Trade Unions in Russia, China and Vietnam

1
Trade Unions in Russia, China and Vietnam

• Simon Clarke

2
State socialist trade unions

• Integral part of Party-state apparatus
• Primary functions
• to maintain labour discipline,
• encourage the production drive
• administer state social welfare system
• Protective functions
• Represent individual worker in disputes
• Monitor enforcement of labour law

3
Transition to capitalism

• Transformed environment of trade unions
• state no longer has control of enterprises
• does not determine terms and conditions
• employment relation now contractual
• Contrasting political role of unions
• Russian trade unions declared independence of
  Party-state in 1987
• Chinese and Vietnamese unions still under the
  leadership of the Communist Party

4
Russian unions

• Collapse of soviet system threatened survival of
  traditional unions
• Property
• Legal privileges
• Membership had no confidence in the unions
• State needed the traditional unions
• To administer traditional state functions
• To channel and contain social unrest

5
Social Partnership

• Partnerly relations with state and employer
• Tripartite commission
• Lobbying legislature and executive
• Branch and regional agreements
• Collective agreements
• Dispute resolution
• Negotiated settlement
• Judicial resolution of individual disputes

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Trade unions and class struggle

• Trade unions channel conflict into symbolic
  protests and bureaucratic and judicial forms of
  conflict resolution
• Weakness of unions is management dominance of
  primary organisations
• Slow progress in overcoming this barrier, mostly
  in prosperous branches (oil and gas, chemicals,
  metallurgy, autos)

7
China and Vietnam

• Unions under the leadership of the Party
• No freedom of association
• Restricted right to strike
• China abolished in 1982
• Vietnam introduced in 1994 labour code, only
  after mediation and arbitration, called by union,
  supported by majority of labour force
• Over 1000 registered strikes since 1994, not one
  legal

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Changes in employment relations

• Large lay-offs from SOEs privatisation
• Transition from permanent to contractual
  employment
• Transition from state welfare to social insurance
• Massive growth of private and foreign-owned
  enterprises
• Employing migrant workers on low wages, short or
  no contracts, long hours, poor health and safety

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Trade unions and the Party

• Not mere puppets of the Party, unions have a
  powerful voice in the Party
• Party has greater interest in reform of the
  unions than do the unions themselves
• Party requires unions
• To extend organisation to POEs and FIEs
• To prevent strikes and social unrest
• By mediating between worker and employer
• And channelling disputes into bureaucratic and
  judicial channels

10
Collective agreements

• ACFTU very active in promoting collective
  agreements, VGCL less so
• Most collective agreements contain little beyond
  that provided by law
• Terms largely dictated by management
• Few sanctions for violation
• Some more effective collective agreements,
  especially in JVs

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Trade union organising

• Trade unions traditionally confined to state and
  collective enterprises
• Pressure from Party to extend organisation and
  membership
• Legal requirement to have a trade union
• Mostly bureaucratic process, always top-down
• Some exceptions, e.g. Wall-Mart
• Sectoral/local unions for SMEs

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Reform of workplace unions

• Controlled by management
• Recognised as a problem, but
• Higher union bodies have little leverage
• Fear of loss of control
• And provoking conflict
• Trade union elections
• Professionalisation of union

13
Legal regulation

• Collective bargaining vs legal regulation
• Baseline terms and conditions set by labour law
• Individualistic bureaucratic/judicial dispute
  resolution
• Legal advice centres NGOs and ACFTU
• State or union function? Trade union versus
  Ministry of Labour

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Strikes and protests

• Increasingly migrant workers in POEs and FIEs
• Strengthened by labour shortage
• Fire-fighting role of state and tu
• Confine strike to one enterprise
• From repression to concession
• Labour bureau persuades employer to concede
• Trade union persuades workers to return to work
• Usually establish a trade union branch by
  agreement with management
• Severe repression of organising beyond one
  enterprise

15
Trade unions and Party-state

• Unions under Party leadership
• From state body to NGO
• Party control
• Imposes pressure on unions to reform
• Backs up union with weight of Party
• Confines union within strict limits
• Union reform much more advanced in China than in
  Vietnam

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Post-socialist trade unions

• Driving force of reform has been development of
  capitalist relations of production
• Mediated by worker unrest
• Need for trade unions to take on new roles,
  reinforced by anxieties of Party-state
• Trade union reform confined within limits of
  social stabilisation
• Main barrier to reform is dependence of workplace
  union on management
• There is progress but it is very slow