Recently the company has added two more facilities for the benefit of its employees: erecting nets around the buildings and hiring counsellors for employees to talk to. But why? Well, to prevent workers from jumping to their deaths, a strange habit they have developed of late without any valid reason whatsoever, as the bosses claim.
Ask the workers, and you will get a very different answer. About 80 percent of the front-line production employees work standing, some for 12 hours a day for six days a week, not excluding those working 12-hour overnight shifts. Conversation on the production line is forbidden, toilet breaks are kept to 10 minutes every two hours. Mostly migrants from distant villages aged below 25 years, with little education and skills, they have to bear with all this, the more so since the craze for Steve Jobs’ iPad prompted the management to brutally overwork the employees. As many as 13 workers, both male and female, have committed suicides (3 of them were saved) this year in this Taiwanese-led Chinese joint venture company. Some of those who committed suicide reportedly showed signs of bodily injuries caused by beating. There was also suspicion of some being pushed off buildings.
The highly embarrassed Foxconn management has announced compensations for the families of employees who killed themselves, and later a wage increase while saying it would no longer compensate for suicides.
New Labour Dynamism
It is not for the first time that inhuman conditions in Chinese sweatshops were reported in the media. But there is something new in the overall situation. If the shameful spate of suicides illustrated the ravages of predatory transnational capital in the land of “market socialism”, a series of powerful strike struggles in different parts of China highlighted the other, and by far the more important, aspect of the current labour scenario in that country.
Encouraged by the trend-setting Honda struggles (see box) advanced sections of the Chinese working class are asserting themselves on a scale rarely, if ever, witnessed since the time the doors were thrown wide open to foreign capital. The Nanhai strike subsequently inspired two other Honda factories in the Pearl River Delta to go on strike and exact some concessions. Workers in several other concerns also resorted to strikes, sit-ins, road blockades etc. Many of these belong to the automobiles/auto-parts sector (in fact this sector has been witnessing a surge in workers’ struggles globally, the movements in Gurgaon (Rico Auto and others), Coimbatore (Pricol) and currently Chennai (Hyundai) in India being cases in point). To take a few examples, the Toyoda Gosei plant in the northern port city of Tianjin, a parts supplier for Japan’s Toyota Motor also experienced short strikes in June.
Nearly 1700 workers in Taisheng Furniture Company, based in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, had a three-day strike to protest against overstress and low pay. Over a thousand workers in the spare parts factory that supply the Beijing-based Hyundai plant went on a strike to demand a pay raise. In Datong City (Shanxi Province), the state-owned Xinghuo Pharmaceutical Company was forced into bankruptcy and its laid-off workers had their numerous petitions refused. Following this, over 10,000 people staged a sit-in at the municipal government building; some of them were beaten up by the police.
In most of these cases the workers secured pay rises that were long overdue (according to the state-controlled All-China Federation of Trade Unions, a quarter of Chinese workers have not had a raise in pay in the past five years). Some of their other demands were also met.
Democratizing the TUs :
How about the Roles of Official Trade Unions?
In China all TUs are not the same. The city-level and workplace unions in State enterprises or large joint ventures try and take care of workers’ interests to some extent, opposing harsh management practices and negotiating better wages. In foreign enterprises in Guangdong and other catchment areas for foreign investment, on the other hand, union representatives are assigned by the local governments, whose main concern is to woo and attract foreign investment.
Both Foxconn and Honda unions belong to the second genre: the former did not even come forward to make a statement on the suicides, while at Honda the union blatantly sided with the local government and therefore with the employer. But Honda workers elected their own representatives to negotiate with the company. This significant step, added with the rock-like unity between the permanent workers and the “interns” and a determination to win, paved the way for success. They now want to hold a new election to their union branch committee. The foreign corporate media often portrays this – and the whole process of struggle -- as an urge for "independent union", a term that alludes, in the context of a post-revolutionary society, to Lech Walesa’s Solidarity in Poland. But this is not necessarily the case. The right to have a democratic re-election is well within the purview of China's Trade Union Law and the organizational structure of All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). Whether, when and to what extent this potential will come to fruition depends, of course on a wide range of factors. Meanwhile, the resurgent workers’ struggle is attracting wide popular support, including that from former and serving academics in state-run universities and research institutions.
The CPC Perspective
The Chinese authorities have recognised the need to decrease reliance on exports and stimulate more domestic consumer demand to maintain steady growth; higher wages would help accomplish this goal. Moreover, in the last party congress and thereafter, CPC leaders have repeatedly committed themselves on reducing income differentials and helping peasants and migrant workers particularly. But at the same time they emphasise the need to maintain stability for the sake of uninterrupted growth. Hence they encourage class conciliation rather than class struggle.
It is this dual position that informs the policies and pronouncements of the ruling CPC. Apparently reacting to the current turbulence, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has urged better treatment of the nation's vast army of migrant labourers, although he did not directly mention the Honda or Foxconn employees. Nor has the government taken any meaningful step to ensure better working conditions and wages in foreign-controlled enterprises. On the other hand, an editorial in the CPC mouthpiece People's Daily on June 9 drew attention to the need for wage rise and, in this context, to the Chinese trade union’s lack of experience in dealing with the management. People’s Daily also publishes letters and articles vehemently criticising the ways of greedy capitalists and strongly supporting the workers’ cause.