Accompanying the reduction in the authority of the Party in SOEs in the socialist market economy, the trade union’s formal status within enterprises by relying on the Party organization has been substantially weakened. At the same time, private enterprises and foreign investment enterprises were permitted and encouraged, expanding the spheres where union organisations were previously absent. These changes mean the trade union has to rebuild its organisational base in the new economic and social environment. This development has been largely confined within the ‘Classic Dualist’ framework.
Issued in 1994, the Labour Law implemented in 1995 introduced the labour contract system. It substantially transformed the administrative-command system into one of market relations. The collective contract system was drawn up by the ‘Labour Law’ and the ‘Provisions on Collective Contract’ issued by the National Ministry of Labour. In the ACFTU’s 12th
Executive Committee Meeting in 1994, the national trade union issued ‘the Decision on Implementing the “Labour Law”’. An ‘Overall Union Road’ (gonghui gongzuo zongti silu) was declared in the meeting. The ‘Overall Union Road’ stated that the establishment of workplace union organisation, especially in the private sectors including FIEs and domestic private enterprises, was the foundation for putting the collective contract system into practice.216
At the same time, the ACFTU had also proposed drafts of revised trade union law to the national legislative agencies. These proposals reflected the inadequacy of the 1992 trade union law with regard to the establishment of trade unions in private sectors, and also in collecting union funds and protecting union property, in the protection of union officials, and in the lack of legal liability rules.217
The revised trade union law released in 2001 gave substantial attention to primary union organisation; which enhanced the primary trade union’s
216 China Labour Bulletin, (2007), The collective contract system is the necessary choice for
adjusting the labour relations, p. 11, online,
http://www.clb.org.hk/schi/sites/default/files/File/No.10%20report%20on%20CC(S).pdf (accessed 14/08/13). In Chinese.
217 You, Z. L. (2010), ‘Three Major Reforms of Chinese Trade Union from 1960s’, in
authority in dealing with the autonomy of enterprise management and underlined the union’s protection function.218
In 2002, the new leadership of the national trade union took on conservative trade unionism, which had significant influence upon union development for a decade. It brought about the idea of strengthening the primary union establishment, having the primary union organisations playing their role, taking care of workers’ production and life, protecting workers’ direct interests; summarised as ‘organising and truly protecting’ (zuzhi qilai, qieshi weiquan). In the ACFTU’s 3rd
Plenary 14th
Executive Committee Meeting in 2005, the focus on the primary organisation was de- emphasised, and replaced by the politicised catch-phrase of ‘developing harmonious labour relations’. The ‘Resolution of Taking the Development Road of Socialist Trade Union with Chinese Characteristics’ (short for ‘New Union Road’) announced in 2006 echoed the messages from the CCP’s decision at the time in delineating the social governance framework.219 The framework was ‘Party-led, government
accountable, with the social actors co-operative, and mass participated’.220 In the
‘New Union Road’, the trade union’s ‘concept of rights protection’ (weiquan guan) was stressed as ‘non-adversarial employment relations’.221
The Party’s leadership was reinforced. Independent trade unions were strictly prohibited. The basic principle for the work of the workplace trade union was ‘promoting the enterprise development and protecting workers’ rights and interests’.222
New schemes and approaches were pronounced in accordance with the ‘socialised approach’, in which the collective contract system was replaced by various protection mechanisms. The protection of
218 Chang, C. (2014), ‘Chapter 4, Legal Regulation of Trade Union in China’, in Chang K.
(eds.) Legal Regulation of Collective Labour Relations in China, forthcoming. In Chinese.
219 Here, the term ‘socialist’ indicates the forces from the society, which for the most part
refers to a number of government bodies. See China Labour Bulletin (2008), Who Protects? For whom protect? – The politisation of the ACFTU’s protection function and the future of China’s trade union movements, online,
http://www.clb.org.hk/schi/files/No.14%20ACFTU(PS).pdf (accessed 14/08/13). In Chinese.
220 ACFTU, Resolution on Taking the Development Road of Socialist Trade Union with
Chinese Characteristics, 30th July 2005, English version online,
http://english.acftu.org/template/10002/file.jsp?cid=66&aid=157 (accessed 14/08/20). Also see Zhang, C. W. (2007), ‘Insisting the rights protection arrangement of Party led and union operated’, in Chinese Workers’ Movement 2007 (1). In Chinese.
221 ACFTU, (2005), Resolution on Taking the Development Road of Socialist Trade Union
with Chinese Characteristics, 30th July 2005, English version online,
http://english.acftu.org/template/10002/file.jsp?cid=66&aid=157 (accessed 14/10/24).
union rights was constituted of six basic activities: broad participation in government and legislative affairs; initiatives for co-ordinating grassroots labour relations; workers’ democratic management; oversight of labour law compliance; early warning systems and measures to deal with labour disputes; and mechanisms to aid workers in difficulty.
The ‘socialised approach’ was adopted to perform these functions. Statistical evidence shows the tendency of union practice for adopting a co-operative attitude and strategy with the government and the party. By monitoring the ACFTU’s major journal and its policies, two Chinese scholars separately and independently concluded that, since the new leader group of the ACFTU came into power in 2004, ‘protecting workers’ interests with (assistance from) the social forces’ (shehuihua weiquan) has become the union’s focus. 223
This socialisation refers to approaches ‘led by the Party, supported by and co-operating with the government and other actors’.
In practice, these were typically supported or initiated by the local Party-governments for the purpose of social stability, growth of the economy, improvement of the investment environment, as well as in resolving problems such as labour shortage.224
Led by city federations of trade unions, programmes were carried out alongside the regional experiments or with particular occupations, in the form of legal aid, labour inspection, and severance payments.225
This approach, regarded as the ‘top-down method’, spread to aspects of the union’s basic functions of the establishment of union organisation at workplaces, and the implementation of the collective contract system as the two crucial and inter-related functions in trade unionism.
223 Wen, X. Y. (2012), Corporatism without Workers Participation – Analysis on Trade
Union Operation in Transition, PhD Thesis, Renmin University; You, Z. L. (2010), ‘Three Major Reforms of Chinese Trade Union from 1960s’, in Sociological Studies, 2010(4), pp. 76-105.
224 Wu, J. P. (2011), ‘From Enterprise Participative Management to Participating Regional
Governance: Organisational and Institutional Reform of Chinese Trade Union’, in Xuehai, (2011)(1), online,
http://www.sociology2010.cass.cn/upload/2011/07/d20110707134915515.pdf (accessed 14/08/20). In Chinese.
225 Workers’ Daily, February 2006, online,