[P2P-F] Fwd: [Networkedlabour] Fwd: [Bulletins] Searching for the Union: The workers' movement in China 2011-13

Sat Feb 22 20:15:25 CET 2014

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Marco Berlinguer <marco.berlinguer at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 3:50 PM
Subject: [Networkedlabour] Fwd: [Bulletins] Searching for the Union: The
workers' movement in China 2011-13
To: Networked Labour <networkedlabour at lists.contrast.org>

FYI

m.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: China Labour Bulletins <clb at clb.org.hk>
Date: 2014-02-20 12:55 GMT+01:00
Subject: [Bulletins] Searching for the Union: The workers' movement in
China 2011-13
To: marco.berlinguer at gmail.com

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<http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/searching-union-workers%E2%80%99-movement-china-2011-13>
 Searching for the Union: The workers' movement in China 2011-13

China's workers have emerged over the last few years as a strong, unified
and increasingly active collective force. Workers have time and again
demonstrated the will and the ability to stand up to abusive and arrogant
managements and to demand better pay and working conditions.

However, workers are still hampered by the lack of an effective trade union
that can maintain solidarity, bargain directly with managements and protect
labour leaders from reprisals.  As a result, workers are turning to labour
rights groups that can advise and support their collective actions while,
at the same time, demanding more of the official trade union and putting
pressure on it to change.

In China labour Bulletin's new research report on the workers'
movement<http://www.clb.org.hk/en/sites/default/files/Image/research_report/Searching%20for%20the%20Union.pdf>,
published today, we examine this evolving relationship between the workers,
the trade union and civil society and look at how the government is
struggling to respond to rapid social and economic change.

CLB recorded 1,171 strikes and worker protests from mid-2011 until the end
of 2013, about 40 percent of which were in manufacturing industries
particularly hard hit by the global economic downturn and the decline in
China's economic growth during this period. Factory workers staged protests
when they were cheated out of their wages and overtime payments, when their
bonuses and benefits were cut back and when the boss refused to pay the
social insurance premiums mandated by law. Workers also went out strike to
demand higher pay, equal pay for equal work, and proper employment
contracts.

Outside the factory: Transport workers staged strikes over high costs,
cumbersome regulations and unfair competition; teachers protested at wage
arrears, low pay and attempts by the government to introduce a
performance-based salary system in schools, and sanitation workers, some of
the poorest-paid in China, staged numerous strikes and protests in
Guangzhou and eventually won a long-overdue raise.

Local governments often got dragged into these disputes and responded with
a mixture of conciliation and coercion, putting pressure on both sides to
reach a consensus speedily. The police intervened in about 20 percent of
the protests recorded by CLB and occasionally conflicts erupted, leading to
beatings and arrests.

Some local trade union federations did respond positively to workers'
demands for support but despite attempts by the new Communist Party
leadership in Beijing to energise the All-China Federation of Trade Unions,
it remained inert and stuck in the past. Nevertheless, China's workers will
continue to push for more effective trade union representation and greater
workplace democracy. And in so doing, they will lay the groundwork for a
more stable and sustainable economy in which ordinary workers can finally
share in the benefits of the "economic miracle" they helped to create.

Searching for the Union: The workers' movement in China
2011-13<http://www.clb.org.hk/en/sites/default/files/Image/research_report/Searching%20for%20the%20Union.pdf>is
published today as a 50-page downloadable file.  This is CLB's fifth
sequential report on the workers' movement dating back to the Year 2000.
All reports are available on the Research Reports
page<http://www.clb.org.hk/en/research-reports>of our website.

*For more information about this new report and the work of China Labour
Bulletin please contact CLB's Communications Director Geoffrey Crothall:*

*Office telephone: 852 2780 2187 Mobile: 852 6402 1530 <1530> Email:
gcrothall at clb.org.hk <gcrothall at clb.org.hk>*
Bulletins <http://en/newsletter/bulletins>

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