After more than a decade without a pay rise, the workers had had enough. The entire 3,000 strong workforce went out on strike, bringing the factory to a standstill for three days. The workers, fearing reprisals, initially refused to negotiate with management, and it was only after the intervention of high-level local officials that the workers and management worked out a compromise pay deal.
The strike led to dozens of copycat strikes across the region and eventually hundreds of strikes and stoppages across the whole country. The strikes elicited a surprisingly sympathetic response from the prime minister and even the local police chief stated that “we have nothing against people asking for higher wages.”
This sounds a lot like what is happening in China today, but it actually describes events in South Africa nearly 40 years ago. On 9 January 1973, the entire Zulu workforce at the Coronation Brick and Tile (Corobrik) factory in Durban went out on strike demanding R30 a week – still barely a living wage at the time. As news of the strike spread, workers at other factories in city also walked off the job demanding higher pay and better working conditions. Over the next three months, there were 160 strikes in Durban alone, involving a total of 61,410 workers.
B.J. Vorster, the prime minister at the time publicly stated that: “The events there [in Durban] contain a lesson for us all... Employers should not only see in their workers a unit producing for them so many hours of service a day. They should also see them as human beings with souls.”
Thirty seven years later, China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, told a group of migrant workers in Beijing: “You are the main army of the contemporary Chinese industrial workforce. Our wealth and our tall buildings are all distillations of your hard work and sweat. Your labour is a glorious thing, and it should be respected by society. The government and all parts of society should treat young migrant workers as they would treat their own children.”
And although the police in Tianjin and Kunshan have been rather heavy-handed in dealing with strike action in the last couple of weeks, the police in the Pearl River Delta, who are much more used to worker protests, have been (like Durban’s police chief Brigadier Bisscoff) relatively hands-off.
China and South Africa are of course historically, socially and economically very different but the similarities in the development of strike action in Durban in the 1970s and in the Pearl River Delta today do invite examination.
A common demand of workers in the Pearl River Delta strikes has been for a democratically elected trade union that can represent their demands and interests in negotiations with management. And this was the case too in the Durban strikes of 1973. The trade unions in South Africa at the time were white-only, black workers were excluded from them, and had no means of negotiating pay increases or anything else with management. Much like China’s migrant workers, who feel excluded and alienated from the trade union, their only option was to go on strike.
As a result of the strike at the Corobrik however, management agreed to recognize a representative union body at the plant, and negotiated with that union over pay, working conditions and benefits. Other more progressive employers also allowed black workers to form unions, eventually putting enough pressure on the government to formally legalize such institutions in 1979. The labour movement grew rapidly, leading to the formation of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in 1985.
COSATU went on to play a key role in the anti-apartheid movement, just as Solidarity had led the anti-Soviet movement in Poland a few years earlier. And of course, it is one of the Chinese Communist Party’s greatest fears that organized labour will eventually pose a threat to its authority. However, if China’s leaders are to learn any lessons from South African labour history, it should be that giving voice to disenfranchised workers is an opportunity not a threat. Suppressing workers voices on the other hand will eventually lead to political upheaval.
If the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) can embrace worker activism and allow and encourage genuinely representative trade unions, the workers trust in and respect for the ACFTU (currently at zero) will begin improve, labour relations will improve, and local governments will not have to worry so much about dealing with worker unrest because many disputes will have been resolved through negotiation without the need for strike action.
The results will be beneficial for management too, if Corobrik, the first Durban enterprise to recognize black unions, is any example. The company, founded in 1902, is still going strong, with 15 factories across the whole of South Africa. Moreover, as the Corobrik website proclaims, it is committed to:
Such is the company’s commitment to worker empowerment; it says the equity share in Corobrik held by “historically disadvantaged South Africans” recently rose to 53.3 per cent.
Right now there is an opportunity for the Chinese government to “redress the imbalances of the past” by reforming and eventually eliminating its own highly discriminatory household registration system. Allowing migrant workers access to affordable housing, education, healthcare and social services in the cities would be the first installment in repaying the long overdue debt to migrant workers that even Wen Jiabao clearly acknowledges.
