There are essays one writes as an expert, and essays one writes as a beginner, sharply aware that many of one’s readers will have greater experience, and expertise. This is firmly in the latter camp. Please jump in and share your perspectives...
While talkin' politics, I’ve read and heard many stories about China, and the point – with respect to American politics and economy -- is often straightforward. The minimum wage in China is about fifty to eighty cents an hour; the trade surplus with America is around 230 billion dollars a year; and America has traded a manufacturing base, and around 1.8 million jobs, for cheap consumer goods. The facts of the matter are compelling. But lost American jobs, eroding wages, and the changes to trade law which brought this about are not the class and labor story I’d like to share with you. Today I’d like to talk about the struggle of the people making that sixty cents an hour, sending home a little, working from dawn to dusk. Chances are good something they made kept you warm and dry today, or put these words in front of you. In the end, I think their interest is our own; in any event I hope you will, as I did, learn a bit, or share what you know. First, a few words about the Class and Labor Series, which is an honor to participate in:
Issues of Class and labor seem to pop up quite a bit on Daily Kos as sidebars or as impacting other topics in important ways, but they don't get their own diaries as often as they perhaps should. Yet work and class have enormous relevance in American life. Almost all of us must work for a living. Most of us who work owe a great debt to organized labor - even if we are not ourselves members of unions, we benefit from the advances unions have made over the years, in safety conditions, limited hours and overtime pay, benefits, child labor laws. And while a shrinking percentage of American workers are represented by unions, not only do union members earn more than their nonunion counterparts, but nonunion workers in highly unionized industries and areas benefit from employer competition for workers, leading to better pay and conditions. Class issues, too, apart from the question of organized labor, are central in many of the political struggles of the day. From bankruptcy legislation to the minimum wage to student loans, legislation affects people differently based on how much they make, what kind of access to power and support they have.
With this series we aim to develop an ongoing discussion around class and labor issues. Such ongoing discussions have emerged in the feminisms and Kossacks Under 35 series, and, given the frequent requests for more (and more commented-in) diaries on these issues, we hope this series will accomplish the same. Entries will be posted every Tuesday night between 8 and 9pm eastern. If you are interested in a writing a diary for this series, please email Elise or MissLaura and we will arrange for you to be put on the schedule
To set the stage broadly, some background facts, from a distasteful but comprehensive source, (gasp! sigh!) the CIA factbook. China has 1.3 billion people, and a workforce of around 800 million, of whom from 100 to 150 million are migrant workers. The median age in China is about 32, the life expectancy is about 71 years, and the economy has a real growth rate of about 11 percent. In 2006, it's economy was second only to that of the U.S., in size. In contrast, the somewhat belligerent entry for the U.S., in the same source, provides an American population of 300 million, a labor force of around 150 million, a median age of 36, and a life expectancy of about 78 years. Our real growth rate in 2006 is supposedly around 3 percent (this week).
A Quick Recent Bowlderized History of Labor Law and Practice
It's impossible to go into this without a dollop of recent history, which is all or mostly review for most. Chinese economic reform is a huge topic, and beyond our already rather too-large scope; but suffice it to say that starting in 1978, under Deng Xaoping, economic reforms began to loosen the grasp of state owned enterprises. Before that, of course, the contract between the individual worker and the state was sometimes popularized as an "iron rice bowl". For quick reference, for those over 40, in 1978 Jimmy Carter authorized the Susan B. Anthony dollar, Rhodesia's white government began to dissolve, two million people rioted against the Shah, and Vietnam attacked Cambodia. It was not all that long ago. In China, everything began to change, on a scale which is hard to imagine. Or as a relatively recent University of Michigan conference summary put it, with academic understatement:
China’s transition from central planning to market-driven policies has had a profound influence on the way labor is valued, and in a short time has radically altered the way in which work is obtained and experienced by millions of Chinese citizens.
