Coverage of CLB's research report on the workers' movement

12 October 2011
China Labour Bulletin is quoted in the following articles. Copyright remains with the original publisher.

Reuters: China rural migrants young, restless and online: report
BBC: China's new-generation workforce 'staging more strikes'
Radio Australia: China's new generation workers demand better conditions
Globe and Mail: China's stature as cheap producer fading into history
The Hindu: Migrants, a strain on China's resources, stability
In These Times: Inside World’s Economic Engine, Young China Redefines Class Consciousness

By Chris Buckley
BEIJING, Oct. 10, 2011 (Reuters)

China's young migrant workers believe manufacturers can afford bigger pay rises and they are increasingly willing to strike to win them, according to a report that documents the spread of labor unrest across the country's export zones.

The Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, which advocates stronger rights for workers, also said in the report on Tuesday the tens of millions of young migrants from the Chinese countryside are increasingly adept at using the Internet to mobilize.

"Workers now understand that many enterprises are profitable enough to accommodate wage increases, and the workers are now more determined and able to push for those increases," the non-governmental organization said.

"Whereas in the past, workers tended to wait for their rights to be violated before taking action, they are now becoming more proactive."

The study is the latest to examine China's "new generation" of increasingly assertive workers from the countryside, who have no desire to return to farms and want to win a foothold in urban society, despite discrimination and high costs.

"They're not going to go back to the village and add an extra storey to the family farmhouse. They want to build a life for themselves in the city, and to do that they need money," Geoffrey Crothall, a spokesman for China Labour Bulletin, told Reuters TV.

"And that is why you're seeing a lot more strikes and protests in China now because the demands of workers are getting higher and they're more willing to stand up for themselves."

In February, Chinese President Hu Jintao singled out migrant workers as one of the challenges to the stability the ruling Communist Party prizes as a key to one-party control and economic growth.

China has about 153 million migrant workers living outside their hometowns, and by 2009, 58.4 percent of them belonged to the "new generation" migrants born in 1980 or after, according to a National Bureau of Statistics survey.

More than 100 million rural Chinese people will settle in towns and cities in the next decade, many of them young migrants who lack old-age and medical insurance in the places they want to call home, China's National Population and Family Planning Commission said in a report.

"I don't have a definite direction. I work in this factory today and the other tomorrow," Wang Long, a 24-year-old migrant worker in Beijing told Reuters TV. "What can I do if I get old? It will be very bad if I cannot have a formal and stable job when I'm in my thirties. How could I raise my family then?"

Although migrant workers have often won pay rises in recent years, they feel poorly served by China's official, Communist Party-run trade union, which has often sided with management in factory disputes, the China Labour Bulletin said in the report.

Instead, strikes and labor protests have spread through informal channels, with workers often using mobile phones and Internet message sites to coordinate, it added.

"They are giving each other in real time updates of their protests, and this has allowed workers' rights groups, lawyers interested in workers' rights, to offer advice, help them push their demands," said Crothall, the Labour Bulletin spokesman, speaking of these digital tools.

The China Labour Bulletin report estimates that in 2009 China experienced about 30,000 collective labor protests, and adds there is "certainly no reason to suspect that the number of strikes is decreasing."

Government-run arbitration and mediation bodies took on more than a million work disputes in 2010, according to the report.

In June, migrant workers in far southern China's vast manufacturing belt rioted, trashing government offices, police vehicles and cars before security forces overwhelmed them.

A string of strikes at Japanese-owned vehicle parts makers last year also showed the growing boldness of younger workers.

A recent survey found that 73 percent of migrant workers were willing to "join a lawful organization" to represent migrants, according to a report from the State Council Development Research Center, a high-level think tank in Beijing.

(Additional reporting by Jimmy Guan in Beijing and Stefanie McIntyre in Hong Kong; Editing by Yoko Nishikawa)


By Damian Grammaticas
China correspondent, BBC News


China's new-generation workforce is increasingly staging strikes to improve labour conditions, according to a report by a research group.

