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Shenzhen factory workers rally to support dead colleague

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21 July, 2014

On the morning of 17 July 2014, Zhou Jianrong, a 49-year-old worker at the GCL Footwear factory in Shenzhen, jumped to her death from the top of a four-story workshop inside the factory complex. Zhou was one of several GCL workers who had just been fired in a long-running dispute with management.

The blood stain on the cement floor had still had not been washed away when Zhou’s two daughters and other family members from Chongqing arrived in the evening. Around two hundred workers then marched silently to the scene of the tragedy with Zhou’s family to commemorate their friend and colleague.

Zhou Jianrong’s husband and daughter, together with her co-workers, gather at the scene of the tragedy on the evening of 17 July.

“I could not believe my ears when I heard the tragic news this morning. She was like a younger sister to me,” said Du Chunmei, a close friend of Zhou. “It was the company that pushed her to the limit. She must be heartbroken when she found out that her work station where she worked for the past 12 years was no longer there. For God’s sake, she entered the factory at 5:20 and jumped at 5:48, it must be the most horrible 28 minutes for her.”

A medical team tried to revive Zhou at the scene but failed. She was then rushed to the emergency room at a nearby hospital where she was pronounced dead. The family and Zhou’s co-workers demanded an explanation from the company and tried to get to Zhou’s body inside. They were quickly dispersed by hundreds of riot police who took the body by force and transported it to a funeral parlour.

The actions of the police and the callous attitude of the factory’s managing director Yang Xianying, led to hundreds of workers going out on strike again on the 17th and 18th. In addition, 626 people and 23 non-governmental organisations signed an open letter on social media that expressed condolences and sympathy for Zhou’s family, condemned the factory’s cold-blooded management, and demanded better enforcement of labour laws and real trade union representation. 

The tragedy was triggered by a long-running labour dispute in which GCL fired as many as 109 workers following a series of strikes in May. The last batch of workers was fired on 16 July for “staging strikes” and “impeding company production.” Zhou was among them.

The workers explained that they initially took industrial action because they were represented by an incompetent union. When a “long-term service compensation” deal was rescinded by the new owner of the factory, the workers feared that their pay and benefits would be cut too and decided that it was in their best interest to demand a one-off payment based on their years of service.

However management refused to negotiate and even hired thugs to intimidate and beat the striking workers, two of which were hospitalized. The local trade union turned a blind eye to the violence and failed to stand up for the workers and safeguard their rights even after the deputy chairman of the factory trade union was sacked.

“There were people from the Shenzhen Federation of Trade Unions here every day during the strike,” said Li Fengrong, Zhou’s husband who also works at GCL. “But they never wanted to represent us or negotiate with the company. All they did was to put pressure on us and tell us to go back to work.”

Many workers felt the local government too was siding with the company: “They were warning all of those who took part in the strike not to take similar action,” said Dai Qiang, a worker suffering from a work-related injury who was among those sacked. “Many people from the government shout out our names in the middle of the night and try to find out where we live. There was one time they even broke in my apartment building with a crowbar, trying to get me.”

Five days after the tragedy, Zhou’s family hasn’t been able to make any progress in negotiating with the company over compensation.

Guangzhou factory workers get their trade union but keep their feet on the ground

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16 July, 2014

It took nearly three months of relentless effort by around a hundred workers at the Japanese-owned Sumida electronics factory in southern Guangzhou but, on 10 July 2014, the factory held its first ever democratic trade union election.

Around 5,000 employees had earlier chosen 267 representatives to sit on a selection committee, and it was these representatives who voted for the new trade union chair and the 25 union committee members.

The election was undoubtedly a victory for the workers but no one was getting too carried away when workers from the factory met up with labour rights activists on the following Sunday to discuss the election and plan for the future.

Everyone knew that the election process had been flawed; many of the key activists who had pushed for the trade union had failed to win election or were not even on the ballot, but the workers were still in high spirits. “The union is like our son, and we are the mothers,” said 39-year-old worker Liang Zhengxian “Although it came out hastily and is not ideal, we will still embrace it.”

Workers representative Wang Zhenmei added:

It is just the first step in a thousand-mile-long journey, and the union chair is now sitting on the hot seat because thousands of people will be watching. We will exert our rights as union members to the fullest and will keep the organisation on the right track.

