions. This will help ensure that they
will be paid not by employers, but by unions. The leaders will then have less
to fear of in helping the workers. Despite all possible resistance, this plan is to
be put into practice.

94. BC Federation of Labour
and VDLC visited in
summer 2014

95. Enjoyed Chinese
culture

96. Had many interesting
meetings

97. Harvard’s Elaine Bernard
and UCLA’s Kent Wong:
both heads of
labour studies programs
 “China has undergone tremendous change in the
past few decades…In this context of change,
would not more worker-to-worker and union-to-
union exchange be positive? Through more
dialogue with Chinese workers and unions, the
…labour movement could promote mutually
beneficial labour solidarity, move beyond the
cold war and unilateralism, and refocus attention
on the domestic and global corporations and
associated institutions that are, in fact, the main
threat to workers throughout the world.”

98. China has many
challenges
 And a good opportunity
to build many
successes in wages and
working conditions,
occupational health and
safety, the environment,
and a return to a more
egalitarian society
 In the Year of the Sheep
and beyond

99. There are
better
ways to
get to
school

100. Please vote “yes” for
more and better transit
Thanks very much