Labour unrest and strikes are becoming more frequent among tens of millions of workers in China's giant manufacturing and export industries.

The report, by the China Labour Bulletin, says the workers are using new technology to organise protests.

And it says that they are winning pay rises and better conditions.

'Build a life'

From jeans to iPhones, toys to televisions, China now seems to be making almost everything.

Its manufacturing boom has been fuelled by a massive army of cheap workers from the countryside who toil in its factories.

Last year's census counted more than 200 million internal migrants. Nearly half are so-called "second generation", under 30 years old.

Like their parents they have left their villages to work in the cities. But unlike their parents they are increasingly not prepared to toil in poor conditions, and do not want to return to their villages.

They want a bigger share of the profits their factories are making, according to the new research by the China Labour Bulletin, a labour rights group based in Hong Kong.

"They want to build a life for themselves in the city," said Geoffrey Crothall, who compiled the report. "And to do that they need money."

"And that is why you're seeing a lot more strikes and protests in China now because the demands of workers are getting higher and they're more willing to stand up for themselves."

Using the internet and mobile phones to organise their protests, they have begun to win substantial pay rises and changes in work practices.

For China's ruling Communist Party this new assertiveness poses a real problem.

It needs to keep a lid on discontent in its labour force. It wants to see incomes and living standards improve, but it will not allow workers to form their own, independent unions which could challenge the party.

So they remain disorganised. Any brave enough to lead industrial action often lose their jobs.

And for consumers in the West, many Chinese products may become just a little bit more expensive.

Radio Australia
October 11, 2011


A Hong Kong based workers advocacy group says consistently high numbers of strikes and protests staged by workers in China has led to higher wages and better working conditions.

China Labour Bulletin today released a report which says over the last few years a new generation of migrant workers is refusing to tolerate the exploitation their parents had to endure.

This report comes with the release of new statistics showing 30 million migrants from rural areas of China moved into cities for work over the last three years.

Reporter: Kate McPherson
Speakers: Geoffrey Crothall, spokesperson for China Labour Bulletin; Wang Long, migrant worker in Beijing; Fu Chensong, migrant worker in Zhejiang

CAROLYNNE WHEELER
BEIJING— Globe and Mail Blog
Posted on Wednesday, October 12, 2011


The watershed moment for China’s beleaguered migrant workers came on a hot day in May last year.

Striking workers at the Nanhai Honda components factory in the southern manufacturing hub of Guangdong province found themselves facing off against 200 enforcers in yellow baseball caps, sent in by their own trade union’s bosses to put them back to work.

A fight broke out and several were injured -- but the workers made their point, winning an apology from their official union, a 33 per cent pay increase from their employer (amounting to an average of 611 yuan, or $95, per month), and setting an example for many more walkouts that followed at automotive manufacturers that summer.

The case, cited in a new study of China’s labour force, suggests the new generation of migrant workers is very different than their predecessors, who are building China’s roads, railways and cities and running its factories. They are more educated, with some 67.2 per cent having a high school education or more, change jobs more often and are less likely to come straight from the farm. And they are far less willing to put up with the long hours, poor working conditions and low pay that their parents settled for.

“The movement was propelled by regular rises in the cost of living, and a growing sense that workers were being denied a fair share not only of their own company’s profits but of the benefits accruing to society as a whole,” read the report, produced by the Hong Kong-based nonprofit China Labour Bulletin, based on events from 2009 to summer 2011. “The government and employers have been put on notice that the standard business model of the last two decades, of management dictating pay and working conditions to their employees, is no longer sustainable, and that workers need and deserve a greater say in their own affairs.”

Local governments began raising their minimum wage on urging from China’s central government, after the global financial crisis of late 2008 and the massive Chinese government stimulus package that followed. Boosting domestic consumption was key to keeping the Chinese economy afloat, and maintaining public order key to keeping political power.

