Can party-led trade unions represent their members?

Abstract

This article examines the implications of party leadership for the ability of trade unions to represent the interests of their members by comparing the cases of China and Vietnam, where the trade unions are under the leadership of the Communist Party, with that of Russia, where the trade unions have been politically independent for almost two decades. The article examines the changing role of trade unions in the transition from a command to a capitalist economy and the pressures for trade union reform from above and below. The key finding is that the form and extent of independent worker activism, and the response of the state to such activism, are a much more significant determinant of trade union development than is the legal and institutional framework of industrial relations, while the main barriers to trade union reform are the inertia of the trade union apparatus and the dependence of primary union organisations on management.

The dynamics of recent changes in the Chinese trade union movement

“…It was actively involved in both the revolutionary struggle before 1949 and the early years of the new Communist regime (Shi 1993(Shi : 77, 2002. Under the Trade Union Law of 1950, the ACFTU was formally confirmed as the only legally recognised trade union organisation in China (Taylor & Li 2007: 707, Zhang 2009: 195, Zhu et al 2011, making it an organisation very different from unions in Western countries but more like its counterparts in other Communist countries (Clarke & Pringle 2009: 85, Chan & Hui 2012. It was dissolved during 1966-1973 due to the Cultural Revolution, but it began to rebuild its organisation during 1974-1977.…”

“…The workplace unions are also heavily dependent on their enterprises' contributions to fund them (Baek 2000: 49, Shi 2002: 170, Clarke et al 2004: 242, Liu, Li et al 2011. By controlling the establishment, staffing and funding, employers control the workplace unions (Clarke & Pringle 2009: 87, Liu, Li et al 2011 When there is conflict between labour and capital, the workplace unions only can either keep silent or side with employers. (Dai 2012: 12) Fourth, Chinese labour law reflected the political power of the CCP and reinforced the subordinate position of unions.…”

The Changing Nature of Labor Unrest in China

“…Although migrant workers resort to wildcat strikes at times, they are said to resort to legal routes to justice (more than their SOE counterparts), often by way of labor nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) (Chan 2006;Halegua 2008;Friedman and Lee 2010;Lee and Shen 2011). Their reliance on the law and NGOs has been alternately praised as empowering and effective at pressuring state institutions (Chan 2006;Halegua 2008;Clarke and Pringle 2009) and criticized as overly individualistic and easily co-opted by the same institutions (Pun et al 2010;Lee and Shen 2011;Chen and Xu 2012). Regardless, the activism of migrants, like that of SOE workers, is seen as reactive, as a request that the minimums of an existing system be upheld.…”

“…Chan and Pun (2009), Clarke andPringle (2009), A. Chan (2010), C. Chan (2010), Butollo and ten Brink (2012), and China Labour Bulletin (2012) have all posited that labor protests are increasingly interest based rather than rights or social contract based. These claims echo the prediction of Silver (2003: 106), who wrote in her survey of world labor unrest a decade ago that "the growing labor unrest in China to date has largely taken the form of Polanyi-type movements against the disruption of established ways of life and livelihood" but there is "every reason to expect that Marx-type labor unrest will also emerge," that is, unrest will switch to an increased reliance on shop floor "bargaining power.…”

Enhanced employee participation and the influence from below

“…In terms of industrial relations, it has been argued by a number of scholars that informal labour activism, especially the explosion of wildcat strikes since 2005, has become one of the most important driving forces for industrial relations reform in Vietnam (see for example, Chan ; Clarke and Pringle ; Do ; Tran ). Tran () found that after the first wave of wildcat strikes in Ho Chi Minh City and the southern region during the 2006 Tet, the government decided to adjust the minimum wage and revise the procedures in the Labour Code for settling strikes.…”