Social Connection, Political Identity, and Employees’ Labor Protest Propensity in China

Abstract

Scholars have long been interested in studying the effects of social and political control on collective action in China. However, few studies have investigated whether the relationship between social and political control and collective action changes over time. In this study, we examined the relationship between social connection, political identity, and employees’ labor protest propensity with a comparative perspective of time. Using data from the Chinese General Social Survey, conducted ten years apart in the years 2003 and 2013, we found that the relationship between social connections, political identity indicated by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) membership, and labor protest propensity differ with these two samples. The relationship between the strength of social connection and labor protest propensity is significant in the 2003 sample, but becomes insignificant in the 2013 sample. The effect of employee’s political identity on labor protest propensity also varies in the two samples. Further analysis shows that CCP members who rated themselves as having a similar social economic status with their peers have a higher intention to participate in a labor protest than party members who rated themselves as having higher social economic status than their peers. This study’s findings demonstrate the importance of considering a time comparative perspective when studying what predicts employees’ labor protest propensity.