Organizing Wal-Mart: The Chinese Trade Union at a Crossroads [Updated]

[Omaha Steve]

http://japanfocus.org/-Anita-Chan/2217

By Anita Chan

Surprise, surprise, it is the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), the trade union notorious throughout the world for being “useless”, that has taken on Wal-Mart and succeeded in setting up workplace union branches at twenty-two Wal-Mart supercenters in China within four weeks. This has attracted the attention of the Chinese media, all major US newspapers, and the China Labor Bulletin (CLB). CLB is the Hong Kong-based labor NGO headed by Han Dongfang, the worker who emerged for a few weeks during the 1989 Tiananmen Square movement as a labor leader of the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation. I was invited by Japan Focus to comment on the significance of the union’s action and the CLB report.

It is necessary to contextualize CLB’s perspective. Along with many others, Han Dongfang was imprisoned and then was allowed to go to the States as a result of an intense international campaign. He ended up founding CLB in Hong Kong more than a decade ago, flying the flag of China’s only autonomous trade union. In this capacity Han goes to Geneva every year to attend the International Labor Organization convention for labor. There and elsewhere, he dismisses the ACFTU as an arm of the Communist Party, and attacks it for its impotence, monopolistic position, and suppression of China’s labor movement, calling on the international trade union movement to isolate the ACFTU. Although the Cold War is over, and engagement with the Chinese government is no longer an issue for the “free” world, in international trade-union circles any engagement with the ACFTU remains a major issue. International trade unions are split into two camps: those who support CLB and refuse to recognize the ACFTU, and those that are willing to engage, in the hope that this can gradually help to transform the ACFTU. It is in this context that we should read the CLB posting on the Wal-Mart trade union phenomenon in China.


Han Dongfang

Holding high the banner of China’s autonomous trade union in exile, CLB’s unchanging position has always been that the ACFTU is unchanging. This is CLB’s implicit message in its report on the attempt of the ACFTU to set up unions inside Wal-Mart. I beg to differ. Has nothing positive emerged out of this Wal-Mart trade union incident? Is the ACFTU a dinosaur that never changes? Alternatively, could there be reformists from within the ACFTU pushing for changes?

After piecing together and analyzing some thirty newspaper reports from various Chinese newspapers, some of which are more sympathetic to the ACFTU, some skeptical, some pro-capital and therefore pro-Wal-Mart, I conclude that there is scope for a more far-reaching discussion of what occurred than is contained in the CLB report. It becomes obvious from the Chinese newspaper articles that in taking on Wal-Mart, the ACFTU has attempted to do something it has not endeavored since the early 1950s, i.e. grassroots union organizing. How the first few union branches came to be formed within such a short period provides intriguing insights into this new phenomenon. The interesting details covered by the Chinese press show signs that the ACFTU, or at least some local unions, are attempting to change. As to how far this change can progress, we will have to wait and see.

Before all else, it is necessary for us to understand that the Chinese press today is no longer totally under state control. Newspapers on their own initiative cover stories they consider newsworthy. Investigative reporting has improved by leaps and bounds. For more than three years, the media has followed closely the jostling between the ACFTU and Wal-Mart, shaping public opinion. At least some reporters have adopted the tone—why should we Chinese give in to this giant corporation, which comes to China, throws its weight around, and openly defies the law of the land.

FULL story at link.