The legend of the frugal Chinese workers

China discovers his own history as the "Middle Kingdom" in the 21
Century and again: While the Western world is suffering from the
financial crisis, Beijing developed palpable awareness of foreign
policy power. At the same time, however, the country must find
solutions for a variety of problems. In a four-part series-nd four
authors describe their views from different angles on different
aspects of life in China.

In April, hundreds of truck drivers went on strike in Shanghai's
container ports against rising fuel costs.

Coming soon is the first time in the history of the Communist Party of
China, one of the richest men in the country (and world) to be a
member of the Party Central Committee. For some time, permit the
statutes of the party membership of entrepreneurs. According to
conservative estimates by the delegates to the Party congresses are a
maximum of 1 to 5 percent, which is attributed to the Chinese working
class itself. It may be doubted whether the working class ever in the
history of the People's Republic of China "historical subject" was.
Currently, at least - and that is where are the experts agree, due to
various investigations - should the social reputation of the workers
have reached a historic low.

What was even more recognition to Mao's times, most people in China
today feel as a burden: to belong to the working class. In the country
with the highest growth rates and long-lasting membership of the
working class, not a "privilege" is more, but an economic and social
burden.

And yet, sometimes the "moribund" Chinese working class, a much talked
about. Many legends have been created not least by foreign investors
and disseminated: Chinese workers to be modest, unassuming, modest and
little conflict-oriented. They would exercise their rights do not
usually, anyway since none of the Chinese legal disputes and
considered themselves to Confucian tradition with their supervisors
and employers would prefer some amicably.
Defense reactions at Foxconn and Honda

One must doubt that these legends have ever had a real background. It
is clear that was limited in the Chinese media coverage of strikes and
labor disputes ever. But since the media had reported extensively for
a short period on the appalling conditions on the extended workbenches
of the iPhone manufacturer Apple, the Chinese workers are once again
come into focus. Obviously, the signals emanating from the numerous
public suicides at Foxconn. A wave of indignation captured the
country. Here were the conditions at Foxconn and are by no means the
worst. But in the Chinese world of work, there is not much different
than in the working world of capitalist industrial nations to
spectacular events, it is not always where it goes to the workers at
their worst. Rather, plus numerous subjective and objective
conditions.

Migrant workers from their containers on a residential construction
site in Fuzhou.

At Foxconn, it was the fact that there have been systematically abused
in cooperation with state institutions, students and young students,
under the pretext of "internships" as cheap labor and the company did
not make the smallest institutions to keep promises. Completely
inexperienced students, who were often overwhelmed with the work
physically and psychologically attacked, in their desperation to the
spectacular view from their means of suicide. From the Chinese trade
unions, they received no support. Worse, most of these young workers
did not even know that there was a trade union.

But the suicides at Foxconn were not the only nor even typical defense
response of workers to exploitative working conditions in Chinese
factories. On the contrary: thanks to the fact that Japanese
entrepreneurs in the Chinese public are not necessarily highly
regarded, was the labor dispute at Honda first reported in detail.
There, the workers had resigned on imaginative ways to work and
mobilize the Chinese public over the Internet. Because of the Chinese
trade unions, who are regularly on the side of the company and the
government, no help could be expected, they sought advice from one of
the most renowned professors of labor law in China. Professor Chang
Kai of Renmin University in Beijing, led the negotiations with
management on a collective agreement. All the strikers' demands were
met. The strike leader was a 19-year-old (!) Worker who had made over
the Internet and contact with the labor law professor. In retrospect,
the official trade unions legalized the procedure.
The strike sparks should not skip

Honda served as an example for many other strikes, which were not only
higher wages demanded, but was asked in particular the requirement for
independent unions. "Independent" was not here, regardless of the
official trade union federation, but elected freely and
democratically. Under the present political and legal conditions in
China alone, the requirement applies to so-called free trade unions,
independent of the trade union federation, to be extremely dangerous.
It is also not true that the state authorities had been watching for
most of the strikes carried out since 2010 only. On the contrary:
While the majority of strikes were tolerated, many strikes were
actually successful, but at the same time strictly respected the
police that the strike by some demonstrations not spread to other
companies. Add to this that in the majority of labor disputes the
claims but were formally successful, the same but changed the business
strategies: Foxconn, for example - one of the largest companies
worldwide - outsourced many enterprises to central China, and
exchanged in this way simply from the workforce. Could experience
labor disputes, or even "class consciousness" does not arise in this
way.

The party and state leadership hopes that the workers "on the"
individual path can refer to the law enforcement. Not by chance, she
has promoted the exercise of individual rights through the Employment
Contracts Act of 2008. This law actually contains a variety of new
rights, which go as high as over the Western European standard.
Legally required overtime pay of up to 150 percent in Germany are as
unknown as statutory redundancy payments when entering into settlement
agreements (excluding social plan!). Recent studies show that the law
has actually led to a significant increase in labor disputes in the
employment services. But the law came in 2008 almost too late: A
significant part of the Chinese working class was in fact for decades
by the general labor excluded: The 200 to 250 million so-called
migrant workers were regarded "as" rural workers and do not fall under
the labor law. Add to this that particularly in the construction
industry a sophisticated legal and most secure system of
"subcontractors" is, the more difficult the exercise of rights purely
factual. Often, the workers did not know who is actually their
employer.
Dr. Rolf Geffken is a specialist in employment law and director of the
Institute for Work - ICOLAIR in Hamburg. In 2004 he organized in
Canton, the first Sino-German Conference on Labour, which was followed
by other conferences. Geffken is a lecturer at various German
universities and author of numerous scientific publications and
fiction. The band 'strike in China? ", Which he published in 2010,
Chinese and German experts to deal with the current and future
relationship of the Chinese workers to the local unions.

"Tolerated" in their own country

The new labor contract law also extends to working conditions of
migrant workers. But in many areas, has not yet gotten around and
migrant workers are still discriminated against. Especially the fact
that migrant workers because of the so-Hokou principle in the cities
usually can not legally resident, leads to the fact that they are in a
quasi semi-legal status. Legally, her condition was similar to the
long period of rejected asylum seekers in Germany. They were tolerated
up to "". And this in their own country!

But China is far from a unified country. This also applies to working
conditions and the structure of the working class. The situation of
workers in factories around the high-tech industry in Shanghai or
Beijing is usually completely different than in the labor-intensive
industry of Guangdong in the south of the country. Between the migrant
worker from central China who tries in the coastal regions, to sell
his labor and his children do not attend public schools in the city
and allowed the other hand, the workers still-state-owned enterprises
in Shanghai, there are significant differences. The generation that
experienced the process of transformation from socialist economy to a
market economy directly, is now largely retired from the labor
process. In its place, either well-trained skilled workers or cheap
wage slaves from rural regions, or "interns" have come from the middle
schools. It has created a completely new and different workforce than
those who belonged to the losers of the privatization wave in the
early 80s.

But all is equal, that they have no authentic mouthpiece. Still, the
official trade unions are not regarded as representing the interests
of employees and perceived. And this is how the strike wave of the
past year as represents what strikes were also in the
industrialization phase of Western Europe: germ cells of a future
union organization.
Difficult path to advocacy

However, the way is just as difficult as it appears in Germany in the
19th Century, was also there for the freedom of association had to be
laboriously fought against the state: It was the result of the
November Revolution of 1918. As long as the state institutions in
China to defend against this law and do not acknowledge it, the
development of China at this point take a similar course. It is still
not completely clear whether the official trade unions of their task
to represent the interests of the working class in China needs.