China's trade unions disoriented : a case study

Cheap labor has always been considered as a major “comparative advantage” of China in its transformation into a world factory. It is also in this period of transition when workers’ basic rights and interests are frequently violated, especially in the non-state sector. While independent trade unions are strictly prohibited, the official trade unions have been regarded as too weak and thus incapable of representing and protecting workers’ interests. However, even though researches disagree on why the trade unions are weak, most of them focused on trade unions’ relationship with “external factors” like the Party-state and management. This research will thus pay more attention to “internal factors”, namely the trade unions themselves and their interactions with the workers. By investigating in detail two cases, this research aims to understand the reasons for the weakness of trade unions in China's labor relations. It finds that, while workplace unions are either non-existent or controlled by the management, the top-down way of carrying out work makes local unions almost totally “out of touch” with workers. Moreover, internal constraints from within the trade unions and workers which have always been overlooked are equally, if not more, important than external factors - like the Party-state and the management - in preventing them from better fulfilling their tasks or carrying out reforms in a wider range. Without a bottom-up way of organizing and mobilizing workers, it is very hard to see any meaningful “reforms” of China’s trade unions