AUT: Fw: [PEN-L:7710] a story on Chinese workers

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-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Saturday, 5 June 1999 1:42
Subject: [PEN-L:7710] a story on Chinese workers


>of interest, from the L.A. TIMES, at
>http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/NATION/UPDATES/lat_labor990604.htm
>
>Friday, June 4, 1999
>
> Chinese Rulers Fear Angry Workers May Finally Unite
>
> Labor: Ten years after Tiananmen Square crackdown, unemployment, not
> lack of democracy, fuels discontent.
>
> By HENRY CHU, Times Staff Writer
>
> SHENYANG, China--Liu Lao is on the longest vacation of his life: two years
>and counting.
>
> In 1997, the state-run iron foundry where he worked suddenly stopped
>production after losing too much money. But rather than lay everyone off,
>the factory bosses sent employees home "on holiday," a semantic ploy that
>allowed them to avoid having to pay severance and welfare benefits.
>
> Liu now spends his extended, unpaid "holiday" standing on a sidewalk in
>this ancient imperial city, peddling cheap steering-wheel covers to passing
>motorists and stewing in a kettle of discontent.
>
> "If workers had supported the students in '89," he grumbled, referring to
>the abortive anti-government protests that year in Beijing's Tiananmen
>Square, "the outcome would have been a lot different."
>
> A decade after Beijing sent tanks in to crush demonstrators on June 4,
>1989, killing hundreds--perhaps thousands--of people, the prospect of labor
>unrest worries China's Communist leaders the most as they seek to hold on
>to power in the world's most populous country.
>
> The former students who pushed for democracy are a spent force these days,
>in prison, in exile or indifferent, more concerned about their pocketbooks
>than politics. Their successors at China's universities are more likely to
>back the government than attack it-- witness the student-led demonstrations
>that erupted after last month's NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in
>Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital.
>
> But with unemployment spiraling and the economy slowing, disaffection
>among urban workers, a key segment of Chinese society, is on the rise. And
>while few Western commentators seem to remember, the Communist regime is
>acutely aware that economic and labor grievances played an important role
>in the 1989 protests, a realization that helps explain Beijing's continuing
>jitters over restiveness among China's 200-million-strong urban work force.
>
> Already, reports are rife of labor unrest across the country, from Hunan
>province in the south to here in the northeast, China's Rust Belt.
>
> So far, most of the unrest has taken the form of small, isolated protests
>by unpaid workers who block traffic or picket local authorities to get
>their demands heard.
>
> But the government fears that laborers--particularly the unemployed, who
>number between 15 million and 25 million in China--might organize en masse
>to become the wellspring of new opposition to Communist rule. Or, worse
>yet, that disgruntled workers might try to link up with other
>disenfranchised groups, such as political dissidents, to create some sort
>of united national front.
>
> "Until you get Wuhan hooked up with Beijing, which is hooked up with
>Shenyang, it's not going to be a threat to the government," said a Western
>diplomat who tracks labor issues. "There's potential for localized
>protests, but until there's a national organization, it's not a threat."
>
> Little evidence has emerged of serious coordination among workers
>countrywide or between workers and other groups. Many unemployed laborers,
>often in their 40s and 50s, say they have too much to lose to mount
>challenges that appear doomed to fail against the implacable machinery of
>an authoritarian state.
>
> "If we get thrown in jail, who will take care of our families?" asked Yu
>Wenting, 47, a factory worker who has been out of a job for two years.
>"Under the Communist Party, the Chinese people have become obedient. They
>don't dare fight the party."
>
> But Beijing is taking no chances.
>
> 3 Labor Activists Reportedly on Trial
>
> Last week, three men who tried to set up an independent labor watchdog
>group in the central city of Tianshui were put on trial for subversion, a
>Hong Kong-based human rights group reported. The charges carry stiff prison
>sentences and are similar to those filed in December against democracy
>activists who tried to establish an opposition political party. The
>activists are now in jail.
>
> Maintaining "domestic stability" remains the Communist leadership's mantra
>in this year of sensitive anniversaries, including the 10th anniversary of
>the Tiananmen Square crackdown and the 50th anniversary of the founding of
>Communist China.
>
> "Without stability, nothing can be achieved, and successes already
>attained will be lost," Vice President Hu Jintao warned in a published
>message to workers to mark International Labor Day on May 1. "Workers must
>wholeheartedly cherish the nation's political stability and unity."
>
> It is apparent that not everyone feels the same way.
>
> Protests Commonplace in Hard-Hit Shenyang
>
> Here in Shenyang, an industrial hub once humming with activity,
