China's unions take on the challenge of change (Part 2)
Migrant workers & building the future

During a visit to the People's Republic of China in July, 
MARILYN BECHTEL talked with trade unionists at the enterprise, 
city, provincial and national levels, to learn how they are 
helping workers meet the challenge of economic and social 
restructuring going on in China today. This is the second of two 
articles; the first appeared in the Guardian on September 15.

In the last quarter century, former agricultural workers and 
peasants have increasingly migrated from rural China to work all 
or part of the year in the cities, as industrialisation and 
urbanisation have greatly accelerated with the policies of 
"reform and opening up". These have brought reorganisation of 
state-owned enterprises and development of a private sector 
featuring both domestic and foreign capital.

This complicated process is at the heart of what the Communist 
Party of China calls "building socialism with Chinese 
characteristics", in order to overcome lingering poverty and 
backwardness in a developing country with a huge population, a 
large, divergent land mass, and a legacy of devastation from war 
and occupation.

Official figures show that the country's 130 million "migrant 
workers" (one tenth of the total population) now outnumber 
settled urban workers, and constitute the majority of China's 
industrial workforce. Most but not all are from rural areas — in 
2003, over 98 million rural workers took jobs outside their home 
townships — up from 15 million in 1990.

These workers face many of the same problems encountered by 
immigrant workers in the United States. Many enter the urban 
environment with limited skills, and start their life in the city 
as construction or service workers, security guards, hotel and 
restaurant workers and janitors.

Just as the policies of the AFL-CIO [peak US union body] have 
changed profoundly in recent years and our national labour 
federation now champions the rights of all immigrants — 
documented and undocumented, organised and unorganised — so too 
the Chinese trade union movement has taken up the challenge of 
organising and representing this important sector of the 
workforce.

The All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), which formerly 
organised only workers with urban residence permits, now makes 
special efforts to organise migrants. The ACFTU announced in 
August 2003 that it would recruit as many migrant workers as 
possible. In the first month, over 34 million joined local unions 
in cities and townships throughout the country.

During a conversation last July in the north-eastern industrial 
city of Shenyang, the head of the city trade union federation, Wu 
En Tao, told me migrant workers there now number about 470,000. 
"They come from all walks of life", he said. "Many are seasonal, 
working in the tourist and construction industries in summer, but 
in cold weather they return home, or go elsewhere."

Migrant workers are comparatively disadvantaged, and usually are 
not well organised, Wu said.

The city union federation makes special efforts to incorporate 
them into all the different trade unions, and into county, 
township and village union organisations as well. "We can enrol 
most of them, and then we can uphold their interests under the 
labour law and in connection with social insurance", he said. "We 
can help workers and their families who are having difficulties."

Later, in Beijing, I discussed the issue with Tong Qing Feng, 
vice president of the China Institute of Industrial Relations, 
who pointed out that while migrants are disadvantaged compared to 
long-time urban residents, they are generally better off than if 
they had remained in rural areas. Unions organising migrants take 
on new characteristics and new forms, he said. Because 
construction workers, in particular, move around a lot, Tong said 
unions try to build links between hometowns and worksites to 
create better conditions.

"Some enterprises are too small for separate unions", Ton added. 
"So we are flexible, and build unions according to conditions in 
different regions and industries."

Community-based trade unions

One such new form is the community-based trade union. At the same 
time urban management and services have gradually shifted to 
local communities within large cities, the ranks of community 
service workers and local construction workers — both areas 
employing many migrant workers — have grown greatly. Many 
migrants also work in small groups at private enterprises. The 
community-based union helps accommodate both trends.

In the eastern city of Nanjing, such unions have made sure all 
the communities have signed contracts with their service 
employees, who are mostly migrant workers. They have also 
represented migrant workers in negotiating collective labour 
contracts with private employers. People's Daily quoted Chen 
Siming, head of Nanjing's general trade union: "Joining community 
trade unions is a sign they have changed from farmer to urban 
citizen — a big dream for many of them."

