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Working Conditions
Baoding workers' rally: Harbinger of a Long March?
A symbolically important march of over 1,000 workers in northeast China, reminiscent of workers marches all over the globe ended when thousands of security officials ‘persuaded’ them to return home. Since then all reports of their protest are impossible to find.
More than 1,000 workers in Baoding prefecture, south of Beijing, rallied in early April in protest over a factory closure, in what may have been a significant step in the long march for improving labour rights in China. Angered over massive job losses at the Baoding Yimian Textile Ltd, the workers set out on foot or bicycle towards the capital Beijing, 140 kilometres away. Many of them were carrying bags of supplies for what they clearly planned would be a long trip away from home. They proceeded peacefully but purposefully, as a grainy video of the extraordinary event shows: As could well have been expected, the regime eventually reacted, after the large serpentine body of workers had covered a considerable distance towards their destination. Columns of uniformed members of security forces and officials stopped the workers and “persuaded” them to board buses back to Baoding, in Hebei province. Initially on April 3, the day of the rally, the official Xinhua news agency described the event as a “hiking tour” by the workers. The next day, however, it acknowledged that the major development had in fact been a “protest march”. The workers were reportedly angered by a factory restructuring or privatization plan that included massive job cuts and paltry severance payouts. Xinhua quoted Baoding Vice Mayor Liu Baoling, who is also the head of the organization department of the Baoding City Committee of the Communist Party, as saying that a Hong Kong-based group had pledged to invest 50 million dollars in the formerly state-owned factory which it had taken over in 2004, but that did not happen. According to Xinhua, the Yimian Group had grown from the Baoding No. 1 Cotton Textile Factory, founded in 1994 and had once been among the top 50 textile companies in China. The official news agency also said that a few days prior to the protest, on March 27, some Yimian group workers had “complained to the company and the Baoding city government about 400 job cuts and poor treatment” and that “the group always paid their wages a month late”. Why were their complaints ignored? Xinhua did not explain but it noted however, that vice mayor Liu said he had been interviewing workers about the problems since then. Liu, according to Xinhua, admitted problems in the privatization and said: "The government will work together with the workers to press the Hong Kong investor to fulfill its responsibilities. We will try the best to solve the problems via negotiations. But if it has to be solved in the court the government will bear the fees." He also reportedly said it was wrong for workers to be paid a month late. Officials from the departments for disciplinary inspection, public security and the procuratorate were reported to have gone to Yimian to make further investigations. Predictably in the time-honoured tradition of loudly banging the barn doors shut after the horses had all bolted, Wang Lijuan was fired from her post as the Communist Party secretary for the Yimian group. She was replaced by Zhang Yanru, chief of the Baoding City State Assets Commission. Wang was also dismissed from her parallel position at the head of the group's management: She had concurrently been chairwoman of the board! One note-worthy absence in all the reports about the aborted Baoding rally is any mention of the sole official representative body of the entire country's working class, the All China Federation of Trade Unions. The fact that none of the official reports even bothered to mention the Communist Party-controlled ACFTU, is a measure of its monumental irrelevance to Chinese workers' real struggles on the ground. Whether Wang Lijuan who was fired as Yimian group's board chairwoman and Communist Party secretary also held an ACFTU office is not mentioned in the reports. However, it is a fact that in innumerable units in China, management officials also wear official union leadership hats, thus making a total mockery of trade unionism. Which is why the Baoding workers' organized and highly orderly attempt to go and plead their case directly with the Beijing officialdom acquires great significance. Deprived of genuine union representation and thus barred from airing their grievances or getting redress through what should be normal collective bargaining arrangements, the Baoding workers had been left with no choice but to take recourse to extraordinary action. That they did so peacefully and in an orderly, non-confrontation manner speaks volumes for the organization work behind the event. It may well come to be seen as one of many signs in a historic turning point in Chinese workers' attempt to break with the helplessness that is imposed on them and to seek their own paths to claiming justice. As reports of their fate have dried up, the extent and intensity of investigation and intimidation that is most probably being directed against the Baoding workers can only be guessed at. But it would be highly unwise of the regime to seek to punish people for acting in probably the only peaceful way that was left open to them with all the straitjackets they were enclosed in. The Chinese leadership has to reflect on the root causes of the incident, which have to do with the denial of genuine trade union rights, the Party's total and institutional identification with managements and the complete absence of peaceful avenues for bargaining.
IHLO
Sources: “Party chief sacked after textile workers' protest march” “Most petitioners to Beijing persuaded to return” “Long march to protest lay-offs” “China moves to quell anger after protest march” “Baoding workers' march on Beijing shakes city officials” 《保定棉紡工人抗議工廠大規模解雇員工》
2009-04-01 RFA 《保定六千名下崗棉紡職工徒步進京申訴》 2009-04-03 RFA http://www.rfa.org/cantonese/multimedia/labor_protest-04032009110858.html?encoding=traditional 《保定棉紡工人進京請願行動被迫終止》 2009-04-06 RFA http://www.rfa.org/cantonese/news/labor_protest-04062009114118.html?textonly=1&encoding=traditional 《保定依棉工人大罷工抗議工廠被賣》
2009-4-1 Civil Rights & Livelihood Watch
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