>small-scale protests have become commonplace, with demonstrators lying down
>in busy streets to get the municipal government's attention. Shenyang, the
>capital of Liaoning province, has been particularly hard hit by a
>combination of factors--China's market reforms, official corruption and
>Asia's sluggish economy--that has forced scores of state-owned enterprises
>to go under and thrown hundreds of thousands of people out of work.
>
> On a single day in April, three different demonstrations were staged by
>workers and retirees unhappy over not getting paid their wages or pensions,
>witnesses said.
>
> Mostly, the standoffs have ended peacefully, dissipated by official
>promises--often unkept--of back pay.
>
> But harsher tactics aren't unknown. And the occasionally heavy-handed
>treatment of labor activists is tacit acknowledgment of the influence and
>prestige Chinese workers have traditionally enjoyed as the "leading class"
>of the Communist revolution.
>
> Mao Tse-tung cut his teeth on labor organization in a mining area in
>central China in the 1920s. During the civil war of the 1940s, both the
>Nationalists and Communists sought to infiltrate, use or smash trade
>unions--big, populist organizations capable of mounting major strikes--in
>aid of their respective causes.
>
> Although the 1989 demonstrations were led by students calling for
>political reform, they were fueled in large part by economic complaints
>over rampant corruption and runaway inflation.
>
> Two weeks before the tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square 10 years ago, a
>group of labor activists declared the formation of the Beijing Autonomous
>Federation of Workers, an act that some think was one of the last straws
>for the increasingly desperate government.
>
> One of the federation's leaders, Han Dong-fang, who spent 22 months in
>prison and now lives in Hong Kong, said bread-and-butter issues could yet
>prove the downfall for a regime that has staked its legitimacy on
>delivering economic growth and prosperity.
>
> "People's temperatures are [close to] exploding," said Han, who hosts a
>radio show on labor issues and receives dozens of calls each week from
>aggrieved workers on the mainland wanting to know what they can do to press
>their case.
>
> Beijing has tried to blunt worker dissatisfaction by co-opting some of the
>agenda of the protesters of 1989. Since then, the government has tamed
>inflation and launched a highly publicized crusade against official
>corruption, a problem that feeds widespread hostility toward the Communist
>Party.
>
> What has also let off steam so far is the huge gray market that has
>enabled people such as Liu Lao to sell small goods or take low-skill jobs
>to keep clothes on their backs and food on their tables.
>
> Official statistics put the number of unemployed in Shenyang at half a
>million, but residents themselves believe it to be much higher, citing
>closure after closure of state-owned enterprises in the area:
> ironworks, pharmaceutical plants, textile makers, coal mines, steel
>foundries.
>
> "It's true that the factories are old and the equipment is old," said Wang
>Shifu, a former worker at a state-run interior decorating firm. "But that
>doesn't mean that all the factories should go bankrupt. It's
> the factory managers who are corrupt and who sell the factories and pocket
>the money."
>
> Man Hasn't Received Any Jobless Benefits
>
> Repairing bikes on the roadside earns Wang a meager 100 yuan (about
>$12.25) a month. He is supposed to receive nearly twice that from the local
>government in monthly unemployment insurance, but he has not seen a penny
>of it.
>
> So what about strength in numbers, the idea of uniting with his fellow
>laid-off workers to demand their due?
>
> "That's the theory," said Wang, 47. "But who will dare to take the lead?"
>
> "People know that you don't come to a good end if you fight the Communist
>Party," added Liu, the former ironworker who was put "on holiday." "Chinese
>people are like scattered sand. It's difficult to get them to unite.
>Everyone just cares about his own affairs."
>
> Activists hope that as China totters toward establishing the rule of law,
>workers will begin developing a sense of their rights under the
>Constitution, until now a relatively hollow guarantor of freedoms, such as
>the stated right to form independent trade unions.
>
> Ultimately, as laborers assert themselves in the workplace and learn to
>take charge, such organizing may prove more of a threat to single-party
>government than the street protests and uprisings the current regime now
>fears, labor advocates say.
>
> "We don't want mass [action]. We don't want violent struggle," Han said.
>"The most important thing is that people have their eyes open and know
>what's going on."
>
> Copyright Los Angeles Times
>
>---------------
>
>In other news, the L.A. TIMES never replaced their long-time labor reporter
>(Harry Bernstein, who was pro-labor by TIMES standards) when he retired, so
>that it lacks regular labor coverage of the U.S.
>
>Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx &
>http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
>Bombing DESTROYS human rights. Ground troops make things worse. US/NATO out
>of Serbia!
>




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