China: Strikes in Dongguan test new labor law

Konica Minolta Business Technologies and Sankyo Seiko Science & Technology are two neighboring factories in Shilong township, Dongguan.

Strikes began Thursday in the Sankyo plant after a pay dispute involving some 3,000 workers who complained their salaries were too low because the overtime pay they were getting didn’t comply with China’s Labor Contract Law. One worker told (in Chinese) RFA’s Cantonese service…that the factory management had responded to the strike by calling a two-day halt to production:

Workers in two departments of our company were on strike; in total more than 3,000 people or thereabouts. We have now all ceased production for two days. I don’t know yet if the strike will continue when those two days are up. The management hasn’t given a clear response to our demands yet, and some of our representatives have been fired.

He also told reporter Lee Kin-Kwan that a labor dispute had also flared at the Konica Minolta factory next door.

A worker at the Konica Minolta factory said in an e-mail that the strike there had begun last Friday after a dispute over holiday entitlement, overtime payments and salaries failed to reach a settlement. It had been peaceful, and without incident, and management had made concessions, but the workers were still not happy, and no agreement had yet been reached.

One administrative employee at the Konica Minolta factory confirmed the report of a strike, while another denied it, saying the strike was at another factory in Dongguan.

Calls to the labor affairs bureaux in both Shilong township and Dongguan city met with a refusal to comment on the reports from officials who answered the phone.

Experts on the labor movement in China point to a wave of industrial disputes to hit the southern province of Guangdong in recent months. According to China Labour Bulletin:

In the past few weeks, many foreign and domestic companies have claimed that new labour legislation and rising labour costs in Guangdong are forcing them to close factories and relocate to other regions or countries…Encouragingly, trade union and government officials in the province have responded forcefully to this threat by pointing out that wages in Guangzhou have failed to keep up with inflation and the overall growth rate of industrial output (see Table1) and actually need to be increased further.

Does this mean that Guangdong’s trade union and labour officials are now determined to take their responsibilities seriously, and defend the rights and interests of workers in the province?

According to the Bulletin, Chinese labor officials and academics are increasingly aware that a collective bargaining system under the recently promulgated Labor Contract Law is the only way to stop strike dragging on endlessly, resulting in disenchanted investors and exploited and disgruntled workers.

The legislative and policy framework for negotiating collective wage agreements has been in place in China since the mid-1990s, however, because of the lack of genuine worker participation in the contract negotiations, these wage agreements have brought only limited benefit to China’s workers.

In December 2007, the Shenzhen Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU) co-hosted with the Shenzhen Lawyer’s Association, a Forum on Collective Bargaining and Corporate Social Responsibility. According to a report in the Southern Metropolis Daily (Nanfang Dushi Bao), the conference heard that: “Most collective labour contracts are not worth the paper they’re written on, and that trade unions’ negotiating and bargaining capacity must be strengthened.”

The biggest obstacle to collective bargaining is not the lack of legislation but the inability of the official trade union to act as proper representative trade union…

In China’s factories, serious violations of the rights and interests of workers are increasingly common. Unless the causes for this embarrassing situation are addressed and effective remedial action is taken, no amount of legislation is going bring about a fundamental improvement in China’s labour rights.

…it concludes. More from the CLB here.

They also have a useful set of English-language resources on the Chinese labor movement.