Market Entrenchment and Multiple Divide of the Chinese Labor Relations

Development Research Seminar by Kan Wang

Globalization and domestic market entrenchment jointly evolved Chinese labour relations. On the one hand, economic liberalization and inflows of capital bring in intensified competition in the labour market. On the other hand, Chinese labour politics remains unitary. Chinese workers cannot organize outside the official union system.

This makes labour representation handicapped at both the national and firm levels. As a result, the unbalanced power between labour and capital worsens job security, with the majority of younger and rural migrant labourers finding it hard to develop sustainable careers.

Meanwhile, the business lobby in labour legislation jeopardizes the state’s efforts to build a balanced labour relations system, while the official trade union is more likely to strive for their own departmental interests, instead of those of the workers.

Newly enacted labour laws including Labor Contract Law and Employment Promotion Law either face serious implementation problems or give rise to the proliferation of precarious work, characterized by labour dispatch, work outsourcing and underemployment of women workers in both state and non-state owned enterprises.

Although collective bargaining is widely perceived as a tool to tackle precarious work, this goal is unlikely to be achieved without the bottom-up participation of workers. A more effective policy response shall be to empower workers to directly elect shop stewards and union reps, who represent the shop-floor workers to speak in collective bargaining. Otherwise, the long-term livelihood of workers is at jeopardy and workers have to undertake confrontational action such strikes or protests to express their discontent.

Seminar chair: Susan Newman

Kan Wang, Institute of Industrial Relations of All-China Federation of Trade  Unions, Beijing, China

See for more information:

Tanya Kingdon (kingdon@remove-this.iss.nl)