The veteran labour lawyer, Duan Yi, who attended the meeting, agreed:

This infant trade union might be a little deformed, and so many questions loom over its birth, but the workers and activists involved in the process should see the election as an encouraging sign. They are at the forefront of using a bottom-up approach to setting up factory unions and I hope this approach will be welcomed by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU).

The ACFTU, the world’s largest trade union, has traditionally set up factory branches in a top-down manner, negotiating with factory owners and managers but largely ignoring the workers. And this was indeed the initial response of the officials at the local sub-district (街道) union when the Sumida workers first approached them in April.

The officials were rude and condescending and attempted to humiliate the workers by making them read out the application form word for word. “They mocked us saying ‘you can’t even write properly, and you want a union!?’ but we bit our lips and did what it takes,” said Liang.

Following this meeting, the sub-district union officials immediately tipped off the managers at Sumida about the workers’ application.

However, the situation began to change in May when the Sunflower Women Workers Centre helped the workers file online complaints at the city and provincial level trade union federations, as well as create their own micro-blog to keep the momentum going.

Luo Hongmei, director of the Sunflower Women Workers Centre, discusses the trade union election with workers from Sumida Electronics.

The workers’ Weibo was crucial in that it made the entire trade union application process open and transparent. CLB Director Han Dongfang pointed out that the union could no longer hide behind closed doors and had no option but to respond to the workers’ demands for a democratic trade union.

Indeed, the higher level union federations did eventually invite ten workers’ representatives to a meeting on 9 June. “All of the federations sent their representatives from the sub-district right up to the Guangdong provincial union,” said Wang Zhenmei. “We were firing cannon balls on to the sub-district officials for their previous mistreatment of us and they could only sit there and take it.”

The union officials at the meeting promised to facilitate a democratic union election as soon as possible and the union newspaper even reported the event. The Guangdong union officials kept their word and quickly launched a high-profile campaign to get more than 5,300 workers to join the enterprise union and organized a preliminary election in late June.

The official media then reported on 2 July, that the Guangdong Federation of Trade Unions plans to make democratic trade union elections universal across the province’s enterprises within five years.  However, having a democratic trade union election is just the start of a long process. As Han Dongfang points out:

The fact that the ACFTU decided to hold the election in response to workers' pressure marks an important step. But it is just the beginning of the long journey for change. The next, more important, step is to make sure the elected union will represent workers and bargain for wages and benefits on the workers' behalf.

Police swoop on Hong Kong protesters

Hundreds arrested as police break up pro-democracy rally that organisers say was attended by more than 500,000 people. Last updated: 02 Jul 2014 09:06

Some protesters resisted and stayed on, but many were physically removed [Reuters]

Hundreds of protesters at a Hong Kong sit-in have been arrested after police moved in to break up the rally which organisers said saw a turnout of more than half a million. Hundreds of protesters had staged a sit-in on a street in the city's Central district and vowed to stay until 8:00 am (0000 GMT). But just after 3:00 am on Wednesday police began to move in and load them onto coaches.  Those who were removed were taken to a police college in the south of Hong Kong, according to the South China Morning Post. Police were not immediately able to confirm how many people had been arrested. Record turnout The confrontation followed a largely peaceful rally on Tuesday, which organisers said was a record turnout and the largest since the city was handed back to China in 1997. Waving colonial-era flags and chanting anti-Beijing slogans, protesters demanded democratic reforms, reflecting surging discontent over Beijing's insistence that it vet candidates before a vote in 2017 for the semi-autonomous city's next leader. The rally came after nearly 800,000 people took part in an informal referendum calling for voters to be allowed a say in the nomination of candidates. Beijing branded the vote "illegal and invalid". Despite soaring humidity and rainstorms, swarms of protesters poured onto clogged streets through the afternoon and evening, marching from Victoria Park to the Central business district. They carried banners emblazoned with slogans, including "We want real democracy" and "We stand united against China". "There is a strong desire for genuine democracy that offers choice and competition without (political) vetting," Anson Chan, a former number two official in Hong Kong who is now a pro-democracy activist, told reporters on Tuesday. The chairman of the Hong Kong post office union, marching in the muggy heat, said the city's government was kowtowing to Beijing. 'For our children' "This march is not for us, it's for our children. Without universal suffrage there's no way to monitor the government," said Ip Kam-fu. The city's Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying sought to strike a conciliatory note, saying his government would do its utmost to forge an agreement on implementing universal suffrage. He offered no details on the 2017 election when he spoke at a ceremony earlier on Tuesday marking the 17th anniversary of the city's handover. The poll, which ended on Sunday, gave three options for the election of the city's next leader - all of which included the public having some influence on the selection of candidates. China has promised to let all Hong Kong residents vote for their next leader in 2017 - currently a 1,200-strong pro-Beijing committee chooses the city's chief executive. But it says candidates must be approved by a nomination committee, which democracy advocates fear will mean only pro-Beijing figures are allowed to stand.

