China's Migrant Workers' Legal Rights Awareness on the Rise

Abstract

INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 6 Volume 22 Issue 4 2015 Guangdong’s industrial cities are undergoing deindustrialisation, leaving workers stranded with unpaid wages and years of entitlements Protests over social insurance and housing funds In April 2014, another new type of demand erupted —protests over unpaid or underpaid social insurance and housing fund contributions by employers. More than 40,000 workers went on strike at a huge factory complex in Guangdong Province owned by the Yue Yuen company. This is the world’s largest footwear manufacturer, which makes running shoes for most of the big brands. It was the largest strike action recorded in Guangdong in the last three decades since China opened its door to foreign investors. The strike lasted for seventeen days, after a worker discovered that the company had not been contributing enough toward her retirement. The Chinese law is quite generous to employees: employers’ contribution to a retirement fund should range from 12 percent to 18 percent of the employees’ total wage depending on the locality. The local government , the official trade union and the police joined forces to suppress the strikers. The police brought police dogs into the factory and dormitories to force workers back to the assembly lines A year after the Yue Yuen strike, 5000 workers at another shoe factory demanded a different type of management contribution worth 5 percent of salary – toward a housing fund mandated by law. Together these two types of accumulated debts owed to thousands of workers run into many millions of dollars, and have serious implications for a company’s finances. For many years the workers have not paid much attention to these two funds, but as the workers age (until a dozen years ago almost all of them were in their 20s), they increasingly are concerned about being short-changed. Deindustrialisation The strikes in Guangdong have been exacerbated by the troubled economy of Guangdong’s industrial cities, which are undergoing deindustrialisation , with empty factory and commercial buildings marring some cities. The soaring cost of living in this southern province necessitates a minimum wage higher than in the rest of China, and foreign companies that rely on cheap labour have been relocating to less expensive inland provinces or have moved their factory operations overseas to South and Southeast Asia. Vietnam, for instance has overtaken China as the number one exporter of garments to the US market. As investors in Guangdong move their factory production elsewhere, some simply refuse to honour their obligations, leaving workers stranded with unpaid wages and years of entitlements. The workers’ only solution is to take to street action before the companies leave. M ass protests of all types have been increasing in China. Labour protests take up about a third, and the number of these protest actions has been rising sharply, but they have all been isolated plant-level incidents. Most of these are staged by workers from China’s countryside or small towns who have migrated to cities in search of work. They make up about 60 percent of China’s non-agricultural workforce, providing almost all the workers in the export industries that fill our shops with goods. Guangdong Province, just north of Hong Kong, has the largest number of migrant factory workers and has witnessed the largest number of protests. Protests over bread and butter issues During the past two decades, these protests have been sporadic and comparatively peaceful—until recently. The vast majority of their demands have been over management violations of China’s labour laws—unpaid wages, under-paid wages, or poor and unsafe work conditions. Workers usually first try to reason with management; and when stone-walled, they send representative to local government authorities to seek help. Only when they are still ignored do they take to the streets, blocking highways, because traffic disruption is one sure strategy to force the authorities to pay attention. Often the police get mobilised, and scuffles and arrests follow. Compared to workers in other Asian countries such as Cambodia, Indonesia and Bangladesh, Chinese workers have been comparatively compliant . They have not targeted the government for an increase in the legal minimum wage. They have not asked to eliminate China’s household registration...