Re: [Marxism] China Drafts Law to Boost Unions and End Labor Abuse (NYT)

[Marvin Gandall <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Walter writes:

> ...Western capitalists these days don't usually encourage the
> growth of unions anywhere... Here in the United States of America, where
> capitalism is entrenched much
> more deeply, in fact, where it is entrenched completely, the capitalists
> here long ago stopped what modest encouragement Roosevelt and the New Deal
> gave to trade unionism. That was the point I tried to suggest when I
> wrote:

> "More U.S. trade unionists should probably to to China and see it for
> themselves, too. Wouldn't it be nice if the United States had a government
> which encouraged workers to join trade unions? China's government is led
> by a bunch of COMMUNISTS...")
====================================
This is a false counterposition for a number of reasons:

1. No government, neither in China nor in the US, has ever "encouraged"
unions - not, at least, as we understand them to be, ie. independent
organizations which have the right to call strikes to impose their demands
on employers.

2. States and employers have only encouraged what we understand as "company
unions", ie. unions which are prohibited from striking and are invited to
"consult" instead with their managers on workers' grievances, while being
expected at the same time to foster the workers' loyalty to the company (or
party or state). This constitutes collective begging rather than collective
bargaining, and more accurately describes the current relationship between
the only legally recognized trade union body - the All China Confederation
of Trade Unions - and the CPC.

3. While governments and employers in the US and other OECD countries also
prefer company unions, they have been forced to recognize independent unions
and the right to strike - almost always after a prolonged period of labour
unrest characterized by "illegal" strikes and other forms of protest which
have often been met by  violent employer and state repression.. At a certain
point, labour reform is accepted as a necessary alternative to the growing
economic disruption and class polarization caused by illegal actions. Union
security and bargaining rights, including the right to strike, are enshrined
in law, although invariably circumscribed by regulations designed to make
the exercise of the strike right less effective.

4. The New Deal reforms conformed to this pattern, and other governments
followed suit in relation to different sectors of the workforce in different
contexts. Union recognition and bargaining rights, as we know, were extended
to the public sector in the postwar period, also following illegal strikes
by postal workers and other public employees. If these reforms were more
limited than those passed by the Roosevelt administration in relation to the
industrial unions, it was only because the system, in a period of capitalist
expansion, was not as threatened as it was during the depression when union
objectives were more closely aligned with capitalism's need to restore mass
purchasing power and to dampen the growing appeal of socialism and the
Soviet Union. There is a tendency which should be avoided to romanticize the
New Deal without taking into account the context in which its policies were
formed.

5. By the same token, if labour reform is being more actively contemplated
by the CPC leaders, it is not because, as "Communists", they are more
"encouraging" of independent unions. In fact, independent unions and the
right to strike are effectively banned in China. What the Chinese
authorities want to do is to strengthen state labour standards, particularly
those relating to unemployment, and to extend the role of the official trade
union federation, the ACCTU, to preempt the development of independent
unions, especially in the largely unorganized private sector, starting with
the multinationals. As the Chinese themselves acknowledge, there is serious
labour unrest in the country, characterized by illegal strikes,
demonstrations, attempts to form independent unions, the arrest and
detention of rank-and-file workers' representatives, etc. There is also the
economic dimension I alluded to previously: the need to develop the home
market in the interest of more balanced economic growth, and to shift the
burden of providing benefits from the state to private employers.

Recognizing that there is little to distinguish the labour policies of the
CCP from capitalist governments, including that of FDR, is not to suggest
that there are not important contradictions between China and the US in the
sphere of world politics that we should take note of and take sides on.




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