Trade-offs Between State Organisations and Workers’ Organisations

Abstract

This article analyses the way in which, since 2010, Chinese trade unions have been trying to find forms of authoritarian collective bargaining that allow them to advance workers' interests without calling into question their belonging to the state apparatus. It compares the case of the Dalian Industrial Zone to that of the Shenzhen Pilot Zone in a bid to understand how the unions try to acquire effectiveness and legitimacy in the absence of any progress in terms of representation.

Worker Congresses in China: Do they matter?

“…Although some have criticized the role of Congresses to be largely perfunctory (Li, 2014), there is some evidence that such institutions can still have an impact on worker welfare (Chen & Chan, 2004; Froissart et al, 2019; Long et al, 2022). Their most obvious way to do so is to provide a platform for workers to voice and give suggestions to the employer regarding their welfare (Chen & Chan, 2004; Zhu & Chan, 2005).…”

The Chinese Trade Union Goes Abroad: Evidence from Cambodia

“…In the Chinese context, the confrontational nature of "collective bargaining" (jiti tanpan 集體談判) -which implies a conflict of interests between employers and employees -was watered down to a process of simple "collective negotiation" (jiti xieshang 集體協商) based on the assumption of a substantial unity of interests between company and workers and on a formalistic approach in which collective contracts generally did not include any provisions beyond the legal minimum (Brown 2006). This has not prevented Chinese unions from experimenting with different practices at the local or industrial level as part of top-down ACFTU reform (Friedman 2014;Wen and Lin 2015), and occasionally local branches of the Chinese union have been able to develop relatively efficient practices of collective bargaining (Pringle and Meng 2018;Froissart, Liu, and Meng 2019). However, that these experiments remain highly localised is highlighted by the fact that in recent years it took labour NGOs to enable the emergence in China of authentic "worker-led collective bargaining" in which workers are able to put forward demand that go beyond the legal minimum (Froissart…”