teleSUR English | 01/22/2016
Besides alarming pundits with their eye on the world economic balance scale, China’s economic slowdown is causing ripples back home. With factories closing, construction projects stalling and, in some cases, bosses not showing up to work, workers’ rights were reportedly reversed in 2015. Accordingly, labor protests and strikes doubled last year, mostly due to a soar in disputes since the August yuan devaluation.
Construction was hit the hardest—housing projects, until recently booming, have been left unfinished—but other older and newer sectors also took a dive, like the overcapacity steel industry. When companies lose money, they don’t pay wages; if they fire workers, they don’t fork up severance pay. Factories, targeted by a third of the protests, are relocating to city outskirts and shaving their budgets on the way. “In nearly all of these cases, workers are just demanding what they’re legally entitled to—not even higher pay,” said Geoffrey Crothall, communications director of the Chinese Labour Bulletin, which gathered and published the statistics on strikes.
China does not collect its own data on labor organizing and only the All-China Federation of Trade Unions can call a protest, which it has rarely done. Organizing, then, centers around independent groups referred to as labor NGOs, which are not registered charities and are thus based on foreign funding. Most communicate through social media, the main source for CLB research.
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Naomi Cohen | journalist 