More than twenty textile workers detained by the police in Xianyang City, Shaanxi Province, in October 2004 for their involvement in a protracted mass strike action against new and unfair labour contracts have reportedly all now been freed. According to China Labour Bulletin sources, the detained workers from the Xianyang China Resources (Huarun) Textile Factory were released without charges in several batches starting last December and ending just before the Chinese New Year in early February.
From 14 September until the end of October 2004, almost 7,000 workers, mostly female, staged an unprecedented strike at the formerly-named Xianyang Tianwang Textiles Factory, following the factory's transfer to new ownership by China Resources, the Hong Kong-based PRC conglomerate, and the new management's attempt to impose harsh labour contracts and working conditions on the workforce. All production at the recently restructured enterprise was halted for almost seven weeks while the strike continued, making it one of the longest known industrial strikes in post-1949 history and possibly the longest.
A police crackdown aimed at ending the strike in late October netted around twenty suspected strike activists, and a police "wanted notice" was then issued for another five workers claimed to have had contact with "foreign subversive elements." However, a variety of sources at the factory have confirmed to CLB that, in the event, no actual charges were pressed against the detainees and all were subsequently released. (A partial list of the freed workers' names has been compiled by CLB, but to safeguard the interests of those released we have omitted their names here.) The detainees' family members were reportedly denied all access to them whilst they were in police custody. Since their release, the Xianyang Huarun management has refused to reinstate them in their former jobs and most of them are currently unemployed.
Crackdown Aimed at Curbing Union Organizing Drive
The police crackdown of last November is believed to have been prompted mainly by the local authorities' determination to prevent the striking Xianyang Huarun workers from going ahead with their plan to elect a factory-level trade union and to register it with the officially-sanctioned trade union organization, the ACFTU, as allowed for under China's Trade Union Law of 2001. When the city authorities learned of this plan in early to mid-October last year, they pre-emptively announced that the ACFTU itself had already taken steps to establish a union branch at the factory and, moreover, that it had been immediately approved by the relevant authorities. However, no workforce elections were convened to legitimize this officially imposed body, and many of the workers at the factory remained committed to electing a genuine union branch of their own.
While welcoming the Xianyang textile workers' release, China Labour Bulletin's director Han Dongfang condemned the heavy-handed police action against the peaceful, seven-week strike action. "The Xianyang workers wanted to set up a trade union branch so that they could begin a constructive process of collective bargaining with the factory’s new owners. Unfortunately, the local government opted for a policy of repression over one of constructive dialogue with the workers," said Han. He added: "If the Chinese government seriously wants to 'build a harmonious and stable society', then traditional repressive tactics against China's workers have to end and they must be allowed to have an organized and independent voice of their own in society."
Xianyang Authorities "Magnanimous in Victory"
The mass strike at the Xianyang Huarun factory was triggered by the textile workers' anger at China Resources' announcement last autumn that, as part of the recent "restructuring" of the enterprise, the entire workforce would have to accept a one-off severance payment equivalent to a month's basic salary for each year of service in the factory, after which an undisclosed number of the workers would be re-employed on short-term contracts of one to three years' duration. Those rehired would then lose their previous work seniority status and be paid substantially lower wages than before. In addition, the new contracts specified that all those re-employed by the factory would have to serve a six-month "probationary work period," during which they would receive only 60 percent of their new salary. However, most of the workers had already been employed at the factory for more than ten years, and so according to the PRC Labour Law were entitled to receive permanent labour contracts.
In the aftermath of the police crackdown last winter, about 3,000 workers – mostly those who had been working at the Tianwang factory for some ten to twenty years – are said to have accepted the severance payment offer and are no longer working at the factory. Around 2,000 other workers have been assigned to new jobs at the restructured factory, while the remainder of the original workforce has been transferred to work in other local concerns – for example, in schools owned by the Tianwang Textile Group (the factory's previous owner.) In a significant concession to the strikers' original demands, however, the Xianyang Huarun management has reportedly dropped its earlier insistence that reassigned workers must undergo a "probationary work period," and the threatened wage reductions appear also to have been largely abandoned.
The Xianyang textile strike leaders' release from jail may partly have been due to the local policy fallout from a visit made to Shaanxi Province in late October 2004 by Zhou Yongkang, the Minister of Public Security. During his visit, the nation's police chief emphasized the central government's new and less draconian policy on the handling of cases of social unrest, as outlined at a CPC Central Committee meeting the previous month. According to Xinhua News Agency, Zhou specifically instructed the Shaanxi police force "to ameliorate social conflict and unrest by any means possible" and "to properly resolve internal conflicts among the people in order to build up a harmonious and stable society."
For further information on the Xianyang textile workers' strike and the subsequent crackdown, see: Xianyang Textile Workers' Strike Ends as Police Detain More than 20 Activists, Wanted Notice for Three Others is Issued
20 April 2005