national
movement
6000 years
old ~
Of rogu ons tremors boasted
22:47 10/5/06 919 bytes
--- Alan Sondheim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 21:55:45 -0400
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: China's Emerging Labor Movement
>
> China's Emerging Labor Movement
>
> By Brendan Smith, Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello
>
> October 5, 2006, submitted to Portside
>
> Trade unionists in the US and elsewhere have long argued that
> there is no labor movement in China. They rightly point
> out that Chinese workers lack even the most basic human rights
> protections,including the rights to strike and join an
> independent union.
>
> But there's more to the story: Ten years ago, according to the
> China's Minister of Public Security, there were on average
> 10,000 large-scale collective protests each year. By 2004, the
> government recorded 74,000 large-scale protests. Late last
> year, the Minister of Police announced protests had increased
> to 87,000 last year, involving well over four million workers.
>
> Four million workers! In the US we celebrated the birth of a
> new global social movement when 60,000 people showed up for the
> 'Battle of Seattle' in 1999. In China there is now more than
> enough evidence of continual worker self-organization outside
> of official trade union channels to put to rest notions that
> 'there is no labor movement in China'.
>
> According to Robin Munro, research director of China Labour
> Bulletin,
>
> '[W]hereas 10 years ago I think you could have said China did
> not have a labor movement, that is no longer really the
> case- there is no freedom of association for workers,but
> hitherto, people have tended to think that, therefore, there
> is no Chinese labor movement. I think the scale of worker
> unrest nowadays is so great, you can go to almost any city in
> the country now and there will be several major collective
> worker protests going on at the same time.
>
> So China now has a labor movement.This is an important point
> to just put there on the table and recognize. It is not
> organized. It is spontaneous, it is relatively inchoate. But
> then so were labor movements in most Western countries before
> trade unions were permitted. We have basically a pre-union
> phase of labor movement development in China today. It also
> has great potential, I think, for becoming a proper labor
> movement.'
>
> In the years before the passage of the National Labor
> Relations Act - known as the Wagner Actor 'Labor's Magna
> Carta' - there was no legally enforced right to organize,
> bargain collectively, or strike in the United States. But US
> workers who were denied these rights responded with their
> own "pre-union" phase of struggle. Thousands of workers were
> arrested or beaten and scores shot dead for trying to exercise
> these rights. For example, in 1934 alone there were three
> general strikes and a huge national textile strike - all
> marked by substantial violence.
>
> Largely in response to this upsurge, in 1935 the Federal
> government passed the Wagner Act hoping to legalize the labor
> movement and divert it into more moderate channels. According
> to a recent study by labor law historian James Gray Pope, the
> massive sit-down strikes and factory occupations of the
> following year cajoled the Supreme Court into reversing its
> own precedents and accepting the Wagner Act as constitutional.
>
> American workers did not get their rights by waiting for the
> government to provide them; rather, they began asserting rights
> they believe they were entitled to, and thereby forced
> the Congress and the courts to acquiesce.
>
> One innovative labor strategy that is being encouraged by CLB
> as a way to relate to the new emerging Chinese labor movement
> is the CC-2005 Campaign or Collective Contract 2005. (According
> to CLB staff, the Campaign's name is "a slightly cheeky
> designation, thinking in terms ofSA-8000" and other Corporate
> Social Responsibility (CSR) standards.)
>
> Under existing Chinese labor law, where there is no union
> presence in a factory, workers are allowed to elect their own
> representatives to negotiate and sign a collective contract.
> With the ACFTU holding only 30% representation outside
> the government sector, CLB is trying to take advantage of this
> legal'loop-hole' by urging multi-national corporations that
> operate in China 'to pressure their supplier factories into
> allowing the workers to negotiate a proper collective contract
> in the workplace.' The innovation ofthis approach is the use
> of existing Corporate Codes of Conducts to negotiate binding
> collective agreements with enforceable rights. CLB views
> the CC-2005 campaign an opportunity to create a basic
> organizing space that is legally protected in the private
> sector.
>
> As Han Dongfang, Director of CLB, explains,
>
> 'What we want to do is get this collective contract regulation
> connected, with a code of conduct, a corporate social
> responsibility kind of thing, which they have been trying
> to work out for more than 10 years but have never worked out.
> Now we try to put it together as a new program. We make the
> corporate social responsibility, the Code of Conduct document,
> which has no teeth, and make them, together with Chinese law,
> have teeth, in particular with the workers'participation,
> workers' representation.'
>
> CC-2005 has three major strategic objectives:
>
> To mobilize workers to participate in collective bargaining,
> so that they can play an active role in protecting their own
> rights; To achieve real implementation of China's labor laws,
> trade union legislation and the relevant standards of
> the International Labour Organization; To provide a new
> and effective means by which multinational buyers can realize
> their commitment to the principle of social accountability.
>
> The massive number of wildcat strikes occurring in China shows
> that Chinese workers are not waiting for official unions to
> reform themselves. Instead, they are fashioning new ways to
> improve their lot. So the challenge is for the US and the other
> labor movements to find ways to reach out and encourage
> new independent workers organizations in China. We might want
> to start by supporting CC-2005 campaign.
>
> [Brendan Smith, Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello are co-founders
> of GlobalLabor Strategies, a new resource center working to
> assist labor and other social movements make the connections
> and develop the strategies needed to function effectively in
> the global economy. Read their blog at
> www.globallaborblog.org.]
>
> ____________________________________________
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d^Vizio
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