Mass Industrial Disruption
Threatens in China
LAST September the owner of the company Longmay, the biggest
coal company in north east China, declared its plans to lay off 100,000
workers. The disposal of 40% of the work
force at 42 mines in four cities is the biggest cut anyone can remember in this
distressed rust belt close to the Russian frontier.
In the past China has
got away with mass layoffs in state-owned businesses such as Longmay before,
usually by suppressing protests and giving payouts and offering job
training.
It was OK doing that
when the Chinese economy was doing well, and could easily absorb displaced
workers. It's tougher now for the
government to avoid labour troubles in depressed coal towns in the north east
and other areas as the economy slows.
In November, the
government of Heilongjiang Province, which owns the Longmay company announced a
$600 million bailout that would help the company pay its bonds. But analysts see the cash infusion as
short-term relief that will only postpone the inevitable reckoning.
Last April, even
before the layoffs were announced, thousands of workers marched in the streets
of Hegang, a city of about one million, to protest delayed salaries. The organisers were arrested and jailed.
In October, the company
management stifled a protest by locking workers in the mines. The police patrolled the streets outside the
company headquarters on the day of the rally.
A few weeks later, Internet regulators exposed a group of workers
discussing a demonstration on an online bulletin board. They were all taken to the police station,
fingerprinted and threatened with jail sentences if they were caught at it
again.
It seems that Hegang
is not the only place where industrial trouble threaten: the number of strikes and labour protests
nationwide in China almost doubled in the first 11months of last year. Up to 2,354 compared with 1,207 in the same
period of 2014 according to China Labour Bulletin, a monitoring group based in
Hong Kong. In November 2014 there was a
record of 301 labour incidents.
This is of great
concern to the Chinese Communist Party because it is suggested that the
unwritten social compact in China is that the Communist Party delivers growth,
jobs and higher living standards, and in exchange the workers acquiesce to the
party's monopoly on power, surrendering the right to organise unions or
protest. It isthought that that deal
could fall apart if workers no longer believe the government is measuring up to its part of the bargain.
Javier C..Hernández in
the International New York Times writes:
'As China's economy
slows after more than two decades of breakneck growth, strikes and labour
protests have erupted across the country.
Factories, mines and other businesses are withholding wages and benefits,
laying off employees or shutting down altogether. Worried about their prospects in a gloomy job
market, workers are fighting back with unusual ferocity.'
Last week, hundreds if
not thousands of employees of the Longmay Mining Group, the state owned enterprise,
staged what has been described as 'one of the most politically daring over
unpaid wages, denouncing the provincial governor as he and other senior leaders
gathered for an annual meeting in Beijing.
In January, there were
more than 500 protests. More
demonstrators have avoided political attacks and have focused on grievances
like wage arrears, unpaid pension contributions and unsafe working
contributions.
President Xi Jinping,
anxious about challenges to the Communist Party, has hit back with a big
crackdown on protests, dismantling labour rights organisations and imprisoning
activists. Yet at the same time his government is trying to placate the
workers, putting pressure on businesses to settle disputes and making billions
of dollars available for welfare payments and retraining programs.
This is part of the
paradox of the Chinese Communist Party which seems to be full of contradictions
of this kind: it still portrays itself
as a socialist guardian of worker's rights as at the same time it embraces
capitalism and welcomes tycoons into its ranks.
Now according to
recent reports more than 30 million workers could lose their jobs in the next
two years if the proposed cuts go through.
The government has already declared its plan to lay off 1.8 million
steel and coal workers.
Javier C..Hernández
writes: 'Mr Xi is grappling with a labor
force that is better informed and more easily organized because of social
media, and also more assertive, in part because of grass-roots rights groups
that have emerged..'
IN February, in the
capital of Guangdong Province in southern China several hundred workers at the
Angang Lianzhong steel plant went of strike last month in reply to a plan to
cut wages by about half and to increase the working day to 12 hours for some
workers. The workers responded with the
chant of 'Towards the sun, towards freedom!':
then chanting this World War II-era army song.
Guangdong, which
manufactures much of the world's toys, shoes, clothes and furniture, has been a
hotbed of worker discontent. In recent
months many foreign-invested companies have relocated to central China and
South East Asia, where wages are mostly lower.
Some of these have moved without paying severance pay or pension
payments, in violation of Chinese law.
Protests are reported
in every part of China, with labour trouble most heavy in manufacturing and
construction industries, which account for two-thirds of the demonstrations.
Last year, most of the
protests were against private employers.
Yet, the actions last week in Shuangyashan, a mining town near the
Russian border in Heilongjiang Province, this according to Mr. Hernández,
suggests that the 'unrest could spread to businesses owned by the government if
Mr. Xi pushes ahead with efforts to overhaul the economy by reining in state
industries'.
After the provincial
governor of Shuangyashan in North East China held up the company of Longmay as
an example of how the state could successfully restructure the nationalised
enterprises without hurting the workers. He made this claim during the annual
session of China's legistlature, the National People's Congress.
In spite of all the
unrest there is as yet no sign of the rise of a national labour movement. The authorities have worked hard to prevent
workers from joining forces. The Chinese
government prohibits workers from setting up independent trade unions, and
insists that they join the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, which is
controlled by the Communist Party.
At the same time the
authorities block social media, shutting down the accounts of labour activists,
deleting news reports of strikes, and monitoring chat forums for signs of
collective action. In December, the
authorities arrested Zeng Feiyang, one of China's most prominent labour
organisers, accusing him of 'gathering a
crowd to disturb social order .' Three other activists were detained as well.
Mr. Zeng, 41, had
organised successful campaigns against influential factories and stae-owned
companies in Guagdong and tutored a generation of labour activists. After his arrest, state media began a smear
campaign accusing him of hiring prostitutes, stealing from workers and
conspiring with hostile foreign forces.
Recently another
labour activist, Wu Guijun, in nearby Shenzhen, said he had started warning
workers against holding demonstrations, as he fears that they might be arrested
as well.
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