Vol 1 – Issue 3 by Catalyst

Author:Catalyst
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-08-30T20:04:15+00:00

After the 2008 Crisis:A New Era for Labor Activism?

When the US mortgage and stock bubbles burst in 2007-2008, China’s old normal of export-dependent prosperity was shaken to the core. When the global credit crunch and the contraction in US and European demand for Chinese goods hit home, the immediate and most visible casualty was the export sector, especially the numerous small subcontractors making up the lowest tiers of the global supply chains. Twenty million jobs were wiped out within a few months and millions of migrant workers were conveniently sent home, falling back on the rural economy for subsistence. Beijing rolled out a massive stimulus package totaling $586 billion and stabilized the economy by injecting credits for urban infrastructural and real estate projects by local governments, with a fraction going to buttress income in the countryside. With its major export markets withering, the Chinese government shifted gear to promote domestic consumption by speeding up state-led urbanization and stipulating doubt-digit annual increases in minimum wages. Service overtook manufacturing as the leading sector of employment in 2010, and the government began talking up the growth potential of Internet-based businesses (called “internet +” in China). By 2012, the economy seemed to have absorbed the shock of the crisis although even the leadership acknowledges concern about the stability of the domestic financial system in the face of the ballooning of local government debt along with rampant real estate speculation and unproductive infrastructural investment.6 State planners now project a lower, single-digit annual growth rate of 6-7 percent in two consecutive Five Year Plans.

The implementation of the post-2008 policies coincided with several high-profile strikes in supplier factories producing for international brands that seemed to herald a new era of labor activism. Journalists and labor scholars have defended this image of an empowered Chinese working class by making four basic arguments: (1) The increase in strikes follows a labor shortage structurally induced by China’s one-child policy. (2) This labor shortage has augmented the bargaining power of the second-generation migrant workers who are more class and rights conscious, and more technologically savvy than the first. (3) Workers’ demands have changed from purely economic to political (for instance, the demand for the direct election of union leadership) while protest strategy has moved from legalistic appeals to direct action. (4) Workers, as a result, have been more successful in obtaining favorable outcomes of strikes, in the forms of wage hikes and the recovery of employers’ insurance contributions and other benefits.7 Unfortunately these theses, which neglect the real direction of change associated with the post-2008 transition, do not stand up to empirical scrutiny. Let’s assess them one by one.

First, the quantitative increase of labor disputes — labor arbitration cases, labor lawsuits, petitions, and strikes — is neither a new phenomenon nor one that necessarily implies a surge of worker power. Labor unrest in China retains its circumscribed character with little lateral coordination across firms, locality, or social class. The state, moreover, has developed a plethora of neutralization tactics to render labor conflicts routinized and manageable.

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