'Democracy' is Not Enough

The Meaning of Tiananmen Square

by ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Alexander Cockburn was born on the 6th of June in 1941. Today would have been his 73rd birthday, always a festive time in Petrolia. In honor of Alex’s birthday (and the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests), we’re running one of his most trenchant columns from the June 12th, 1989 edition of The Nation. –JSC

Transfixed by a million people in Tiananmen Square, the press seems unfazed by the fact that though some students plainly want capitalist democracy, others sing “The Internationale.” Workers carry pictures of Mao. But then, these journalists don’t seem to notice very much. How come, if Deng Xiaoping has been the most hated man in China, we had to wait for a million people to tell us the news?

Speaking as one who has stood in a crowd of a million people-the demonstration in favor of a nuclear freeze, held on June 12, 1982, in New York’s Central Park-I don’t recall the press here getting quite as excited at the turnout. Some millions are more millionish than others.

I hope Deng goes down and his whole crowd with him. They promoted market relations within an authoritarian state, which is fascism. At least Gorbachev is going at it the other way round.

The past decade has spelled long-term misfortune most Chinese peasants and workers. Thatcherization in the countryside has led, as William Hinton observed in the Monthly Review  for March, to a dispersal of social assets so great that “it is doubtful if, in the history of the world, any privileged group acquired more for less.” The privileged in this case are those-mostly party functionaries urged to the pillage by the leadership-best positioned to loot the public economy.

So far as urban workers are concerned, Jim Petras points out in a fine article in the May/June issue of Against the Current (7012 Michigan Avenue, Detroit, MI 48210) that they are losing the social benefits of communism and getting little in return, beyond “market discipline,” linkage of wages to profits a contract system hailing back to feudal times.

If 1905 in St. Petersburg, or 1968 in Paris, or 1986 in Manila taught us anything, it is that real political change takes more fuel than mass good will. Undesirable classes do not liquidate themselves voluntarily; vested power is not overwhelmed by yellow roses. “People power” can change the nature of the government but not the nature of the state, because although a mass of citizens can stop an army, as the second entry of the Little Red Book says, “To make a revolution, you need a revolutionary party.” And there is no revolutionary party for those Chinese students to turn to.

The word “democracy” always needs footnotes. There was recently a “democratic” mayoral election in Angeles. About 20 percent of the eligible voters turned out, and the winner was a man, Tom Bradley, who in the recent portion of his long stay in City Hall has mostly represented the causes of real estate (local, Canadian, Japanese), in whose interest tens of thousands of the city’s poorest people are about to be flung from their homes.

As Petras concluded, “The class lines are being drawn in the East [i.e., China] between the managerial supporters of the market and working-class defenders of democratic collectivism. It is time for those on the left in the West to also define themselves, because historical experience is demonstrating that one cannot be for both the market and ~ socialism.”

Maybe you can have some market mechanisms within socialism that would make it work better, but that’s not what the Chinese “reforms” have been all about. They’re about restoring capitalism. I buy Petras’s point.

Alexander Cockburn’s Guillotined! and A Colossal Wreck are available from CounterPunch.

Vietnamese mobs burn foreign firms in riots against China

Reuters, HANOI and MANILA

Smoke and flames billow from a factory in Binh Duong Province yesterday as anti-China protesters set more than a dozen businesses on fire in Vietnam in an escalating backlash against Beijing’s deployment of an oil rig in a contested area of the South China Sea.

Photo: AFP

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Thousands of Vietnamese set fire to foreign factories and rampaged in industrial zones in the south of the country in an angry reaction to Chinese oil drilling in a part of the South China Sea claimed by Taiwan, Vietnam and China, officials said yesterday.

