Since I wrote this, Chenzhou
has not had
power restored. Price rises
have been banned, although prices for food have actually skyrocketed in
affected areas and in many places there is no food in the shops.
Guangzhou railway station
has seen another million people gather
their. Although trains are
running (they can move 400,000 per day) all railway carriages have been
commandeered by the State to ensure coal reaches power plants.
Heiko Khoo
The largest human migration
in the world gets under way every Chinese
New Year, as China’s 120
million strong army of migrant workers make
their annual trip home. This
year heavy snows led to railways and
roads being overburdened and
transport bottlenecks wreaked sudden
nationwide chaos.
Coal prices are set by the
market, but electricity prices are fixed by the state. Power plant managers
were unwilling to pay the increased prices
demanded by coal mines,
which are in the process of privatisation. As the snows fell, coal stocks at
power plants held only 8 days supplies – 40% down on the same period in 2007- causing
widespread blackouts. In Chenzhou, a city of over 4 million inhabitants, power
was cut off for 8 days.
The government mobilized 250,000
army troops, the People’s Armed
Police and 770,000
paramilitaries, and is issuing edicts to keep the
nation running. Top Party
officials have been on inspection tours to
pacify angry crowds. They
know conflict can erupt suddenly.
In front of the railway
station in the southern city of Guangzhou, the
main station for trains
taking migrants workers from Guangdong
province to their homes in
the interior, 400,000 migrants are stranded
as I write. Whilst this
number was 800,000 a few days ago, conditions
have eased somewhat and
railway traffic has started to resume. However
a total of 30 million people
have been stranded at one time in the
last few days. Migrant
workers have been urged to stay in their
factories and phone their
New Year’s greetings home. For many, with
thousands of miles to travel
to their annual family get-together, this
is a huge blow.
However given the scale of
the problem, the government and army
response has been determined
and rapid as heavy snowfall affected over 75
million people. They have
avoided the incompetence displayed in New
Orleans after Hurricane
Katrina hit the city. In China central power
controlled by the
bureaucracy and army is still strong and able to be
mobilized by the state when
the will is there.
Nevertheless workers
correctly see ‘those above’ as responsible for
the errors and mismanagement
which caused unnecessary breakdowns in
the nation’s infrastructure.
Whilst the rich can travel anywhere,
anytime, the poor cannot
even get home once a year. The migrants live
in factory barracks, shacks
and construction sites, building city
houses and apartments for
the rich, or producing commodities for world
export. The sense of being
‘those below’ serving ‘those above’ is all-pervasive.
The official line of the
Party leaders is that China is building a
‘harmonious socialist
society,’ although the word ‘socialist’ is often
forgotten when repeating the
phrase.
The All China Federation of
Trade Unions (ACFTU) is supposed to
represent the entire working
class, galvanizing the workers behind
Party, government and
business objectives within the workplace.
Generally the ACFTU representatives
in factories are appointed from
above, playing a purely
palliative role in conflicts, much like a
workers’ charity. In the
case of Chinese New Year the ACFTU is
supposed to ensure that
unionized migrant workers get home. Last year
they provided transport for
30 million migrants.
Total union membership is
over 150 million of whom 41 million are
migrant members,and 8
million of whom joined in 2007. Many will ask why
the ACFTU has such little
societal power given their colossal
numerical strength. The
ACFTU is seen by the workers as a
representative of the
government at the workplace – to protect the
workers against employers
and monitor the implementation of labour
laws. Whilst the ACFTU is
singularly absent in militant labour
conflicts, the union
bureaucracy has sought to gain a certain
strategic position inside
workplaces, to serve the Party and
government and act as an
instrument fostering social stability, i.e.
to limit the spread of
worker protests. High profile cases demanding
the unionization of Wal-Mart,
Coke and other multinationals organized
by the ACFTU leaders are
designed to reinforce this image.
The government has recently
amended its position on strikes and
demonstrations. In 2005 the
Minister of Public Security stated that
"in the current stage,
mass protests are essential manifestations of
social and economic
tensions. They are not oppositional and do not
have a clear political motive."
This is a big change containing some
truth. Protests by state
employees in the mid 1990s often took place
behind revolutionary slogans
like, "down with the new capitalists" and
"workers are the
masters of the state." This is no longer the case,
but this does not preclude
such slogans re-emerging in future.
Central government has a
policy of handling mass protests according to
the "Three Dos and
Three Don’ts" (do disperse and don’t gather, do
resolve and don’t
complicate, do calm down and don’t excite) as well
as "Three
Cautions" (cautious use of police force, cautious use of
police equipment, and
cautious use of coercion.)
