The Albert Shanker Institute-Principals and Teachers Survey Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 15, 2008

Chinese Workers Speak Out: New Publications Reveal the Downside of China’s “Economic Miracle”…and Show Hope for Future

Two new reports – released today – show a Chinese labor force under extreme pressure from delayed or unpaid wages, work-related illnesses and harsh working conditions. Both are filled with data and interviews showing that as conditions deteriorate, growing numbers of workers have been willing to engage in spontaneous and even coordinated protests. Both reports are based on the work of China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based labor rights group, and its founder and director Han Dongfang.

 A Cry for Justice: the Voices of Chinese Workers, produced by the Albert Shanker Institute, tells the stories of workers demonstrating in open defiance – from the Oilfields of Daqing, the Ferroally workers of Liaoyang, the Heavenly King Textile workers of Xianyang, the Gold Peak Battery factory workers of Huizhou, coal miners from Wanbao, teachers from Suizhou and ex-soldiers who work in factories around the country run by the People’s Liberation Army. The accounts are based on extraordinary first-hand interviews conducted by Han Dongfang, China’s leading labor rights advocate, with workers across China.

 Speaking Out: The Workers’ Movement in China (2005-2006), published by China Labour Bulletin, documents the worker protests that flared up because of continuing grievances related to mass lay-offs, loss of pensions and medical insurance, excessive overtime, wages in arrears and unsafe working conditions. The report says most of these protests were a direct consequence of two factors: the privatization of state-owned enterprises, and the continuing exploitation of migrant workers in the private sector.

These timely reports are being released just as the new Labor Contract Law goes into effect in China. Many observers believe the law’s provisions will strengthen protections for workers by requiring employers to provide written contracts for full time workers. The law also contains provisions against employers hiring temporary employees on a repeated basis, as a way of avoiding giving them proper contracts, and against laying off workers without regard to seniority and severance compensation.

The continuing harsh reality for many workers, however, can be gauged from an interview by Han – excerpted in A Cry for Justice – with an oilfield worker in Daqing:

At nine o’clock this morning, the leader telephoned me at home and said my bonus would be cut if I didn’t stay at home. He said docking my bonus was one thing, but suppose I was picked up and detained. Either way I suffer. I told him I wanted to be detained. At least they’d have to cook for me and I wouldn’t have to wash the dishes....

Says Han: “The key to real change, where labor contracts are concerned, will lie at the enforcement level. But for that, workers need the right to select their own union leaders and representatives. And you need real collective bargaining too.” As the CLB report contends: “It is the lack of genuinely representative trade unions and the inability of workers to engage in real collective bargaining that is the root cause of the problem.”

“But the new law does not really deal with trade union rights,” Han added. “Time will tell if the Chinese authorities have a genuine interest in hearing from workers more constructively, through union representation. Otherwise their voices will still be heard, but most likely in the streets.”

The interviews excerpted in a Cry for Justice were conducted by Han, who joined the demonstrations in Tiananman Square in 1989 as a leader of the Beijing Autonomous Workers Federation and was then jailed for almost two years, in his capacity as a correspondent and presenter for Radio Free Asia. The source data was compiled by China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong based non-governmental organization that promotes labor rights in mainland China. The book is being published by the Albert Shanker Institute, a policy-oriented study organization endowed by the American Federation of Teachers.

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