Writers I've encountered speak often of the danwei, or work unit, as being the fabric of social existence; I've heard people describe self corrections, and re-education.. And not everyone got economic security, in any meaningful sense. Rural areas were then, and remain,desperately poor. From the time economic reforms began, to the present, the Chinese economy has (at least)quadrupled in size. The growth of the Chinese economy is an oft cited capitalist morality tale, which presumably lifted 400 million people from poverty (a good Guardian article, if you're inclined to click). Others see systemic gaps between rich and poor in continued emphasis on the export sector, and regional differences which leave rural areas behind.. It is important to remember, for me -- reading these articles -- that the definition of "poor" in this context can be living on a few hundred dollars per year, or less.
In reading for this piece, I very much wanted to draw comparisons to American labor. I had a mental picture of a fairly repressive place; pictures of people mining discarded electronics in vast toxic cities and 100 millionbrutalized rural poor in the city, used up and thrown away. People jumping to their deaths for unpaid wages. Capitalism run amok, even by American standards. So it was disorienting to read that China has a comprehensive labor law, passed in 1994, and another, more recent law,set to go into effect in 2008 (full text) (wapo article, and a more complete gloss in theChina Law Reporter -- the R. Brown article, after the lead in...).
In contrast to American employment at will, the new law is much more reminiscent of EU labor law, which seeks to provide real contract assurances to the worker. The overall legal and administrative system, as it stands before the law's implementation, is well summarized in this China Labour Bulletin article. A number of pieces on the development of the recent law, which was first proposed in 2004, mention the over 190,000 comments submitted. Reading a white paper from Global Labor Strategies, written in March 2007, draws an especially vivid picture of the of the struggle over the strength of the legislation. I recommend the GLS article as a great snapshot of the players -- The American and EU Chambers of Commerce, and multinationals, NGOs and Chinese state unions -- and issues, for those who are not already well versed. While some things simply weren't on the table -- such as the right to strike or have independent unions -- businesses balked at the EU style contract law provisions, and whether uncontracted workers would gain or lose rights by default, among other things. By most accounts the result was a mixed blessing: companies intending to comply may be firing employees (perhaps a lot of employees) within their six month window before the new law takes effect. (The last link is from Gobal Labour Strategies blog; the China Labour Bulletin has an article here)
In terms of external investment, and the actual degree of compliance, historically, I found this little booklet - from an organization with a Walmart VP and the chair of Dow Chemical on it's board -- to be telling. Even in the most positive reading, one is not left with any doubt that legal enforcement postfacto, intermittent, and inconsistent. An article in the CSM summed up the issues around the new law:
The law gives oversight power to labor unions for collective agreements and the implementation of new employment regulations, but because independent labor unions are illegal in China, this duty will fall to the government-sponsored All China Federation of Trade Unions, an organization with deep ties to the Communist Party and local government officials.
In the current environment, even WalMart is unionizing , and they are apparently quite supportive of Chinese unions (if not in the US, and if not for the people who work in their contracted, sometimes hard to find factories). It would be an odd thing, to be one of the first people to unionize a Chinese Walmart; at the same time they are allowing the government union, they are also allowing party organization. On one hand, it's easy to read these articles and dismiss the whole thing as a ploy, government unions and government control. On the other hand -- imagine being one of the very first people to unionize one of these stores.
As when reading about America on other issues, there is a huge disconnect between an approved system, where incremental progress is apparently being made and the terms are public and legal, and an unapproved system, where the organizers are considered criminal and stories of terrible worker abuse are so common as to numb the soul. One goes quickly from articles which describe the movement of millions of people, huge pools of unemployed available for any exploitation, to articles on changes in the law which will help -- to some degree or another -- those same millions -- to pieces on conditions at individual factories, and for individual workers, whose stories are often heartrending. One gets the impression of a story which is hard to tell by it's very scale, and a desperate attempt to find levers which can improve conditions.
One lever is plant inspection and long term surveys, targeted to specific industries or brands. This Corpwatch study focused on Nike and Reebok is a good example. As an American reader, I've become accustomed to a rhetoric and environment where working conditions are, even when bad, survivable, and people in union shops are quite lucky. One could read this sentence in any American labor pamphlet, for instance:
The working conditions in the Nority Factory are clearly hazardous to the workers' health. There is serious dust and noise pollution, excessive heat, dangerous fumes (from glue, for example) and congestion.