But unrest grew as exports fell -- China had an estimated 30,000 labour related strike or protest actions in summer 2009 -- and did not let up even as exports recovered. Also grabbing headlines have been a rash of suicides at Foxconn, the electronics manufacturing giant producing Apple’s iPads and iPhones, which forced wage increases and changes in management policy.

Those changing working conditions, while good news for the workers, will eventually have implications for China’s status as a leading producer of cheap goods for the world. The head of Beijing Hyundai Motor Corporation, Jae-Man Noh, told a recent briefing of journalists that increased costs of doing business in China are now “inevitable,” and that protests have shown the need for auto manufacturers to be more aware of the mood among employees.

“We need to let go our perception that the Chinese market is a low price production base,” Mr. Noh said.

ANANTH KRISHNAN
15 October 2011


A wave of migration that could bring another 300 million people to China's cities in the next three decades could threaten social stability as migrants struggle to bridge a fast-widening rural-urban gap, two studies released this week have warned.

While cheap labour from the countryside has fuelled China's remarkable economic growth over the past three decades, a new generation of migrant workers was increasingly unwilling to return to life in the countryside and more prepared to strike for higher wages, the studies found.

Last year alone, China experienced more than 30,000 collective labour protests and more than a million work disputes, the reports estimated.

A government study on China's migrant population, released this week by the National Population and Family Planning Commission, found that more than 76 per cent of migrant workers born after 1980 wanted to live permanently in cities, but were “seriously challenged by the high cost of urban life and poor access to welfare services such as education, medical treatment, housing and social security programs”.

Under China's household registration or hukou restrictions, migrants lose access to social services when they leave their home provinces — a policy seen as widening the urban-rural gap, with city residents now earning more than 3.3 times what rural Chinese take home.

The report said more than 300 million rural people would move to urban areas in the next three decades. China's migrant population, the study calculated, was 221 million — 16.5 of per cent of the country's population. China's urban population is expected to cross 800 million by 2020, up from the 670 million estimated by last year's census.

The rising urban migrant population will strain resources as well as pose challenges to social stability, the report said, with 20 per cent of migrant workers unable to afford working and living in cities.

WEALTH GAP

The problems arising from “a widening wealth gap between migrant workers and urbanites are crucial because they upset social stability,” Wang Qian, who heads the commission's floating population management division, said at the report's release.

Other problems the report identified were poverty, forced housing demolitions and challenges to public services.

Another study, conducted by the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin (CLB), found that a new generation of migrant workers was “more determined and able to push for [wage] increases”, compared with the past where “workers tended to wait for their rights to be violated before taking action.”

The CLB estimated that in 2009 alone, China saw 30,000 collective labour protests. Those numbers are expected to have risen in the two years since.

Geoffrey Crothall of the CLB told The Hindu in an interview that behind the strikes were financial pressures and rising costs of living caused by inflation, which were pushing up wage demands.

Another factor was the balance between supply and demand of labour, in contrast with the past where “clearly an oversupply of labour meant workers pretty much had to accept what paying conditions were offered.”

Mr. Crothall said rising migration would necessitate a relook on restrictive hukou policies that deny migrants social benefits. “At some point, the central government will have to revisit the issue of hukou reform,” he said, adding that it was “more likely to happen at the provincial government level” with likely easing of internal migration within provinces.

Rather than ease restrictions, governments have, so far appeared to tighten them. Mr. Crothall cited the recent closure of schools in Beijing for migrant workers' children, a move to discourage migrants from settling in cities.

“We are going to see growing social tensions, between groups of young migrants who want to make a life for themselves in cities and urban residents becoming more reactionary,” he said.

“And that is a serious social issue.”

25 October 2010
BY MICHELLE CHEN


In every corner of the world young people are rocking their worlds, defying government crackdowns in Santiago and Sanaa, occupying beleaguered cities in America and Europe, challenging authoritarianism across the Global South. But one of the largest concentrations of youth on the planet seems relatively dormant: China's rising generation appears, at least in the Western media lens, to be too timid, cynical, or busy making money, to take on political struggles.

