GUANGZHOU, China — For nearly seven years, Li Wei rose before dawn for his 10-hour shift at the steel plant, returning home each night soaked in sweat, the clank of heavy machinery still ringing in his ears. But last month, the 31-year-old welder stood outside the plant with hundreds of co-workers, picketing against pay cuts and singing patriotic battle hymns.
Within a week, the authorities declared their strike illegal, threatening fines and imprisonment. The police descended on the plant by the hundreds, tearing down signs and ordering the protesters to go back to work.
“I’ve sacrificed my life for this company,” Li told officers as they sought to disperse the workers. “How can you do this?”
As China’s economy slows after more than two decades of breakneck growth, strikes and labor protests have erupted across the country. Factories, mines, and other businesses are withholding wages and benefits, laying off staff, or shutting down altogether. Worried about their prospects in a gloomy job market, workers are fighting back with unusual ferocity.
Last week, hundreds if not thousands of angry employees of the state-owned Longmay Mining Group, the biggest coal company in northeastern China, staged one of the most politically-daring protests over unpaid salaries yet, denouncing the provincial governor as he and other senior leaders gathered for an annual meeting in Beijing.
China Labor Bulletin, a labor rights group based in Hong Kong, recorded more than 2,700 strikes and protests last year, more than double the number in 2014. The strife appears to have intensified in recent months, with more than 500 protests in January alone.
Most demonstrations have refrained from political attacks and focused on grievances such as wage arrears, unpaid benefits like pension contributions, and unsafe working conditions.
President Xi Jinping, concerned about challenges to the ruling Communist Party, has responded with a methodical crackdown, quashing protests, dismantling labor rights organizations, and imprisoning activists. But his government has also sought to placate workers, putting pressure on businesses to settle disputes and making billions of dollars available for welfare payments and retraining programs.
The approach underlines the political dilemma that labor unrest poses for the Communist Party, which has continued to portray itself as a socialist guardian of workers’ rights even as it has embraced capitalism and welcomed tycoons into its ranks.
The tide of protests appears to be cresting as Xi contemplates a tremendous downsizing of China’s bloated state industries, which are producing much more steel, cement, and other goods than the market needs. According to a recent study, more than 3 million workers could lose their jobs in the next two years if the cuts go through. The government has already announced plans to lay off 1.8 million steel and coal workers.
China trimmed the state sector of more than 30 million workers during a wave of privatization and restructuring during the late 1990s and early 2000s. But the economy was booming then, creating millions of jobs in new industries. It is still growing today, but at its slowest pace in a quarter century.
At the same time, Xi is grappling with a labor force that is better informed and more easily organized because of social media, and also more assertive, in part because of grass-roots rights groups that have emerged.
“This is probably the thing that keeps Xi Jinping up at night,” said Eli Friedman, a scholar at Cornell University who studies Chinese labor issues. “Governments are not swimming in money the way they used to be, and there’s less room to compromise.”
Here in the capital of Guangdong province in southern China, several hundred workers at the state-owned Angang Lianzhong steel plant went on strike last month in response to a plan to decrease wages by as much as half and extend the workday to 12 hours for some employees.
“Toward the sun, toward freedom!” the workers chanted one morning as they demonstrated outside, reciting a World War II-era army song.
They used WeChat, a popular messaging app, to rally support and raise money to buy protest banners. In one widely shared post, they described how the authorities had tried to stop them from playing the national anthem on a loudspeaker. (Its first line is, “Rise, we who refuse to be slaves!”)
After the police broke up the strike, the plant promised to delay its planned wage cuts. But several workers said they had returned to work only because they feared punishment.
“I lost hope that anything would change,” said Li, the welder, adding that he was anxious about finding a new job to support his wife and son.
Officials at the steel plant did not respond for requests for comment. https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/03/14/labor-protests-multiply-china-economy-slows-worrying-leaders/mPLmr11nppmkOzZWiSpkxI/story.html
Comments are closed.