Reforming the Work Unit System

Abstract

AbstractChapter 7 looks at the impact on factory governance of the initial reforms carried out during the first decade and a half after Mao’s death in 1976. These reforms left the fundamental features of the work unit system—public ownership and permanent job tenure—in place, and institutional forms of participation, including staff and workers congresses, were revived and enhanced. During the “long 1980s” workers enjoyed substantial influence, especially with regard to the distribution of wages and bonuses, housing, and other welfare entitlements. Although the Chinese Communist Party had by then renounced its original class-leveling mission, workers effectively resisted new distribution policies that violated the egalitarian ethos that had long prevailed under the work unit system. The latter years of this period, however, also marked the beginning of the erosion of industrial citizenship as temporary employment was expanded and the power of the factory director was reinforced in the second half of the decade.