Vol. 80/No. 17      May 2, 2016

 

Labor actions rise in China as bosses slash jobs, wages

 
Strikes and labor protests increased sharply in China last year, as workers took action against unpaid wages, massive layoffs and factory closures. Under the impact of a worldwide slowdown of capitalist production and trade, the Chinese rulers, like bosses everywhere, attack workers’ wages and working conditions. In doing so, they risk provoking what they are mortally afraid of: a growing movement and organization within a working class numbering hundreds of millions.

China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based workers’ rights group, recorded 2,700 strikes and protests throughout China last year, twice as many as in 2014. The overwhelming majority took place in construction, manufacturing and mining, with unpaid wages being the single most common reason. In the garment and shoe industries there were numerous actions opposing factory closures and relocations.

The manufacturing explosion has created a huge modern working class in China. Hundreds of millions have moved from rural areas into rapidly growing urban centers since the government turned to capitalist market methods and increased foreign investment starting in the late 1970s. Many got jobs in factories that employ tens of thousands. In the beginning this working class had one foot in the village and one in the city. But today most workers were born in the city or have lived there for decades.

Slashing jobs in coal and steel

State enterprises accounted for some 40 percent of the country’s industrial output and employed around 37 million people as of 2013. Officials project slashing this workforce by 5 million to 6 million in the next couple years, the Associated Press reported March 2.

Yin Weimin, minister for human resources and social security, announced Feb. 29 plans to lay off 1.3 million coal miners and 500,000 steelworkers in the coming years. That’s on top of 890,000 jobs slashed from the coal industry since 2013.

The government has set aside $15 billion it says will help these workers find new jobs. What happened at Longmay Group coal mines in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang shows why officials are nervous about workers’ response. In September the company announced that it would lay off 100,000 workers, some 40 percent of the workforce at 42 mines.

In March, provincial Gov. Lu Hao bragged that Longmay was a good example of how industries could be restructured and said its miners weren’t owed back wages. This provoked protests by workers whose pay had been shorted since November. On March 11, 1,000 people marched with banners reading, “We must live, we must eat” and “Lu Hao is a liar” to rally in front of the mining authority in the town of Shuangyashan. The next day Lu Hao admitted he was wrong and by March 15 workers said the provincial government had paid the wages through January and promised February wages would be paid soon.

In recent years workers in China have won improvements in wages and conditions, a result of a labor shortage during the industrial boom as well as their growing capacity to apply their social weight in militant strikes and protests. These advances are now under attack by the government and capitalist bosses.

During the annual gathering in March of China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, Finance Minister Lou Jiwei declared recent pay raises “unsustainable” because they outstrip productivity increases. He said it should be easier for bosses to fire workers. And he complained that a 2007 labor code “is based on fixed working hours, which does not fit in with the model of labor flexibility.”

In Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province in the south, several hundred workers at the state-owned Angang Lianzhong steel plant went on strike in February protesting plans to cut wages in half and extend the workday to 12 hours for some workers.

In Liaoning province the state-owned Benxi Iron and Steel company has cut wages substantially and many employees have been laid off. One worker told CNN he’d been sacked and then rehired as a day worker, meaning he no longer gets company health insurance or benefits.

Growing income inequalities make it difficult to sell the idea to workers that they need to tighten their belt. “We ordinary workers are doing much more work than the management and yet they can get paid almost 10 times more than us,” a worker in Chongqing, where protests have surged in recent months, told China Labour Bulletin.
 
 
Related articles:
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Stand in solidarity with 40,000 strikers
Teamsters hold DC rally to demand halt to pension cuts
On the Picket Line
Protests across country demand $15/hour and union
New decline looms within worldwide capitalist crisis
Fight for pensions for entire working class
 
 
 
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