NYT: China Pressures Big Companies to Allow Unions

[ClarkUSA]

The free ride is over.

SHANGHAI — Some of the world’s biggest corporations are facing intense pressure from China to allow state-approved unions to form in their Chinese plants and offices. But many companies fear admitting the unions will give their Chinese employees the power to slow or disrupt their operations and will significantly increase the cost of doing business here.

Employees at a Wal-Mart outlet in the southwest of China voted in 2006 to form a trade union. A spokesman for Wal-Mart, which has opposed unions in the United States, said the company had a “good relationship” with the union in China.
The companies, many of which moved to China to lower manufacturing costs and some to avoid unions in their home countries as well, are now being asked to meet a Sept. 30 deadline to make their offices and factories union shops.

Companies that do not comply risk being publicly vilified or blacklisted by the union, and perhaps penalized by the government, since businesses are required by law to allow unions to form.

Lawyers and analysts say that demands of the All China Federation of Trade Unions, the only union the Communist Party allows, could sharply alter business practices of foreign companies in China, including giving lower-level workers the power to bargain for anything from pay raises to whether a Chinese headquarters should be moved elsewhere in the country.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/business/worldbusiness/12yuan.html

[Selatius]

1. On paper, it looks impressive, but the trade unions are totally dominated by the Communist Party.

The Communist Party demands control, and they would never allow any truly independent trade union to speak for the workers. The trade unions as they exist now have not really served the workers well in China.

The only conceivable reason I could think of that they are allowing this is a gamble to try to assuage growing worker anger at poor workplace conditions and terrible pay and benefits. The Communist Party is afraid of a worker rebellion, a true class revolution, so they are trying to seek a middle-ground where they are pressuring corporations to allow government trade unions in, but at the same time, the union will not be handed over to the workers to decide for themselves.

The ultimate decisions still rests with the Politburo, and as much as they may fear a worker-led rebellion, they are not going to give workers that much freedom either to bargain with employers for fear of scaring away corporations that pay big bucks to communist party leaders.