-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2001 7:25 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Workers' Rights Suffering as China Goes Capitalist - NYT The New York Times August 22, 2001 Workers' Rights Suffering as China Goes Capitalist "The conditions that many of these workers face today are no better than the conditions that Marx described in 'Das Kapital' " - He Qinglian By Erik Eckholm Dongguan, China - The two young women were strolling through a sterile factory zone in China's roaring southeast, enjoying a rare day off. "Trade union?" they repeated, puzzled, when asked about workers' rights. "What's that?" Migrants from the same distant village, the women typified the tens of millions who have flocked to China's coast to work in factories that are mainly foreign-owned, producing electronic goods, clothing, toys and other products for export. And like many of their fellow migrants, they are willing to work 12 hours a day or more for a pittance, living 12 to a room and putting aside any questions about legal rights. One of the pair, Ms. Fu, who said she was 20 but looked 16, said that in her toy-packing job she cleared $24 to $36 a month, "depending on overtime." With orders recently down, she said, she has been working only 10 hours a day and has started getting some Sundays off. Ms. Fu, who declined to give her full name, said she was not aware that her wages and hours violated local labor regulations. National law sets a basic work week of up to 44 hours with at least one day off, and the local minimum wage is $48 a month, plus higher rates for overtime. "But we couldn't do anything about it anyway," she added with a shrug. With the collapse of the state industries that once dominated China, tens of millions of the workers who were long portrayed as official masters of the Communist nation have been virtually cast aside. Their official Communist-run trade union federation has often been little more than a bystander as the old companies are dissolved or sold. As private and foreign companies race ahead in newer industrial centers like this one in the southeastern province of Guangdong, a new kind of working class is emerging, one dominated by rural migrants who have no tradition of unions or the security once enjoyed in state enterprises. A large majority of the new companies have ignored the requirement to unionize or have created puppet bodies, according to Chinese and foreign labor experts. "The working class of China has been marginalized," said He Qinglian, a social critic and author of "The Pitfall of China's Development." For the Chinese leaders, who are trying to engineer the transition to a market economy, both the old and new arenas of labor have been sources of social instability. Already thousands of worker protests, wildcat strikes and other disputes are reported each year over everything from unpaid pensions to corruption to intolerable hazards. Through rapid economic development, the government is hoping to grow out of the problem as the benefits of a restructured economy gradually spread. In the meantime President Jiang Zemin has taken the step of trying to broaden the party's base by allowing in capitalists, which some Marxists say will only further diminish the officially hallowed status of workers. For now, inequality is growing fast, and in the years ahead, as China further opens its markets under World Trade Organization rules, labor strife - and questions from abroad about fair labor practices - are likely to increase. The trade union federation includes many officials who yearn to speak more forcefully for underdog workers. But a blizzard of examples, many from the federation's own newspaper, shows that unions are hamstrung by tight political control and by their mandate simply to help workers adjust to change. The plight of workers and the constricted role of unions have also become a subject of formal international inquiry now that China has ratified the International Convention on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, which explicitly calls for free labor unions. China exempted itself from that clause, arguing that its federation of unions already speaks for workers. All efforts by workers to create independent groups have been crushed, with a number of organizers sent to prison or labor camps. The minister of labor and social security, Zhang Zuiji, speaking earlier this year, said China's workers enjoyed free association "in conformity with Chinese conditions" and that "no one has been detained or imprisoned for legitimate trade union activities." "All the rights and interests of workers have been protected," the minister said, adding that the government was still working to bolster the social security system and strengthen the role of unions in helping laid-off workers adapt. Indeed, the All-China Trade Union Federation is now struggling to regain members and to entrench itself in the foreign-owned and private companies that have become the leading edge of China's growth. In the 1990's union membership fell from 130 million to perhaps 90 million by 1999, according to a union official who spoke on condition of anonymity. With a new campaign, the federation hopes to sign up 20 million new members this year. Still, only about half of