This is for two main
reasons:
1. Party leaders believe
that the market creates a separation of
economic from political
power which allows a certain space for
protesting forces to vent
anger and pressurize ‘bad employers’ without
undermining state power.
2. Party leadership and
government organs seek to act as agents
between the workers and the
employers. The main candidate for this
role is the ACFTU which is
supposed to intervene to prevent conflict,
to nip discontent in the
bud, and to intercede to keep social peace.
The ACFTU is seen as an
instrument of reformism.
All over the country laws
concerning wages, hours of work, overtime,
health and safety etc. are
ignored by employers. Capitalists and
factory managers think that
"communistic laws’ promulgated in Beijing
can be ignored with
impunity, just as anti-corruption laws and
campaigns are largely
ignored. When it comes to new private property
laws however, they salivate
at the progress in society.
Every trick in the book has
been used to rob the workers of the
factories that they built,
owned, protected, and often lived inside,
for decades. In the
restructuring of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs),
layoffs, bankruptcies and
any fundamental changes, are supposed to be
presented to the factory or
workplace "workers’ congress" (a general
assembly of the workers) for
approval, before implementation. In
practice these congresses
are tricked or bypassed.
SOE restructuring has not
been so simple as imagined. Even years after
the event, the consequences
have not been accepted by laid off workers.
The discrepancy between the
legal framework for restructuring and
reality, often led to unrest
during and after the restructuring
process. For example, in the
Shengli Oil field 20,000 workers signed
agreements to be laid off,
but when the oil price rose they felt
they’d been tricked. In
November 2005 several thousand workers, who
had been made unemployed,
blockaded management offices demanding their
jobs back.
In the private sector 30,000
workers in the Dalian development zone
went on strike in September
2005. Average wages in Dalian city were
1600 RMB per month. However
in the development zone factories’ wages
were as low as 500 RMB. In July 2005 a strike at the Toshiba
factory led to a wage rise
of 150 RMB. The strike spread to ten other
Japanese factories. The
close physical connection of these workplaces
and their living barracks
helped the contagion to spread. Some strikes
and protests in the last two
years have reflected increasing
communication between
workers who have found ways to coordinate
actions by phone and
internet.
Unfortunately the ACFTU acts
as if there is no class conflict. They
see themselves as the agents of ‘harmonious national development’.
The union does not normally
organize strikes or class conflict.
Nevertheless in a new
development at Uniden Electronics in Shenzhen,
16,000 workers went on
strike demanding a labour union be set up.
Although this was achieved
with ACFTU support, the union officers were
then appointed by the
management.
In 2005 the Chinese Academy
of Social Sciences published a "Survey on
the Issue of Social Harmony
and Stability." When asked if there is
conflict between social
groups in China 16.3% said ‘no conflict’,
44.9% said ‘a little
conflict’, 18.2% said ‘a rather large conflict’
and 4.8% a ‘very serious
conflict.’ Public hostility to the sham talk
of ‘harmony’ has risen
sharply. The survey also revealed that
"inequality" is
seen as China’s main social problem, whereas it was
ranked fifth in 2001.
As migrants now constitute
the core of the working class in the
private sector, the ACFTU
has been forced to organize migrants in
order to assist the Party
and government to influence and control
potentially explosive
conflicts. Whilst there were occasions when
lower level managers, Party
officials and ACFTU representatives
played a role in protests,
in general these movements are spontaneous.
With the downturn in global
demand particularly from the United
States, China faces economic
dislocation from asset bubble collapses
in property, banks, stocks,
shares and so from a fall in sales of
manufactured goods. Labour
unrest is certain to rise. This will be
reflected in the ACFTU. The
Communist Party led government has
introduced some progressive
laws to protect workers’ rights, but to resist the arbitrary rule of the bosses
and realize the "rule of law" for workers requires militant unions to
mobilize the power of the working class.
When the ACFTU was founded
on May 1st 1925 it was the Guomindang (Kuomintang) and the Confucians who
advocated ‘social harmony’ with the capitalists and
imperialists. In 1927 they
banned the ACFTU, executing many militants.
To advance the rights of the
workers, militant trade unionism is
needed. Promises, laws,
proclamations and studies will never be able to
create ‘social harmony’ and
a good life for all. The Year of the Rat
will see increasingly angry
and discontented working masses, unified
by their conditions of life
and a profound sense of injustice.
