SStrikes are a normal part of life in most countries. Industrial action is both a right and an occasional inconvenience for those who rely on striking industries. The merits of each individual action are often debatable but the principle is an important one – we have the right to protest unfair treatment.
About Industrial Action in China
Many people believe that Chinese workers are legally prevented from striking. This isn’t the case. It is against the law for Chinese people to unionize because the party perceives loyalty to any other organization as a potential conflict with communism.
Strikes are on the rise in China. Workers often find themselves in situations where pay is withheld for months at a time, or where severance pay is not paid in the event of layoffs. In fact, there are some factories in China that still fail to meet the (very) minimal legal working conditions required by law.
Most strikes in China are peaceful and are resolved quickly and painlessly with management. However, there are certain cases when things go very wrong.
Inside a Normal Strike
I’ve been involved in a strike in Shenzhen. I was doing some technical writing for a small electronics manufacturer and the job involved spending a couple of days a week in their offices and then developing manuals for their products.
One day I came into work to find all of the company’s employees sitting down in the meeting room. The American owner had not yet arrived for work and – as I wasn’t asked to join the meeting – I sat down and began to work. A few minutes later the owner arrived and looked confused at the meeting; apparently it wasn’t scheduled.
10 minutes later he came to me and announced that everyone else in the building was on strike. He told me that they were unhappy about the working hours and had decided to strike until their concerns were heard.
Most strikes in China are peaceful and are resolved quickly and painlessly with management. However, there are certain cases when things go very wrong.
You might be thinking: Why couldn’t the workers simply bring a petition to management outlining their concerns and what management can do to help? The trouble is that Chinese society is a hierarchical one. Chinese workers are not expected to bring problems to their bosses; they’re expected to say “yes” even when they should say “no”. In a situation like this, they can’t just talk to their boss because he’s not their equal from a cultural perspective and challenging him would cause him (and in turn them) to lose face, or even their job.
Banding together in a strike frees them from the hierarchy. They can appoint an unofficial leader and this person is then able to act as a social equal to the boss while the strike is on. In this instance the strike lasted less than 4 hours. The boss explained they got paid more than the average worker in Shenzhen (which was true) and part of that was to cover the slightly longer hours they had to work (though these hours were far less than factory worker’s hours in Shenzhen). They agreed that this was reasonable and returned to work. No hard words were spoken, no stones thrown and the problem was resolved without any additional conflict.
Violent Strikes in China
The strike we were involved in is the typical strike in China. In most cases, things are resolved peacefully and often quite as quickly. However, strike action is on the rise in China with some sources estimating that there are as many as 3-500 strikes a day on the mainland. Occasionally, these spill over into violence.
At the end of 2012, Xi Jinping (The Chinese Premier), decided to cash in on the image of the man that most people in China adore – Deng Xiaoping. Deng – whose words “It is glorious to be rich” led to the opening up of China to the world – is revered here. He spoke those words on a tour of Southern China and Hong Kong and Xi Jinping saw that it could be easy to tread in those famous footsteps and gain a little popularity early in his Premiership.
A group of workers in Guangdong found themselves caught up in this. They were peacefully protesting the working conditions in their factory by picketing the highway running up to it. Xi’s route was along this highway so the local police decided to clear the picket by forcing workers off the road. Things soon turned nasty and the bullying police left many strikers injured and others were jailed. This also influenced the police elsewhere in the provinces to take violent action against other peaceful protests and 3,000 strikers at a factory in Shenzhen were subjected to a humiliating about face due to police intervention.
Striking is tolerated by the authorities in China. However if the factory owner has enough guangxi (a form of Chinese social credit) with the local party or if senior party officials are involved – strikes may be quickly broken up and workers left without any form of recourse at all.
