[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 10]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 14767]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



               WORKPLACE REFORMERS ARE STIRRING IN CHINA

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                           HON. ANNA G. ESHOO

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 26, 2001

  Ms. ESHOO. Mr. Speaker, I submit for the Record an op-ed piece 
written by Mr. William B. Gould IV that appeared in the San Jose 
Mercury News on Monday, July 23, 2001. Mr. Gould wrote the article upon 
his return from China where he conducted a series of lectures at local 
universities. I share it with my colleagues in the hope that they will 
find it as instructive as I did.

            [From the San Jose Mercury News, July 23, 2001]

               Workplace Reformers Are Stirring in China

                        (By William B. Gould IV)

       On an uncomfortably hot June afternoon in Shanghai, 
     university students giggle as they complete their mandatory 
     military exercises before departing for the summer. The 
     coexistence of these out-of-uniform drills with the mirthful 
     laughter of students mirrors much of the paradox of Chinese 
     free market policies alongside Communist Party controls.
       The free market has meant a labor market that has witnessed 
     more than an incremental expansion of freedom to hire and 
     fire--millions of dismissed Chinese public enterprise workers 
     who have not found re-employment in the newly expanding 
     private sector can testify to the latter. The same 
     environment affects rural migrant workers who have streamed 
     to the job-filled urban centers with a resolve that sometimes 
     borders on the desperate. Their unemployment and second class 
     status mean worker protest and government scrutiny of it. 
     Like South Africa and Poland in the '80s, China has the 
     potential for a mobilized worker discontent that could cut 
     across most of the sectors of political and economic life.
       Last year, for instance, 20,000 miners in the northeast 
     went on a violent rampage of burning and window smashing as 
     they faced dismissal.
       Workers in a state-owned silk factory confronted with the 
     same prospect, called for a new and independent union.
       Standing in the way of such spontaneity are not only the 
     security apparatus but also the Communist Party government 
     unions, which perform none of the representative functions 
     normally present where there is freedom of association. The 
     Chinese government, though it signed last month a Decent Work 
     agreement with the Geneva-based International Labor 
     Organization, defiantly proclaims its continued hostility to 
     the right of workers to choose their bargaining agents. Yet 
     advocates of reform are stirring and American policy makers 
     on Capitol Hill considering China's preferential trade status 
     need to be aware of them.
       As the military drills fade into the languid Shanghai air, 
     labor law reform expert Dong Bao Hua tells me, ``The essence 
     of reform is to try to persuade policy makers that we want to 
     have a government with open and societized features.'' This 
     approach seeks to protect both rural migrants and those 
     dislocated public enterprise workers through a number of 
     avenues.
       One is to provide a ``hotline'' with legal advice for 
     workers with labor complaints, pregnant female employees who 
     are unfairly dismissed, and those who have suffered workplace 
     accidents.
       Dong and his students have organized events in public 
     squares to advertise their services. They use the courts and 
     China's expanding government arbitration process. The cases 
     move quickly by Western standards, most of them brought to 
     conclusion within 60 to 90 days of a complaint's filing.
       The arbitration mechanism, admittedly government 
     controlled, resolves a variety of workplace disputes. (The 
     so-called neutral third party is a Labor Ministry employee.) 
     Workers can retain lawyers and in half of the cases in 
     Shanghai they do so.
       The bad news is that workers have difficulty getting their 
     frequently fearful fellow employees to testify on their 
     behalf. The Communist Party official government unions are of 
     no or little help to them. As a Shenzen employment lawyer 
     said to me: ``No representatives of workers are in the 
     arbitration process.''
       No one can completely anticipate the stress that the 
     transition will place on China's workforce. The government's 
     response to Tianannen Square illustrates the likely reaction 
     to any new challenge or to an outcry against its unapologetic 
     use of forced labor.
       Yet the workplace democratic impulse is an international 
     one. In South Africa and Poland, it had its origin in 
     institutions far more modest than those that ultimately 
     brought sweeping change. And Chinese officials may ultimately 
     find comfort in the examples of Hungary and the Czech 
     Republic, where reform did not include new Solidarity-type 
     mass movements.
       One of China's many puzzles lies in the prospects of and 
     the government's answer to the new workplace reformers who 
     have come on the scene.

     

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