the nation's work force today is in unions, the official said, and a much lower portion of workers in private and foreign companies. The trade union federation declined a request for an interview but in a written response said it was working to increase union coverage in private companies. "At present, violations of employees' rights in private firms are to some extent widespread," the federation wrote, with problems including the refusal of companies to sign labor contracts, illegal docking of wages, excessive hours, terrible work conditions and frequent injuries. Whether the trade union federation, as it reaches into the private sector, can develop a more independent voice is a question that its own officials are debating, and one that will affect the country's future stability. "If the trade union federation remains simply a political tool and doesn't play a more positive role in defending worker interests, then it will be increasingly difficult to defend its exclusive status," said a Chinese scholar of labor affairs who spoke on condition of anonymity. Li Qiang, who worked for several years as a clandestine labor organizer in China before fleeing to exile in the United States last year, said that "Chinese workers are beginning to understand their own rights." He pointed to the steep rise in lawsuits over labor issues and the frequent, if suppressed, efforts by factory workers to organize independently. "If the government doesn't do a better job of promoting worker rights," he warned in an interview in New York, "we could see a real explosion of worker protests." By all accounts, wages and conditions in factories run by major Western corporations and joint ventures tend to be better than average, in part because of the foreign outcry over sweatshop labor, which has led some Western companies to monitor the practices of subsidiaries and direct contractors, although rarely the behavior of subcontractors. By contrast, conditions in Hong Kong, Taiwanese and South Korean companies as well as private Chinese companies are often worse, with widespread violation of overtime limits, minimum wage laws and safety rules, say Chinese and foreign experts. "The conditions that many of these workers face today are no better than the conditions that Marx described in `Das Kapital,' " said Ms. He, the author and social critic, who lived in the special export zone of Shenzhen until leaving this summer for the United States after suffering police harassment. Coastal cities like Dongguan are laboratories for China's labor relations in the future. Within the borders of Dongguan, which has blossomed as a satellite of Shenzhen, thousands of companies, mainly owned by Asian investors, have created large industrial parks to produce electronic goods, clothing, shoes and other products for export. Large zones of Dongguan present a strangely vacant landscape, dominated by large fenced-in factory complexes. On Sunday, the sole day off for those who get one, the streets are filled with strolling young men and women, many in factory uniforms and all wearing ID tags for their foray outside the gates. Cafes, bookstores and other normal trappings of urban life are nowhere to be seen. "Mostly you don't have the energy to go out anyway," said Dang Jianjun, 22, a migrant from Shaanxi Province who came to Dongguan in 1997 and landed a job in a Taiwan- owned electronics factory. For almost two years, Mr. Dang operated a large metal press for 12- hour shifts, seven days a week. Then, at 2 a.m., bleary-eyed, he slipped and the hot press dropped onto his hands. While the factory paid immediate medical costs, responsibility for long-term compensation lay with the local government labor bureau, which offered him a one-time settlement of $14,500. "I didn't feel that was enough," said Mr. Dang, gazing down at the two stumps he has for hands. Throughout China the drive to improve worker protection in private industry has been undercut by frequent collusion between local government officials and factory managers, a union official said. With local governments desperate to stimulate investment and generate taxes, officials have often proved willing to overlook infractions of labor laws and have allowed factory managers to set up virtually powerless unions headed by their cronies or in some cases even their wives. "The supply of labor vastly exceeds the demand," said Zhou Litai, a lawyer in Shenzhen who has made a specialty of representing factory workers maimed on the job, "and if you're an official who wants to keep jobs in your district, then you pay attention to the interests of the owners." The two young women who strolled in Dongguan one Sunday landed their factory jobs earlier this year through fellow natives of their village in Hubei Province. The woman walking with Ms. Fu, who gave her name only as Ms. Feng, said she made $36 a month at her electronics plant if she worked 12 hours, seven days a week. She said workers feared that they would be fired if they complained about conditions. Was there no state-sponsored union in their factories, as required in principle? "Oh, yeah, I guess maybe we do have one of those," Ms. Feng said after a moment's reflection. "When the management has some new demand or request, they call us together for a meeting."