Another experiment is forming an all-migrant worker union. In 
July, China Daily wrote about such a union in Shenyang, which it 
said was the first of its kind in the country. The union had 4500 
members by the end of June, and the newspaper said, it "has done 
much to help settle many cases involving payment default issues".

A fundamental disadvantage faced by migrants is that under the 
traditional "hukou" system of residence permits, most still do 
not have permission to live permanently in the cities. They are 
thus deprived of important social and political rights as well as 
social security benefits.

This situation is changing, however, as cities and counties 
throughout the country test the granting of permanent residence 
permits to migrants. At a press conference in Beijing in July, 
Zhao Baige, vice director of the State Population and Family 
Planning Commission, pledged that the government will equally 
protect the rights and interests of migrants and the permanent 
urban population. She added that restrictions on employment, 
medical care, education and social security for migrants will be 
lifted.

Inequalities

In China rural incomes are rising relatively rapidly (about 4 
percent annually over the last decade), but urban incomes are 
rising twice as fast. Despite the disadvantages, including wages 
typically about 70 percent that of permanent urban workers, most 
migrants still earn more than their rural counterparts. Many 
contribute significantly to the rural economy through the 
remittances they send home (another parallel with immigrant 
workers in the US).

However, an article published by Xinhua news agency in May 2004 
makes clear the difficulties they face. "Migrant workers take on 
the heavy, dirty work disdained by their urban counterparts, and 
even when there are rural and urban workers on the same job, they 
do not reap the same benefits", Xinhua said.

"Rural workers get no insurance, subsidies or social security, 
and have to pay a high entrance fee when sending their children 
to school. The worst aspect of their situation is the unfair 
treatment they are subjected to, like working overtime with no 
pay, and being chosen to do dangerous work with no protective 
clothing or equipment.

"If they fall ill, or get injured to the extent of disablement, 
they are simply fired." At the National People's Congress session 
in March, ACFTU leaders called for far-reaching legal reforms, 
and special enforcement efforts, to assure migrants' rights to 
organise, and their personal freedom, equality in employment, 
wages, and health and safety.

Chasing unpaid wages

A common problem for migrant workers — and one the unions are 
campaigning to overcome — is late payment or non-payment of 
wages. Payment of wages on a yearly basis is being replaced by 
regulations requiring monthly payment

The ACFTU said at the end of 2003, migrant workers' unpaid wages 
totalled as much as 100 billion yuan (US$12.1 billion), with 
construction companies and caterers the worst offenders. A drive 
by unions and local governments around the country has helped 
millions of workers recoup their wages, and has convinced many 
migrants of the importance of unions.

Industrial health and safety is another crucial concern, 
especially since so many migrants work in mining and 
construction. Besides efforts to cut the injury rate through 
better law enforcement and to close small, unsafe mines, 
occupational injury insurance is now increasingly being extended 
to migrant workers.

In Shanghai, an occupational injury insurance program was 
extended on July 1 to cover all local enterprises that are part 
of the city's employee social security system, including state 
owned enterprises, government institutions and private 
businesses.

Families also suffer special stress, whether they migrate as a 
family or some members stay behind. Health problems of women and 
children in migrant families are the subject of serious study by 
the State Council's Working Committee on Women and Children.

In education, too, new concepts are being tested to break down 
barriers, including lowering or eliminating the often prohibitive 
special fees charged migrant students. In Beijing, extra fees 
once charged by public elementary and junior high schools have 
been abolished, and the city budget now includes US$4.2 million 
to help migrant children from poor families finish education 
through junior high.

In sum, while China's migrant workers and their families continue 
to face many challenges, the special attention the country's 
trade union movement is giving to organising them, and the work 
being done by government at the national and local level to 
abolish discriminatory practices, are opening the path for 
migrants to overcome discrimination and to take their place as 
full and equal members of China's working class.

* * *
(Part 1 appeared 2 weeks ago)