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labor rights activism

A series of labor laws have been passed since the early 1990s, and more are expected. The National Labor Law (1994), the Trade Union Law (1992 and 2002), and most recently the Labor Contract Law (2007) and the Law on the Mediation and Arbitration of Employment Disputes (2007) have replaced “policies” and the elusive socialist social contract in regulating employment relations. These laws explicitly define such workers’ rights as hours, compensation, wage rates, and social insurance. At the same time, in an effort to contain labor activism within institutional channels, the law lays down a set of bureaucratic procedures for labor dispute resolution and prohibits independent unionism.

In spite of all this legislation, labor standards in China have remained abysmal over the 30-year period since economic reform began. Chinese labor problems have been so obvious and unsettling that the central government felt compelled to commission a multi-ministry survey in 2006 on the conditions of the country’s 130 million migrant workers. These workers are largely from the countryside and provide the main source of labor for manufacturing, construction, and services in the country. The survey gave an authoritative and shocking portrait: only 12.5 percent of workers have a signed labor contract and only 48 percent are paid regularly. Most work every day of the week and are seldom paid the legal overtime wage.

Lacking the ability to form independent unions, aggrieved workers find the National Labor Law and the legalized labor arbitration systems—flawed as they are—their most important institutional sources of leverage. In their attempt to claim legal rights, workers are also assisted by numerous (their ephemeral and ambiguous legal status makes it almost impossible, not to mention undesirable, to count them) non-governmental organizations focused on labor. Many major cities have non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that specialize in offering legal advice or other assistance to migrant or female workers.

Under the influence and guidance of transnational or international labor advocacy groups, Chinese NGOs adopt standard features resembling those in other countries: legal counseling sessions, hot-lines, and labor law classes. The protocols of internationally funded projects often require an annual quota of labor lawsuits for which these organizations must provide representation. They usually choose cases with “paradigmatic” significance and wide demonstrative effects, either for the court or for workers.

For example, a popular NGO servicing women workers, well-funded by international foundations and visited by prominent female political figures including Hillary Clinton and Cheri Blair, eagerly took up a domestic worker’s complaint about wage arrears and lack of rest days. The goal was to stir public debate about the lack of legal protection for the large number of women working in private middle-class homes in the cities.

Another NGO sued the American fast food giant Kentucky Fried Chicken, which employed mostly dispatched (or subcontracted) workers and allegedly denied them severance payments when workers left the firm. This case became a cause célèbre for Chinese NGOs when the fast food giant stopped hiring subcontracted workers altogether.

The idea of “labor rule of law” is universally embraced, a common denominator among the international labor community, the Chinese government, and Chinese NGOs. Its utility for workers and labor activists in China is apparent in the newly established national network of Working Stations for Migrant Workers Legal Aid, a joint effort between the United Nations Development Programme, the All China Lawyers’ Association, and the China International Center of Economic and Technical Exchange under the Ministry of Commerce. This project aims to train a nationwide network of qualified lawyers dedicated to working full-time for migrant workers in 20 provinces.

The growth of the Chinese bar has also, perhaps inadvertently, contributed. Denounced as “rightists” in the Mao era and numbering only 3,000 at the beginning of reform, there are now some 150,000 attorneys in China and another 100,000 “barefoot lawyers” working without formal certification. Since labor cases aren’t economically attractive, bigger law firms and more established lawyers shun them in favor of lucrative corporate and criminal cases. Yet, younger and newly minted lawyers without established clients, as well as lawyers without official registration, take up labor rights cases out of moral and civic obligation, or simply to fill an emerging market niche. Regardless of their motivation, the growth of the legal profession has channeled labor grievances into the legal system.

With legal assistance, many workers are now filing labor dispute arbitration claims and lawsuits, while others take their grievances to the street by blocking traffic, holding managers hostage, or threatening to commit collective suicide. Labor unrest even prompted Beijing to pass (against very vocal and public opposition from foreign investors) a controversial Labor Contract Law in 2007 that required employers to sign labor contracts with employees and “restricted” the practice of casual employment. However, the institutional dependence of the Chinese judiciary on local governments seriously undermines the legal system’s capacity to resolve the mounting pressures generated by rising legal rights consciousness, labor unrest, and persistent violation of labor laws by employers.

property rights activism

Housing stock in urban China has been almost totally privatized since 1998 when the government overhauled the public housing system previously organized by socialist work-units and local governments. And while private residential neighborhoods have since mushroomed in major cities, violence by thugs has become a serious challenge for urban homeowners.

Thugs are routinely hired by land developers and their subsidiary property management companies to silence and intimate homeowner activists or elected members of the homeowners’ associations who dare challenge their interests. A Renmin University study of 100 residential neighborhoods in Beijing found that from 2001 to 2005, 80 percent experienced serious conflicts between property management companies and homeowners and 37 percent witnessed physical violence and bodily injuries in these disputes. Hence the term “property management terrorism.”

The root cause of property rights violations is the enormous financial interests at stake for both local governments and their allied land developers in China’s housing market. The incentive for local governments to protect the interests of land developers and their subsidiary property management companies can be traced to fiscal decentralization, especially fiscal reform in 1994. At that time, the central government regained budgetary control over a range of taxation revenues from local governments. As a consequence, local administrations become ever more eager to locate or create sources of revenue that could be kept at the local level. Land lease sales and urban redevelopment projects emerged as the two main revenue streams for local governments under this fiscal regime.

This tendency was exacerbated when the former Premier Zhu Rongji targeted the housing market as a way to stimulate domestic consumption after the 1997 Asian financial crisis dampened external growth. Since the late 1990s, in fact, construction and real estate have become the pillars of local state finance, accounting for 50 percent or more of budgetary income in many localities and jurisdictions. Moreover, many land development companies are owned by municipal agencies, state-owned companies, or official acquaintances. In Shanghai, a newspaper report found 60 percent of real estate developers in 2006 were “red-hat merchants,” or private businessmen backed by the government.

As in the case of labor rights, the collusion of local officials and property capital has created major obstacles for property owners seeking to enact and ensure their lawful rights as stipulated in the 2007 Property Rights Law. This landmark piece of legislation, crafted explicitly for the rapidly growing Chinese middle-class, calls for the establishment of homeowners’ associations and stipulates the rights and responsibilities of homeowners’ congresses over a wide range of community affairs, including sanitation, security, and environmental protection.

Thanks to their intricate and intimate ties with the local government (especially the Ministry of Construction) land developers and their affiliated management companies encroach on homeowners’ rights in numerous ways. They have been known to, among other things, convert green areas into additional housing units, overcharge management fees and parking rentals, misappropriate income generated by advertisements on bulletin boards, intimidate homeowners who want to change property management companies, and obstruct the formation of homeowners’ associations.