Worker Congresses in China: Do they matter?

Abstract

We use a survey of privately‐owned enterprises spanning the years 2006–2014 and estimate effects of Worker Congresses on worker welfare outcomes. We find that Congresses by themselves had positive effects on all outcomes except for wages. Firms with both a Congress and a union had large and positive effects on all outcomes reflecting the sum of their separate individual effects, suggesting that they were not substitute institutions but rather were complementary in an additive fashion.