Abstract
Reviewed by: Anita Chan, Australian National University, Australia
This volume contains 11 chapters on China’s industrial relations, 9 of which are authored by mainland Chinese scholars. This presents us with an opportunity to gain a sense of PRC academics’ scholarship on industrial relations.
The first chapter, authored by William Brown, a prominent British industrial relations scholar, lays out an introduction to the world’s three major types of industrial relationships systems – free market (market dominates), Marxist (state dominates) and pluralistic (interest group representation), each with its own mix of power relationships, levels of collective bargaining, laws and procedural rules, compliance with International Labour Organization conventions, etc. Brown titles his chapter ‘What Should We Be Looking For?’, and he concludes that ‘There is no perfect model to be copied’.
In Chapters 2 to 9, the Chinese scholars each take on one topic relevant to China’s industrial relations. Chapter 2, by Chang Kai – China’s most well-known labour law professor – and Brown, emphasizes the importance of the 2008 Labour Contract Law, designed to regulate individual labour contracts. Over the past 2 decades, workers became increasingly aware of its contents, which has led to collective actions. Chapter 3, also by Chang Kai, is on ‘The Two Forms of Labour Movement’. It views the various new laws and regulations promoted by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) to increase the union’s representation of workers as representing an official ‘force’ of the labour movement, and the workers’ increasing protest actions as another, unofficial ‘force’ of the labour movement. Chang recognizes that the two ‘forces’ are miles apart and that, given the political system, they will continue to remain separate. Most western scholars have a different point of view and do not regard the Chinese union federation as a force of the labour movement.
Chapter 4, ‘The Response of Trade Unions to Market Pressures’, by Chang Cheng, gives an accurate picture of how the trade union system operates. She is critical of how the local governments from district level downwards set up lower-level union branches in connivance with employers, and how the membership numbers have to fulfil upper-level quotas, which she characterizes as playing ‘the number game’. However, she points out that there could be some positive outcomes, since in the process of setting up new workplace union branches, a scattering of workers may find an opening to run for office. She concludes that based on her observations there are only isolated cases of the unions achieving something for workers. These isolated cases are due to the personal quality of the union chair or the high political status of the municipal union, as in the case of the Dalian city strikes in 1997.
Chapter 5, by Wen Xiaoyi, ‘Employer Strategies in Collective Labour Relations’, describes some of the changes in how employers deal with labour. In the earlier times when China initially opened up to foreign investment, employers tended to treat workers poorly, but as labour shortages set in over time, they had to be more accommodating. Yet they have also been organizing themselves into employers’ associations, and as the number of strikes continues to rise, while acceding to some concessions they also have learned how to deal with strikers – isolating them, harassing them and blacklisting them.
Chapter 6, on ‘The Changing Role of Government towards Labour’ authored by Tu Wei, describes the various industrial relations laws. The chapter cites some surveys regarding labour disputes, labour arbitration and labour inspection that do not portray a glowing picture of the social stability that the government so urgently desires. Nonetheless, Tu writes that the government ‘leads more by coordination than coercion’ (p. 137). At the time of writing, Tu did not foresee the government’s increasing suppressive measures towards labour under President Xi Jinping.
Chapter 7, by Lei Xiaotian on ‘The Development of Collective Consultation’, notes that the government continues to dominate the consultation process, but he also notes that after 2010, due to a strike wave, the government pushed the ACFTU to organize union branch elections, collective consultation and sectoral bargaining in a big way. Reportedly there was some success, and the chapter, like Tu’s, ends on a hopeful note. So does the next chapter by Zhan Jing on ‘The Challenges Faced by Employee Participation’. It has a positive view of existing institutions and policies. Zhan points out that the workers’ congresses in state enterprises are avenues that provide workers some space for participation. Unfortunately, this congress institution has never worked well overall, and in the non-state sector the results, based on Zhan’s own case studies, are variable. Still, Zhan predicts that the growing demands from employees have the potential to influence the government and employers to further develop workers’ participation.
Chapter 9, by Meng Quan on ‘Strikes: Rights and Resolution’, outlines the history of strikes and then goes into the attitudes and strategies of workers, the government and employers in staging, defusing or suppressing strikes. This is the only chapter that addresses workers’ consciousness, strategies and behaviour. Unlike other authors who express a vague hope that workers’ aspirations will somehow prevail, Meng is sceptical that workers’ participation in the union is sustainable, even when a strike is successful and a union election takes place, due to managements’ and the authorities’ manipulation and workers’ satisfaction with short-term gains.
Tim Pringle’s informative chapter compares the industrial relations of Russia, Vietnam and China. He points out while they all have their own problems, there are degrees of pluralism in each of them. Vietnam and China in particular deserve a closer comparison, inasmuch as Vietnam, albeit a one-party state, nonetheless has many more pluralistic practices than China’s increasingly authoritarian system.
Brown and Chang, the editors, conclude the book with hopes that have not come true for several decades – that if employers understood their responsibilities, if laws were implemented, and if the ACFTU could adapt to the new environment, then sectoral bargaining would spread across China.
Checking the citations at the end of the chapters, the final drafts of the empirical studies (except for Tim Pringle’s) were finished before 2013/2014 in the relatively less authoritarian period before Xi Jinping came to power. Had these chapters been written now, they would have to be drastically revised. Also, positive case studies (such as the Wenling collective consultations, and the successful Nanhai Honda strike of 2010 and subsequent union-branch election, cited in several chapters) are often turned into official emulation models, and have repeatedly been used by Chinese and foreign authors as supporting evidence that China’s industrial relations institutions, policies and practices have been developing in the right direction. But some 15 years later, is there still sector-level collective consultation today in Wenling? A search on the web suggests that more recent research has not been conducted by any scholars or journalists to find out whether the collective consultation model was sustainable. And 9 years later, is the trade union in the Nanhai Honda factory still democratically elected? No. Even the first election was manipulated. In the next election, the employers captured control of the factory-level union branch, and most of the members of the branch’s executive committee are management staff. In hindsight, was the optimism held by labour scholars, Chinese and foreigners alike, during the period before Xi Jinping became Party Secretary justified? The series of crackdowns on workers, labour non-governmental organizations and dissenting voices since 2015, with the unions often a willing accomplice, strongly suggests otherwise.