Michael Zhang

The All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), the only legally permitted trade union in China, published its mission statement in early 2001, declaring that "Wherever there are workers, a trade union should be organized," and it also released the paper "Recommendations on strengthening the establishment of trade unions in new enterprises." In September 2005, ACFTU issued the "Blue Paper on Chinese Trade Unions safeguarding the rights and interests of all working men and women." In it, the organisation boasted that 459,000 union branches with a total of 55.463 million members had been set up in privately-held commercial enterprises. On 31 August 2005, the magazine Business Watch published an article titled "Trade Unions: Lobbying and Rejection, Persuasion and Resistance," describing the embarrassing position of the ACFTU in its relationship with private enterprise. The article revealed the hidden failures behind the 'glorious' claims made by the ACFTU and exposed the day-to-day difficulties local union officials actually encounter.

Grovelling in front of private entrepreneurs

In the Business Watch report, a retiree named Ms Long, who was employed by a community-level trade union, described her job as grovelling at the feet of private entrepreneurs, a fruitless exercise but one aimed at extract big promises from them. Her job was to visit private enterprises in her community in the western district of Beijing and persuade the owners to set up a branch of the state trade union in their companies. Long said most of the time she was turned away by the security guard or receptionist, kicked out like a door-to-door salesperson and never given a chance to talk to the decision-makers in the company. In China, the union must have the approval of the owner before it can set up a branch in the company. (The law states that companies should allow the set up of a union but does not make it mandatory.) She considered herself lucky if she had a chance to meet the owner after five or six attempts. However, the talk with the owner could be even more difficult, because he or she was usually was just going through the motions.

"There was one company that I managed to get in to see and I talked to the owner at least five times. He was always very polite. He never said he approved or rejected the idea of setting up a trade union; he didn't debate the idea at all. He just kept saying he would think over it, and he asked me to come back in a few days... Well, we are still unable to reach an agreement on a trade union there," she said.

In some cases, the boss would say that he would let the workers decide whether they wanted a trade union. He would ask them to vote in front of Ms Long. Not surprisingly, the workers all voted against the set up while the boss was standing in front of them and Ms Long once again felt completely humiliated and anxious to leave the company. But the China's official trade union, according to the Trade Union Law, requires that the company provide the union with its operating expenses, thus the establishment of a trade union inevitably required the owner's approval.

Another unique feature of the trade union in China is the fact that a trade union is organized by the party leaders. Workers can't organize a union themselves, Ms Long told the magazine. A group of taxi drivers in Beijing received the same response when they applied to form their own union. "A trade union is an organization of the people, but it shouldn't be organized by the people. Only the Party can organize it," according to the Beijing Municipal General Trade Union. Leading the taxi drivers was Dong Hao, the second interviewee in the Business Watch report. In late 1998, Dong was chosen as the representative of the drivers of the Tianyun Taxi Company and charged with the task of applying for the set up of their trade union at the Tongzhou District Trade Union office. When the district union discovered that they planned to set a union which was going to do more than "get movie tickets and gloves for its members", they rejected the application. Mr Dong and his colleagues then held a Workers' Congress during which he was formally elected as their workers' representative. On 2 January and 26 February 1999, Dong applied two more times at the district trade union office but to no avail. Ironically, management later set up a trade union in the company, and the union's chairperson and committee members were all appointed by management. Although every driver in the company got a membership card, one driver told the reporter, that the union has never held a workers' congress or any other activities. It just hangs out a banner taken from the Tongzhou District Trade Union office which says "Home of Advanced Workers." This designation "Home of Advanced Workers" is a meritorious designation, awarded by the ACFTU for an outstanding performance by a corporate level trade union. The Business Watch report represents the first time the domestic Chinese media have exposed the ACFTU's dismal failure to set up workers' unions in private enterprises, even though the problem has existed for a long time.

Reasons for the ACFTU's failure

To get the approval of the owners of these private businesses for the set up of a union branch, local trade union officials often relax the requirements. The most common concession is a waiving of the responsibility of the company to pay the operating expenses of the union in its first two years. (Under China's Trade Union Law, the company is required to pay 2% of the total monthly wages of the workforce to the trade union for its operations.). In some cases, the company's management is given the right to appoint the trade union chairperson. Despite these conciliatory measures, the union still fails to get company owners to allow them in.