The brunt of Tuesday’s anti-China violence appears to have been borne by Taiwanese companies in the provinces of Binh Duong and Dong Nai that rioters mistook as being Chinese-owned.

The row over the South China Sea was sparked by Beijing’s movement of an oil rig near the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) last week. The Paracels are claimed by Taipei, Hanoi and Beijing.

The anti-China violence in Vietnam has brought relations between Hanoi and Beijing to one of their lowest points since the Communist neighbors fought a brief border war in 1979.

“I fear a dark chapter in Sino-Vietnamese relations is now being written and because China wants to keep that oil rig in place into August, these protests could just be the first pages,” said Ian Storey, a expert on the South China Sea at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

Binh Duong People’s Committee vice chairman Tran Van Namb said the workers’ protests were initially peaceful, but disorder broke out when their numbers swelled to about 20,000. Gates were smashed and rioters set 15 factories on fire, he said.

“This caused billions of dong [hundreds of thousands of dollars] in damages and thousands of workers will have lost their jobs,” Nam said by telephone. “We urge everyone to stay calm, exercise restraint and have faith in the leadership of the [Vietnamese Communist] Party and State.”

A Binh Duong police official said by telephone that about 200 people had been arrested, adding: “We are working on other areas in the province... We haven’t seen any injuries.”

A Singaporean Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman said that the premises of a number of foreign companies in two Vietnam-Singapore joint venture industrial parks in Binh Duong had been broken into and set ablaze.

Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) told reporters that China was seriously concerned about the violence and had summoned Vietnam’s ambassador to protest.

Beijing has “demanded the Vietnamese side make efforts to adopt effective measures to resolutely support eliminating illegal criminal acts and protect the safety of Chinese citizens and institutions,” Hua told reporters.

MOFA condemns protests against China in Vietnam

It's so sad that Taiwanese sweatshops are being trashed in Vietnam because of Chinese seizure of disputed oil reserves in Vietnamese waters. Serves these locust right to lose their capital though it is a mistaken revenge on Taiwanese in Vietnam, not Chinese. The bottom line: Taiwan is not China though the sweatshops are run by Taiwanese business people who are for unification. Say no to sweatshops from any boss, anywhere!

MOFA condemns protests against China in Vietnam

RIOT ACT:The foreign ministry urged Hanoi to protect Taiwanese there after protests over China’s territorial spat with Vietnam devolved into a rampage on foreign factories

By Chris Wang  /  Staff reporter

Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lin talks to reporters in Taipei yesterday, calling on the Vietnamese government to prevent further attacks on Taiwanese businesspeople and companies.

Photo: CNA

The government yesterday condemned the violent anti-China protests in Vietnam over Hanoi’s ongoing territorial dispute with Beijing, demanding that the Vietnamese government get the situation under control after the factories and offices of Taiwanese businesses in the country’s southeast were damaged during what it called “acts of rioting” by the protesters.

Speaking at a hastily convened press conference yesterday morning, Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lin (林永樂) said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) was still trying to gather information on the factories damaged in the unrest in Binh Duong and Dong Nai provinces that ensued after an anti-Chinese protest devolved into a violent attack against foreign businesses on Tuesday afternoon.

The mass demonstration was launched over the weekend to denounce Beijing’s installation of an oil rig close to the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) in the South China Sea, which are claimed by Taiwan, China and Vietnam. The three also claim sovereignty over all or part of the sea, as do Brunei, the Philippines and Malaysia.

The protest intensified on Tuesday and participants started damaging any factory with Chinese-language signs, including those owned by Taiwanese companies.

“We condemn the violent acts, but we believe the situation is calming down since the Vietnamese government has deployed military and police forces to the area,” Lin said.

No deaths were reported, despite rumors said that two Chinese workers at a Taiwan-owned factory were killed, but a Taiwanese businessman was confirmed injured and received three stitches, while reports of another injury case have yet to be verified, according to Lin.

The minister said he has summoned Vietnam Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei Director Bui Trong Van and demanded that Hanoi take every measure necessary to protect Taiwanese businesspeople and their families in Vietnam.

The ministry elevated the travel alert level for the two provinces where the violence occurred to “orange,” the second-highest threat level on the ministry’s four-color system, and revised the alert for Ho Chi Minh City upward to “yellow.”

