Shoe factory workers show that collective bargaining is already a reality in Guangdong (China)

[Omaha Steve]

X post in Labor & GD

http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/shoe-factory-workers-show-collective-bargaining-already-reality-guangdong

2 January, 2015
Guangdong’s new Regulations on Collective Contracts in Enterprises (广东省企业集体合同条例 went into effect yesterday, 1 January. However, just last month, several thousand shoe factory workers in Guangzhou showed they already know how to negotiate a deal with management through collective bargaining.

More than 2,500 workers at Lide Shoes took strategically-timed strike action in December that succeeded in bringing management to the negotiating table and led to an agreement on the payment of social insurance and housing fund contributions, overtime and annual leave payments as well as high-temperature subsidies.


Lide shoe factory workers on strike in December 2014. Photo from workers’ Weibo.


After two strikes and three rounds of bargaining, Taiwanese-owned Lide agreed on 17 December to pay social insurance contributions dating back to 1995 and to a one-off compensation package of between 2,000 yuan and 12,000 yuan, depending on employees’ years of service. The company was also forced to disclose any future relocation plans and continue the dialogue with the workers’ representatives. Management further agreed in writing that it would not retaliate against those representatives.

The industrial action has now ended and the employees have returned to work.

FULL story at link.

[yallerdawg]

1. I did not know...

Deep in your link, interesting tidbit:

How have labour relations changed since the onset of economic reform?

There has been a fundamental shift from a tightly controlled and planned economy based on state-ownership of enterprises in the late 1970s towards what is basically a market economy today. Under the planned economy, workers made up a relatively small proportion of China’s largely rural population and had a so-called job for life with a wide-range of welfare benefits. During the 1990s some 30 million state-owned enterprise employees were laid off, while the urban job market opened up to hundreds of millions of rural migrant workers. The Chinese government gradually abdicated its power in labour relations to business owners, and workers were employed on terms and conditions largely dictated by the employer.

I was under the impression the People's Republic of China was one big union.

The Communist Party of China meets Walmart!