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enterprises…There obviously is no collective bargaining or other actions that we associate with
unions.” (Chan, 2006)
This subordinate role has been reinforced by unions’ financial and personnel dependence on the
enterprise (Chan, 1998, pp.134-140; Shen, 2007, p.236). As a consequence, unions have not been
capable or willing to represent workers, but have generally taken a pro-management or at least not
pro-labour when labour disputes happen (Taylor and Li, 2005, pp.3-4). As a consequence, the fast
growing in private sector unionism has not been associated with effective representation of workers
interests in the workplace.
4. Empirical Evidence--Professional Union Organizer/Leader Program in B City
Faced with a new type of capitalism -- neo-liberal globalization -- the surge of unionism in China
shows signs of taking different forms from the past to counter the new risks. There are some reports
of a recent attempt by regional offices of the ACFTU to recruit professional union leaders and form
region-based unions, which is independent from management. In particular, this paper examines the
role of these unions in protecting labour from market risks.
Fieldwork Method
Empirical evidence of this case is mainly originated from a major fieldwork. The fieldtrip involves:
1) a major interview with district level, sub-district level union leaders and professional union leaders;
2) a special interview with 2 professional leaders; and 3) a half-day long participative observation in
professional union leaders’ daily work. Government policy documents are also used as secondary data
source.
Case Description
Since 2002, a number of regional branches of the ACFTU started to try out two top-down trials
aiming at organizing workers and form independent leadership from management in workplace/local
unions. Among these attempts, the practice in P sub-district, S district, B city is a unique combination
of recruiting professional union organizers and leaders, which represents characteristics of both the
professional leader and organizer program. The critical innovations are:
1. Recruit organizers outside the firms to organize rank-and-file workers and establish
local united unions;
2. Get the organizers elected as union leaders, and get them paid by various levels of
unions rather than by management.
P sub-district is a suburb right lies on the border of rural and urban area of B city with 110
thousand populations. Among all the 900 employers in this sub-district, around 600 are small business.
In recent years, urban expansion transfers all the former farmers in the sub-district into urban residents.
Some of them set up their own business in various occupations with 2-8 employees.
Faced with the complex situation, P sub-district union leader initiated an innovative form of
grassroots union, which is called “Small Firms United Grassroots Union”. The sub-district level union
leader explains why they adopt this new form of grassroots union:
We have lots of petty shops in our area. These shops are too tiny to be organized as an
individual grassroots union, since at least 25 employees are required by the Trade Union Law
for a workplace to be eligible for setting up an individual grassroots union. If we set up unions
in these petty firms, it could leads to two different situations. One possibility is that the boss
holds a concurrent post as union president, which will undermine union’s role of maintaining
workers’ interests. Especially, these petty unions are mostly run by former farmers, who lack
of sense of conforming to labour legislations. The other possibility is rank-and-file workers
take the position of workplace union president, which will put themselves in danger of being
fired by their boss when they try to bargain with boss over labour relations issues, which is
simply because they are hired by, and get remuneration from, their boss. Both of the
possibilities will not be favourable for union’s worker representation.
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