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During the past 20 years, the author has watch China move from being a developing country into an industrial superpower
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These programs have their skeptics. Speaking of Infact’s efforts, Chang Kai, a professor of labor relations at Renmin University of China in Beijing, says that helping workers negotiate more effectively is a sensitive issue for the government, which fears such attempts could empower workers too much. Adds Bob Bainbridge, who until early 2011 worked for Apple policing suppliers for worker abuses, “Many times you will find some senior management that want to do the right things. But mid-level management and line managers resort back to more dictatorial ways.”
The government is expanding the Party-controlled official union—still a largely toothless organization, according to Chang Kai. Wal-Mart, Dell, and Motorola have already let the union in. Policymakers want 80 percent of all companies to have collective bargaining agreements by 2013. “We want to guide the expectations of our migrant workers,” says Yang Hongshan, deputy director general of the human resources and social security department of Guangdong province. The official union is training tens of thousands of negotiators to help workers bargain over wages.
The only sure strategy to stop strikes may be to raise pay. The latest Five-Year Plan aims to increase the average minimum wage by at least 13 percent a year. Or machines can replace workers. After Hong Kong’s Milo’s Knitwear (International) added new Japanese knitting machines at its Dongguan sweater factory, it reduced line workers from 80 to 6. “All the headaches, the riots—gone,” says Managing Director Willy Lin. “Machines don’t complain about their salaries.”
The bottom line: China’s government wants almost all companies negotiating collective wage agreements with workers by 2013.
With Bruce Einhorn
Roberts is Bloomberg Businessweek's Asia News Editor and China bureau chief.
