Helpful laws fuel Chinese labour unrest

On a hot morning in late May, while some 2,000 workers at a Honda parts factory were striking in China’s south, 100 irate employees at a hotel in the heart of the capital staged their own protest.

On a hot morning in late May, while some 2,000 workers at a Honda parts factory were striking in China’s south, 100 irate employees at a hotel in the heart of the capital staged their own protest.

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The Honda workers got lots of publicity. The hotel employees were mostly ignored. But the undercurrent was the same: labour disputes are becoming a common feature of the Chinese economic landscape.

Chinese workers are much more willing these days to defend their rights and demand higher wages, encouraged by recent policies from the central government aimed at protecting labourers and closing the income gap. Chinese leaders dread even the hint of Solidarity-style labour activism.

But they have moved to empower workers by pushing through labour laws that signaled that central authorities would no longer tolerate poor workplace conditions, legal scholars and Chinese labour experts say.

The laws, enacted in 2008, were intended to channel worker frustrations through a system of arbitration and courts so no broader protest movements would threaten political stability.

The labour laws have raised expectations, but still leave workers relatively powerless by Western standards.

The Communist Party-run legal system cannot cope with the exploding volume of labor disputes. And legal enforcement by local officials loosened when the global economic crisis hit China and resulted in factory shutdowns.