Lin said the ministry has contacted China Airlines Ltd (中華航空) and EVA Airaways Corp (長榮航空) to arrange additional flights for Taiwanese who want to leave Vietnam, but that it did not think an evacuation was necessary.

Asked if the situation warranted a statement from the government reasserting Taiwan’s sovereignty and status as a country separate from China, the minister said people know that both sides “are governed separately” and that issuing such a statement would “require further study.”

Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Vanessa Shih (史亞萍) said that the relationship between Taiwan and China was not relevant to the cause of the unrest, adding that the Vietnamese protesters “could not tell Taiwanese businesspeople from Chinese businesspeople.”

Meanwhile, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) issued a four-point statement urging the government to prepare evacuation plans for Taiwanese in Vietnam and demand that the Vietnamese government protect the property and safety of Taiwanese there.

DPP Policy Research Committee executive director Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) told a press conference that the political implications behind the protests deserve more attention, since President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration has yet to comment on Beijing’s dispatch of the oil rig, despite the US having done so.

PRC’s Xi declares ‘four noes’ on Taiwan

UNHAPPY:Analysts interpreted the Xi Jinping-James Soong meeting as a rebuke to the Ma administration for its inability to implement the service trade agreement

By Peng Hsien-chun, Chen Hui-ping and Stacy Hsu  /  Staff reporters, with staff writer and agencies

People First Party Chairman James Soong, left, shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing yesterday.

Photo: CNA

Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday made an indirect response to the concerns voiced by the Sunflower movement protesters against the controversial cross-strait service trade agreement, pledging to learn more about the needs of Taiwanese, particularly those of ordinary Taiwanese.

Xi made the remarks at a meeting with People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing yesterday.

Soong began a five-day visit to Beijing on Tuesday, which set up a platform for Xi to address the growing apprehension among Taiwanese of the creeping economic influence of Beijing.

The student-led movement was launched in protest against the government’s handling of the trade pact, which was inked on June 21 last year and is pending legislative ratification, and to call for effective oversight of cross-strait agreements.

“Based on the concept that both sides of the Taiwan Strait are of one family, there is no difficulty that cannot be overcome as long as each side feels for the other and treats the other with sincerity,” Xinhua news agency quoted Xi as saying. “We’d like to know more about the practical needs of Taiwanese, especially those of the grassroots, and take proactive and effective steps to take care of vulnerable groups and to ensure more Taiwanese can benefit from cross-strait economic interaction and cooperation.”

Despite his seemingly soft stance on Taiwan’s growing youth activism, Xi reiterated Beijing’s “unwavering and steely determination” to prevent pro-independence supporters from attempting to “split” Taiwanese society.

The pledge was part of what Xi called China’s “four noes” related to Taiwan, which included three other pledges — it will not change its policy on promoting peaceful development of cross-strait relations, it will not give up its pragmatic approach to seek mutual beneficial results, and nothing will shake its passion to push for the unity of people on both sides.

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) dismissed Xi’s remarks, saying that the recent spate of protests had demonstrated the public’s strong desire to determine the future of their own nation.

“The DPP and Taiwanese stand firmly behind the nation’s sovereignty, and the values of freedom and democracy. We insist on living a free and open life,” Su said.

Meanwhile, some political analysts interpreted the Xi-Soong meeting, which they said was held at Xi’s request, as Beijing’s way of demonstrating its discontent with the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and its failure to implement the trade pact.

Beijing has repeatedly dismissed Ma’s calls for a Ma-Xi meeting.

“Playing two-handed strategies has always been one of China’s fortes. By setting up a meeting with a ‘political goner,’ Beijing was not only able to make a seemingly warm shout out to Taiwanese, but also get back at the Ma administration,” an analyst said on condition of anonymity.

Soong urged the Chinese leader to show “four understandings” when engaging with Taiwan.

“I hope you can understand the ‘Taiwanese consciousness’ when seeking to deepen mutual trust between both sides of the Taiwan Strait. I hope you can understand and know more about the rise of a more autonomous civic consciousness in Taiwan, as our political and social systems are after all much different from yours,” Soong said.

Soong called on Xi to improve his understanding of Taiwan’s democratic system and its pluralistic society, while showing understanding of the problems faced by the owners of Taiwan’s small and medium-sized enterprises, who grew up in a nation whose economy was diversified and independent, and who often had to work away from home.

Additional reporting by Shih Hsiu-chuan