As long as strikes did not adversely affect society, he said, they should be accepted and tolerated. However, Wang noted that the current lack of laws, regulations and procedures on strikes could lead to more damaging and disruptive wildcat strikes in the future. He pointed out that there were no clear rules of the game; no employee representatives and no one to negotiate with, only the government and higher level branch unions to rely on. And as such, Wang called for the introduction of legal or systemic measures to establish guidelines for strike action, and thus enable the peaceful resolution of disputes.

He stressed that the majority of strikes resulted from employers’ violations of the law and the failure to pay decent wages. If employers were willing to engage in collective wage negations with workers, a lot of problems could be resolved at source, he said.

China Labour Bulletin welcomes this more progressive and realistic outlook from the Shenzhen Federation of Trade Unions, and hopes officials will be as good as their word and seek to represent workers in negotiations with management, and support strike action if necessary if those negotiations breakdown.

All too often, unions not only fail to support strike action, but sometimes intervene on behalf of management to end strikes as quickly as possible, see Solidarity from the sidelines: Union passivity allows a steel strike to escalate [2]. In many industries, a limited or non-existent union presence has been a significant factor leading to strike action. A commentary carried by the official Xinhua news agency, for example, claimed the civil airlines pilots strike in March 2008 could have been avoided if a union was in place and able to represent the pilots in negotiations with management. 14 pilots working for China Eastern subsidiary Yunnan Airlines returned to their departure ports on 31 March in protest at low pay on domestic routes. This followed a mass “sick-in” earlier in March by pilots from Shanghai Airlines and Wuhan East Star Airlines.