The strike led to dozens of copycat strikes across the region and eventually hundreds of strikes and stoppages across the whole country. The strikes elicited a surprisingly sympathetic response from the prime minister and even the local police chief stated that “we have nothing against people asking for higher wages.”
This sounds a lot like what is happening in China today, but it actually describes events in South Africa nearly 40 years ago. On 9 January 1973, the entire Zulu workforce at the Coronation Brick and Tile (Corobrik) factory in Durban went out on strike demanding R30 a week – still barely a living wage at the time. As news of the strike spread, workers at other factories in city also walked off the job demanding higher pay and better working conditions. Over the next three months, there were 160 strikes in Durban alone, involving a total of 61,410 workers.
B.J. Vorster, the prime minister at the time publicly stated that: “The events there [in Durban] contain a lesson for us all... Employers should not only see in their workers a unit producing for them so many hours of service a day. They should also see them as human beings with souls.”
Thirty seven years later, China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, told a group of migrant workers in Beijing: “You are the main army of the contemporary Chinese industrial workforce. Our wealth and our tall buildings are all distillations of your hard work and sweat. Your labour is a glorious thing, and it should be respected by society. The government and all parts of society should treat young migrant workers as they would treat their own children.”
And although the police in Tianjin and Kunshan have been rather heavy-handed in dealing with strike action in the last couple of weeks, the police in the Pearl River Delta, who are much more used to worker protests, have been (like Durban’s police chief Brigadier Bisscoff) relatively hands-off.
China and South Africa are of course historically, socially and economically very different but the similarities in the development of strike action in Durban in the 1970s and in the Pearl River Delta today do invite examination.
A common demand of workers in the Pearl River Delta strikes has been for a democratically elected trade union that can represent their demands and interests in negotiations with management. And this was the case too in the Durban strikes of 1973. The trade unions in South Africa at the time were white-only, black workers were excluded from them, and had no means of negotiating pay increases or anything else with management. Much like China’s migrant workers, who feel excluded and alienated from the trade union, their only option was to go on strike.
As a result of the strike at the Corobrik however, management agreed to recognize a representative union body at the plant, and negotiated with that union over pay, working conditions and benefits. Other more progressive employers also allowed black workers to form unions, eventually putting enough pressure on the government to formally legalize such institutions in 1979. The labour movement grew rapidly, leading to the formation of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in 1985.
COSATU went on to play a key role in the anti-apartheid movement, just as Solidarity had led the anti-Soviet movement in Poland a few years earlier. And of course, it is one of the Chinese Communist Party’s greatest fears that organized labour will eventually pose a threat to its authority. However, if China’s leaders are to learn any lessons from South African labour history, it should be that giving voice to disenfranchised workers is an opportunity not a threat. Suppressing workers voices on the other hand will eventually lead to political upheaval.
If the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) can embrace worker activism and allow and encourage genuinely representative trade unions, the workers trust in and respect for the ACFTU (currently at zero) will begin improve, labour relations will improve, and local governments will not have to worry so much about dealing with worker unrest because many disputes will have been resolved through negotiation without the need for strike action.
The results will be beneficial for management too, if Corobrik, the first Durban enterprise to recognize black unions, is any example. The company, founded in 1902, is still going strong, with 15 factories across the whole of South Africa. Moreover, as the Corobrik website proclaims, it is committed to:
Redressing the imbalances of the past… [and has] instigated a multi-faceted education and development programme, which expedites the advancement and promotion of previously disadvantaged employees.
Such is the company’s commitment to worker empowerment; it says the equity share in Corobrik held by “historically disadvantaged South Africans” recently rose to 53.3 per cent.
Right now there is an opportunity for the Chinese government to “redress the imbalances of the past” by reforming and eventually eliminating its own highly discriminatory household registration system. Allowing migrant workers access to affordable housing, education, healthcare and social services in the cities would be the first installment in repaying the long overdue debt to migrant workers that even Wen Jiabao clearly acknowledges.