Negotiating authoritarianism and its limits: Worker-led collective bargaining in Guangdong Province

Abstract

Contrary to some scholars' assertions, worker-led collective bargaining has become a practical reality in China, especially as seen in Guangdong Province between 2011 and 2015. This article analyses the practices and strategies of negotiation to show how this is possible in a regime that recognizes neither independent trade unions nor the right to strike. Labour NGOs have become a catalyst for collective action that enables workers to change the power balance with employers, official unions and local authorities and alter their response to labour conflicts. This article thus challenges the concept of 'bargained authoritarianism' by stressing social actors' ability to carve out a space for negotiating authoritarianism despite obvious limits and tightening political constraints. However, collective bargaining will remain ad hoc and localized as long as trade unions and local authorities refuse to strike a durable alliance with workers and labour NGOs.

State and labor in China, 1978-2018

“…Specifically, social movement‐oriented NGOs seek to organize workers in collective contention and mobilization (Chen & Yang, ; Froissart, ). “To lower the cost of coordinating contention in a repressive state,” Diana Fu details how labor organizers coached workers to take individual forms of activism, rather than collective actions, such as staging a “suicide show” to make urgent appeals (Fu, , p. 516).…”

Labour NGOs in China

“…Most importantly, as Froissart has effectively shown, in recent years labour NGOs have enabled the emergence in China of authentic "worker-led col-lective bargaining" in which workers are able to put forward demands that go beyond the basic legal minimum (Froissart 2018). In a context of such systematic disempowerment of collective contracts and negotiations, why did some labour NGOs decide to shift their focus to collective disputes and collective bargaining in the first place?…”

“…I hope that everybody will take me as a warning and that they will not be fooled by any foreign organisation, [keeping in mind] that they must resort to legal means and channels to protect their rights and interests. (1) I t was with these words that in September 2016 labour activist Zeng Feiyang pled guilty to "gathering a crowd to disturb public order" at his trial, an event that marked the peak of the harshest crackdown to hit Chinese labour NGOs since their appearance in the mid-1990s (Franceschini and Nesossi 2018;Froissart 2018). It had all started in December 2015, when public security forces rounded up a couple dozen labour activists in Guangdong, bringing charges against five of them.…”

Trade-offs Between State Organisations and Workers’ Organisations

“…Highlighted by the emblematic and large-scale dispute at the Yue Yuen shoe factory in 2014, demands were also made when smaller factories closed or were relocated, as has happened with increasing frequency in Guangdong in recent years following increases in labour costs and the will of the provincial authorities to start an economic transition to sectors of higher added value. Illustrating also the marginalisation of the unions, the workers have generally been supported in these disputes by NGOs, who have trained them to conduct collective bargaining autonomously (Froissart 2014(Froissart , 2018. Seen as direct competition to the unions, the development of these labour NGOs has also been a spur to the reform of the unions in Guangdong, as the final section of this article will show.…”