But the next section seems more reminisceint of the outskirts of some vast, unspeakable hell:
Reebok's Code of Conduct states that workers are not required to work more than a 60-hour week, and China's Labour Law stipulates a maximum of 44-hours, and overtime should be limited to one hour per day. At Nority, however, the normal work week, not including overtime, is 12 hours a day, six days a week, or 72 hours a week....On top of this grueling 12-hour schedule, workers are often forced to work an additional 2-5 hours of overtime....The factory also fails to pay the legal minimum wage and the legal wage for overtime pay. The legal minimum wage in Dongguan is $1.93 (16Rmb) for 8 hours of work, but workers in Nority receive only $1.20-$1.45 (10-12Rmb) per day. The legal minimum for overtime pay is $0.36 (2.99Rmb) an hour, but at Nority workers only receive $0.27 (2.20Rmb) per hour...
That's not exactly, er, a job.
The overall picture, in this introductory exploration, was of a place where things are getting a little better for people who are established in their place, who are lucky enough to work for a corporation or government agency which is interested in the new contract law.. For the migrant workers -- who total the entire working population of the United States -- and for people in municipalities and regions where the authorities wish to keep a particular order between the very poor and the factories who employ them, things aren't so great. An Amnesty report describes the situation succinctly; it also offers a list of things that western (EU and American) union workers can do to help.
Independent labor action is illegal in China, and the new law does nothing to change this. People are in prison -- in unspeakable conditions -- merely for organizing. To read their stories is reminiscent of early American struggles for some kind of fair work environment.
The UAW has chosen to champion the cause of a few of these people -- I recommend reading the page, which provides a single english paragraph to describe each case -- and each case is a book, I suspect, about justice and courage. They also have a page where you can send an email on behalf of the short list of activists provided. China Labour Bulletin also provides a list of currently imprisoned activists, and some of their stories.
This is rapidly reaching -- or has (sigh) perhaps surpassed the appropriate length of a C&L diary, and the putative attention span of all but the most determined.
There are huge issues I've barely mentioned -- child labor, prison and forced labor (laogai and related systems), and the nuance and process of per-corporation, and sometimes per-individual activism. There are a few resources which were persistently cited and proved useful to me, and I'd like to share them before I go...
China Labor Watch attempts an engagement policy with large corporations in the US and China, and provides reports on conditions along specific supply chains. They are also attempting to do work to educate workers about their rights. While one can wonder at theefficacy overall, they were a good source of current information and of an example of one kind of activist engagement.
China Labour Bulletin provides information on trade union activity, possible avenues for action (such as public interest lawsuits), worker detainees, and changes in the law as they impact real lives (as opposed to the movement and policies of corporations and governments. A smallish site, but useful.
The UN's ILO has some interesting articles on fair globalization in general, and the issues in play. It's from a UN perspective, so it's strong on idealism and history, and short on current events and the reality of worker's lives, compared to activist sites for Chinese workers; but as a place to read about codified international goals, and how the people with money and good will are talking about stuff, it's very interesting.
For a quick education in Laogai, the system of forced labor, I recommend checking out the Laogai Research Foundation. They provide links to MSM articles, and some of the stories of those who have experienced the system.
Thanks for reading. I'm just starting the journey of learning about this topic, and am not claiming even the average journalists level of expertise, but it seemed like an important part of our ongoing conversation, something important and not to be missed. I began with the thought that improving conditions for Chinese workers, who represent some of the poorest and most exploited folks on earth, would in turn change how things are priced and valued here in America. I ended with an image of courage so vast I can barely get past it, and the sense that there are big, important things going on, on an unprecedented scale, about how people organize for their rights, and sometimes get them. I recommend more reading on this to everyone, at this point :} I hope a few readers will share personal stories or experiences -- maybe, if we're lucky, some of those wandering experts with firsthand experience.
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