But to read China’s fraught political geography, you need a long-range lens. A new report by the Hong Kong-based advocacy group China Labour Bulletin tracks the nascent Chinese labor movement from 2009 through 2011, examining a pattern of conflict, organizing and advocacy, and finds the seeds of a youth-led labor movement underpinned by a sense of growing economic injustice. Communication technology, migration, creative organizing tactics, and the sheer density of the popular mass are fueling thousands of labor protests in both the public and private sectors.

Socially and geographically, mobile young workers are starting to leverage their power within the political and economic establishment, according to the report:

  • Workers are becoming more proactive They are taking the initiative and not waiting for the government or anyone else to improve their pay and working conditions.
  • The protests have created an embryonic collective bargaining system in China. The challenge now is to develop that basic model into an effective and sustainable system of collective bargaining that benefits workers, improves overall labour relations and helps achieve the Chinese government's goals of boosting domestic consumption and reducing social disparity.
  • Their ability to organize is improving. A growing sense of unity among factory workers, combined with the use of mobile phones and social networking tools, has made it easier for workers to initiate, organize and sustain protests.
  • Worker protests are becoming more successful. Recent protests have secured substantial pay increases, forced managements to abandon unpopular and exploitative work practices, and even stalled the proposed take-over and privatization of SOEs.
Though China has earned a reputation as the world’s preeminent sweatshop, its broader economic agenda centers on turning legions of workers into vast, politically obedient, domestic consumer class. The fragile social structure has shown some cracks lately, though, as workers discover their unique place in the global economic hierarchy. Workers with rising aspirations understand that they deserve equitable pay for the “cheap” labor that foreign capital readily exploits.

China Labour Bulletin cites a series of high-profile protests by Honda factory workers in 2010 as just one many examples of workers organizing to press for decent working conditions and wages. Troubles have been bubbling up in China's state-owned firms as well, as workers revolt in a “unified collective force” against the state's ruthless drive toward privatization.

On the other hand, a series of suicides by workers at the massive Foxconn electronics plant in southern China suggests a massive level of despair that hasn't yet crystallized into a proactive youth labor movement. And the rioting that erupted in Guangdong earlier this year suggested that when pushed to the brink, disenfranchised migrants will lash out against authoritarian social oppression.

The rapid pace of change, and the demographic upheaval driven by rural-to-urban migration, could be a catalyst for worker solidarity, though the scope of worker activism remains constrained. Geoffrey Crothall of China Labour Bulletin told In These Times:

There is without doubt a great deal of unity among workers at the factory level and to some extent at the industry and regional level, strikes in one factory leading to others in that sector but beyond that it is difficult to see how more widespread action could develop. The authorities are watching carefully and will clamp down very quickly on any organization that develops that could in their view politicize the workers movement.

So far, restive workers have won substantial pay hikes, both from employers and through the local mandatory minimum wage. Meanwhile, amid international public scrutiny, multinationals have made some hasty concessions (Foxconn wages in Shenzehn recently doubled—perhaps a suicide premium of sorts).

In some cases, worker militancy has compelled the All China Federation of Trade Unions, which is embedded with both the state and business interests, to pivot toward labor by strengthening collective bargaining mechanisms. But the government will likely find it increasingly difficult to contain or co-opt dissent as political consciousness converges with economic desperation in the workforce.

Media stereotypes tend to portray Chinese youth as a faceless army of job-sucking drones, or as carefree consumers racing toward a neoliberal dream. But as old state institutions wither and the “free market” moves into the vacuum, the "Chinese century's" generational arc may take a new revolutionary turn. The young workers who will determine China's social future seek more than material wealth, and while their aims are not yet clear-cut, they've emerged at the vanguard of their own long march.
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