So why are they still trying so hard and humiliating themselves in front of these businessmen? The ACFTU's goal in setting up more unions branches is in fact to serve the needs of the ruling party. The "Recommendations on Strengthening the Trade Union in New Enterprises" issued on 7 February 2001 stated that the main objectives of the ACFTU's expansion campaign were "to strengthen the establishment of the party, create a closer relationship between the party, the workers and the people and consolidate the party's class make-up and political position". Former ACFTU Chairman Wei Jianxing said in a speech given in November 2000 that if there were no trade union (branch) in an enterprise, it would "give way to foreign hostile elements to divide the working class." Assuming such a future political threat, that is - a foreign hostile forces forming independent trade unions outside the ACFTU structure and overturning the Communist Party's rule and subverting the socialist system - the ACFTU has exceeded its original mandate of union survival and development (on behalf of workers). The sad thing is that this goal of the wider trade union establishment lacks the support of local party officials. Although some local industrial and commercial and labour departments have paid lip service claiming that they would form "a leading group on trade union establishment", which would be led by different levels of party officials, and such groups would chiefly conduct propaganda campaigns by releasing documents on trade union establishment in the name of the party and holding a few coordinating meetings, rather passive efforts in union building work. One of the most shocking examples was Wal-Mart's refusal to allow the set-up of an ACFTU branch in its subsidiary in 2004. When ACFTU vowed to take Wal-Mart and other foreign companies to court for refusing to allow the union in, the central government as well as local governments simply kept quiet. The government's ambiguous attitude as regards the set up of the union in the Wal Mart subsidiary reflects that the ruling party and the central government's desire to strike a balance between social stability and economic development. Since 1990s, it has been the responsibility of the ACFTU to "maintain social stability and enhance economic development" and the ACFTU's duty to build the union and protect workers' rights is in fact given lower priority under this party policy. Thus, on the one hand, the ruling party and the government want the ACFTU to penetrate private enterprises and act as a middleman, resolving any labour conflicts that erupt and limit the degree of exploitation of workers. At the same time, the party and the government do not want to see emerging trade unions threatening enterprises' operations and output. Thus, it is difficult for the ACFTU to attain the government's full support given the ruling party's ambiguous attitude towards trade union establishment in private enterprises. It is as if the party tacitly agrees that private enterprises should have the right to decide whether trade unions should be set up in their companies. Therefore, every level of the ACFTU is placed in a difficult situation as regards private enterprises.

Apart from the political need, ACFTU also needs to grow to improve its finances. After massive restructuring, bankruptcy or closure of many state-owned enterprises in the last few years, ACFTU's income has been sharply reduced, and the future employment of its 600,000 staff members put in jeopardy. ACFTU branches have to look for new sources of income, and setting up new unions in private enterprises throughout China is one irresistible choice. This also explains why ACFTU officials are so eager to visit private enterprises to discuss union-building.

An entrepreneur's rejection of the set up of a union in his plant is viewed as the inevitable response of a capitalist businessman. In today's China, when an entrepreneur does well in business, he is regarded by local officials as one of the elite, possibly providing the main source of income in the local economy and thus shares the same interests and status as local government and party officials. He is also often not restricted in his business activities by the local government. The only things that will worry him will be market competition and internal labour disputes. For the former challenge, he needs to develop better products to win more market share, and for the latter, he has to crack down on it before it develops into anything threatening his bottom line. It is difficult for the local ACFTU units to impress companies by offering them favourable terms: The trade union will not be included in the management structure, it will not be seen to help bring in any direct economic benefits, and last but not least, the costs of setting up and running the trade union must be met by the company itself. Therefore, the ACFTU's strategy to grant entrepreneurs the right to decide whether to allow the trade union in the company creates a major obstacle to trade union's establishment in private enterprises.

We can see that the purpose, procedure, structure and mission of ACFTU units in private enterprises are different from what we would expect from trade unions which really represent and protect workers' interests. By recognizing this reality, we can understand why the ACFTU rejects the idea of allowing workers to the right to form their own trade unions, as worker-led trade unions would not tolerate the restrictions placed on them by the ACFTU. Although it is still uncommon for workers to demand to form their own unions in some parts of China, workers usually raise such a demand when they fight for certain labour rights. When workers apply to local trade union branch to establish their own unit, they always have already set up their trade union structure and elected the main union members. In the Tianyun taxi-drivers' case, the drivers then realized that they needed to have their own organization to negotiate with the company after learning that the company was being sold off and their vehicles would be taken back. Before submitting their application to the Tongzhou District General Trade Union, they had held a workers' congress and elected their representatives. During the workers' congress, they even passed a motion against the company's plan to sell off the enterprise or to merge with other companies and submitted it to the company management. Therefore, although such a trade union is registered in the ACFTU system, its intrinsic confrontational nature and outwardly its active representation and protection of its members' rights are very different from the trade union responsibilities and organizational principles set out by the ACFTU.

We are unable to verify the authenticity of the figures about trade union establishments released by the ACFTU, but it is definitely a big question about whether these several hundred thousand unions in private enterprises which are approved by the company owners can actually survive. According to figures obtained by Business Watch from the president of the community trade union for which Ms Long was working, the trade union helped establish 570 unions in the community between 1999 and 2002. However, by early 2005, the most recent figures available show that only 150 of those unions are still in touch with the community trade union.

3 February 2006