Workers

Sacked Hotel Workers Organise Desperate Protest

Two dozen laid off employees from a state-owned Guangzhou hotel threatened to jump from its sixth-floor garden unless the company settled outstanding pension benefits. The workers staged their protest at the 63-storey Guangdong Trust and Investment Corp (Gitic) building, which houses the hotel as well as flats and offices. They sat on a roof garden parapet that overhangs the porch roof of the hotel lobby, while their representatives negotiated with the hotel’s management.

The group's representative, Ms. Li Lilian, said they wanted general manager Yu Xiuwei to keep a promise he had made in July 2003 to buy them retirement insurance amounting to 7.5 million yuan (US$914,634). The workers had already taken their grievances to a provincial Communist Party committee in February 2004 but an official told them it could not tell the hotel what to do.

The central government closed down Gitic, the Guangdong provincial government's fund-raising and investment arm, in 1998 after it ran up liabilities of 39 billion yuan (US$4.7 billion). The hotel was taken over in a subsequent sell-off and the new owners have laid off 628 staff since the middle of 2003. The contracts of the remaining 1,000 employees will also be terminated to give the new owner a clean slate.　

Coca Cola!

Some three dozen firefighters set up inflatable mattresses on the porch roof while dozens of police secured the entrances to the garden. A resident of the building said lunchboxes were sent up to the protesters and police were overhead saying that they were to be given Coca-Cola instead of water in order to get them to go to the toilet faster because of its caffeine content. Those who left to relieve themselves were not allowed to rejoin the group, and by mid-afternoon their number had halved. Police in the garden appeared relaxed and stayed well away from the group in an apparent attempt to outlast the protesters.

A labour department official who arrived at the scene said it would accept the protesters’ complaints and immediately took down the details and complainants’ particulars. The workers eventually came down but it is not known if the company agreed to meet their demands. Hotel spokesman Yang Xueli said workers received up to 50,000 yuan (US$6,100) in severance pay. He added that the complainants were not Guangzhou residents and did not have to be provided with retirement insurance coverage.

However new laws require enterprises to provide retirement benefits to non-resident staff who leave their employ and Mr Yang stated that “[T]he hotel has promised them that we will buy them insurance but it is not something that can be done overnight. Some of these people have been with us for a long time.” (Source: South China Morning Post, 23 March 2004)

Comment from Ma Weipin, Regional Secretary (Asia Pacific) of the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF):

The IUF has recently completed a research project on international hotel operators in China. Our findings revealed that collective contracts were non-existent despite regulations that specifically gave workers the option to demand a collective contract from an employer. Combined with the active repression of freedom of association and a monopoly state union that shows little interest in defending hotel workers’ rights, it comes as little surprise that hotel workers should see no other option but to threaten to take their lives in pursuit of their rights. It is a sad testament to the lack of trade union rights in China.

IUF website: http://www.iuf.org/en/