In late April, some 450,000 catering workers in Wuhan welcomed the signing of a collective agreement that promised them a basic wage 30 percent higher than the municipal minimum wage (currently 900 yuan), and a wage increase this year of at least nine percent on average.
But soon after the Labour Day celebrations died down, experts started questioning if this agreement is really that promising, even though it does involves the largest number of workers covered in one agreement and a big increase in pay.
The Wuhan Finance and Tobacco Trade Union spent around two years in preparation, and its negotiations with the management representative, the Wuhan Catering Association, took nearly two months. According to the mainland media, the two parties would argue for hours over the proper terms to be used in the collective agreement.
The shortage of catering workers in Wuhan partly explains why this city with a distinct historical and cultural legacy worked so hard on this collective bargaining contract. “There’s a nearly 15 percent gap between the supply and demand of restaurant workers in the peak season, and close to a five percent gap in the off season,” said Liu Guangliang, chair of Wuhan Catering Association, in a media report.
The catering industry is among the poorest paid industries, not just in Wuhan, but in mainland China. A recent salary survey by the National Bureau of Statistics showed that in 2010, the average annual salary of 17,531 yuan for catering workers only accounted for 84 percent of the average annual wage in China.
There are nearly 40,000 restaurants in Wuhan, but only 15 percent of them have a salary adjustment mechanism. Most catering workers don’t have formal labour contracts; rather they are recruited on a casual basis by a labour contractor, usually the chef in the restaurant. “The workers’ salary is totally at the whim of the chef,” said Liu Qixin, vice-chair of Wuhan Trade Union in an interview with Guangzhou Daily.
Moreover, there seem to be no regulatory or punitive measures in the agreement that would force the bosses of these predominately small and medium-sized enterprises to raise their employees’ salary by several hundred yuan a month.
“The key problem is how to implement this agreement,” Chang Kai, dean of the Labour Relations Institute at Renmin University, said in a CCTV interview. “Unlike formal collective contracts which entail specific legal responsibilities and procedures in case the relevant parties default, this agreement seems to have neglected that part.”
In addition, the workers’ representative in this collective bargaining agreement is the industry trade union federation rather than the enterprise trade union. Without a union official on site, it will be difficult for these 450,000 workers to ensure that the boss honors the agreement.
Though it is better to stay cautiously optimistic about this agreement than to give up hope on it from the outset, based on our observations of the collective bargaining initiatives across China this year, it does seem that trade unions like boasting about their plans and achievements. But for as long as there are no detailed objectives or punitive measures for bosses in these agreements, workers are unlikely to get what they have been promised.