Hope for low-wage workers everywhere
Strike victories in China rattle imperialist exploiters
By
Deirdre Griswold
Published Jul 5, 2010 11:34 PM
Class-conscious workers and Marxists around the world have looked at the rapid
economic growth of People’s China over the past two decades with both
admiration and anxiety.
Whether one sees China as capitalist or as still fundamentally socialist, none
can deny the astounding material progress made by this vast country, home to
one-fifth of the world’s people. Nor can it deny that much of
China’s industrial growth has come in tandem with investment by
imperialist corporations that scour the globe in their search for low-wage,
educated workers.
Recently, intense exploitation of workers in China by these very corporations
seems to have sparked a series of suicides among employees of Taiwan-based
iPhone maker Foxconn, arousing public indignation and debate over wages and
working conditions.
The question for the movement has been, would Chinese workers remain passive in
the face of the capitalist bosses’ never-ending pressure to reduce them
to nothing but wage slaves? Or would they organize and militantly demand their
rights in a country that has inscribed both a central role for the working
class and the goal of achieving socialism in its constitution?
Since May a highly significant sector of China’s working class —
mostly young migrants from the interior provinces who have traveled to the
coast by the tens of millions, seeking work in both state construction and
capitalist-owned plants there — has given the answer.
Honda workers touch off strike wave
What has turned into a strike wave with tremendous implications for the class
struggle everywhere was touched off when workers at a Honda parts plant walked
out May 17.
Eventually, almost the entire plant — 1,900 workers — turned off
their machines and joined the strike. The lack of auto transmission parts from
this plant in Foshan, Guangdong province, and strikes at other parts plants
that soon followed, forced Honda to shut down four assembly plants.
The Foshan strike was settled at the beginning of June, when Honda agreed to
raise all employees’ wages by more than 30 percent, as well as give the
workers regular cash bonuses based on attendance.
However, no sooner was this strike underway than workers at other companies
— most of them owned at least in part by Japanese firms — also hit
the bricks. Besides strikes at more Honda plants, workers at Nissan and Toyota
also went out seeking higher wages.
Strikes have also been reported “at a Taiwan-funded sporting goods
supplier in Jiangxi province and at Japanese sewing machine maker Brother
Industries in Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi province.” (People’s
Daily Online, June 23)
Just two days after the Honda settlement, between 300 and 500 workers from a
Merry Electronics factory — a Taiwanese audio components manufacturer
also in Guangdong — staged a walkout and blocked roads for the better
part of a day. The company immediately responded by announcing a 22 percent
wage increase, while denying that the increase had any relation to the strike!
(China Study Group, “Wildcat Strikes in China”)
From walkout to sit-in
At a Honda lock plant, also in southeastern China’s Guangdong province,
the workers went even further, going from a strike to a sit-in. They walked out
on June 9 but then were threatened by Honda managers with being fired and
replaced by new hires.
Five days later, many of the 1,400 workers “filed through the factory
gates in their crisp white uniforms, giving the appearance that the strike they
began last Wednesday was over. But workers said they showed up only because
they feared they would be fired after the company posted notices saying it was
looking for replacement workers — at far higher pay. Once inside, they
started a go-slow action to press their demands for an increase in basic pay to
1,600 yuan a month from 900 yuan.” (Wall Street Journal, June 13)
These militant actions appear to reflect two important developments: One, there
is a labor shortage in China, giving the workers greater leverage over their
bosses; and two, the government has given the workers some encouragement in
their wage demands.
Both these conditions are unheard of in capitalist countries in this time of
mass unemployment, givebacks and cutbacks.
Within days of the Honda settlement, the Chinese government announced that in
four coastal provinces where foreign-owned industry is concentrated —
Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong and Shanghai — the minimum wage was raised
between 10 percent to 20 percent. (People’s Daily Online, June 8) This
brought to 14 the number of provinces that have raised the minimum wage since
January.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made a point of publicly urging better treatment for
migrant workers. He recognized that a new generation moving from villages to
work in factories would not be satisfied with the hard conditions their parents
faced.
The mass media in the U.S., which are afraid to reveal too openly their
anti-worker bias, seemed to take a neutral tone toward these strikes. But those
speaking to investors and corporate executives could not conceal their dismay
over both the workers’ militancy and the role of the Chinese
government.
“Executives say the Chinese central government’s relatively
tolerant attitude toward strikes since a series of disputes began surfacing
last month may be a factor in encouraging workers to press their issues. In the
recent southern China labor disputes, authorities have generally refrained from
sending in police to break up strikes, a tactic often used when disputes become
high-profile.” (WSJ, “Toyota’s China Assembly Lines
Vulnerable to Labor Unrest,” June 18)
This “tolerant attitude” of the government has alarmed the
imperialists. And it didn’t start with these strikes in the foreign-owned
businesses.
Last July, when officials at the state-owned Tonghua Iron & Steel Group in
Jilin province called a mass meeting to announce to thousands of workers that
the plant was being privatized and most would lose their jobs, all hell broke
loose. The workers actually seized a manager from the group that was to take
over the plant and beat him to death. The government’s response was not
to come down on the workers; it cancelled the privatization. (WSJ, July 27)
Workers in state-owned industries have job security and much better conditions
and benefits than those in the private sector. They’ve made it clear that
they won’t give that up.
Threats to go elsewhere
What are the foreign corporate executives saying to the Chinese government
about the recent strikes? Aren’t they threatening to pull out their
investments if the workers keep up the pressure and the government
doesn’t crack down on them? Aren’t they saying: “We can go to
India or Indonesia, you know.”
In fact, that’s exactly what they are saying, through the press. The Wall
Street Journal, which unapologetically speaks for U.S. finance capital, quoted
an executive from the Japanese company Advanced Research:
“Mr. Endo estimates that annual compensation per worker in China could
total as much as 400,000 yen to 500,000 yen, given the recent pay increases.
This would be roughly double the average amount paid to a factory worker in
India or 33 percent higher than that in Thailand, he said.
“Honda’s China labor headache comes as the company is struggling to
keep up with growing demand in the country, which became the world’s
biggest auto market last year.” (“Honda’s Long-Haul Dilemma
in China,” June 24)
Of course, U.S. auto companies may take some consolation from the fact that it
is their Japanese rivals who are being affected by the current strike wave. But
the billionaire class in the U.S. cannot forget that just a few years ago the
All-China Federation of Trade Unions got Wal-Mart to sign a contract with its
workers — something the huge retailer still has not agreed to inside the
U.S.
Right now the ACFTU is behind an organizing drive at Yum Brands, the U.S. owner
of KFC and Pizza Hut fast-food chains. With more than 3,500 KFCs, Pizza Huts
and other outlets there, Yum amassed 48 percent of its first-quarter global
operating profit from its China operations. (WSJ, “Firms Boost Pay for
Chinese,” June 13)
Clearly, not just Japanese but U.S. corporations are worried — not only
about the encouragement these strikes are giving to workers in China but about
their impact on low-paid workers all over the world, including in the U.S. For
the last three decades there has been an unrelenting assault on U.S.
workers’ wages and benefits that has greatly escalated with the current
capitalist economic crisis.
Workers everywhere have a big stake in this struggle.
Next: Role of China’s unions. Email [email protected].
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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