International Labor Studies - Internationale Arbeitsstudien

Herausgegeben von Klaus Dörre und Stephan Lessenich

Der Band bietet die erste systematische Studie über Arbeitsbedingungen und industrielle Beziehungen in den Kernindustrien der chinesischen Exportwirtschaft. Auf der Basis von über dreißig Fallstudien multinationaler Unternehmen der Automobil-, Elektronik- und Textilindustrie beleuchten die Autoren die verschiedenen Produktionsregime im Kontext globaler und nationaler Vernetzung. Dabei untersuchen sie auch die Rolle der Gewerkschaften sowie die Bedeutung von kollektiven Tarifverhandlungen und betrieblicher Mitbestimmung in China.

Vorwort
International Labor Studies Internationale Arbeitsstudien Herausgegeben von Klaus Dörre und Stephan Lessenich

Autorentext
Boy Lüthje ist Mitarbeiter am Institut für Sozialforschung Frankfurt und Visiting Professor an der Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China. Siqi Luo ist Industriesoziologin und promovierte 2012 an der Universität Frankfurt. Hao Zhang ist Promotionsstudent an der Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

Klappentext

Der Band bietet die erste systematische Studie über Arbeitsbedingungen und industrielle Beziehungen in den Kernindustrien der chinesischen Exportwirtschaft. Auf der Basis von über dreißig Fallstudien multinationaler Unternehmen der Automobil-, Elektronik- und Textilindustrie beleuchten die Autoren die verschiedenen Produktionsregime im Kontext globaler und nationaler Vernetzung. Dabei untersuchen sie auch die Rolle der Gewerkschaften sowie die Bedeutung von kollektiven Tarifverhandlungen und betrieblicher Mitbestimmung in China.

Leseprobe
I . Socio-Economic Transformation, Industrial Relations and Regimes of Production in China As China has become one of the largest manufacturing economies in the world, a better understanding of labor relations in key industries and factories in China is important . This is particularly true in the light of the ongoing reform of labor laws, the attempts by Chinese trade unions to expand their presence in multinational enterprises, and the social upheaval that has rocked key exporting industries in the wake of the global recession which began in 2008 . We have to understand why labor relations in China have proven remarkably stable in spite of the massive social changes during the recent two decades . But we also have to take a sharper look at the prospects and conditions for reforming trade unions, for labor organizing in the growing non-union sectors of the Chinese economy, for collective bargaining, and for democratic workplace representation . Given this purpose, the conceptual framework of this report will be outlined in the following chapter . We start from theoretical reflections, linking and "marrying" Chinese and Western perspectives on industrial relations research and establishing the general framework we use to interpret current labor relations in China . We then trace key tendencies of economic restructuring, determining the development of labor relations in the leading sectors of the Chinese exporting economy . Having established this background, we develop a typology of regimes of production, providing the basic framework for comparative studies of the regimes of production presented in the following three chapters . 1 . Changing Labor Relations - Conceptual Approaches and Perspectives Debates on the reform of labor policies are a persistent topic among labor experts in China, although not highly publicized and mostly disregarded by Western media . These debates focus on the question of how to create tripartite mechanisms including management, trade unions and government, to ensure harmonious labor relations in an advancing industrial economy . Many aspects of these debates seem surprisingly familiar to Westerners . Chinese scholars often resort to concepts of tripartism, corporatism or social partnership as they developed following the birth of modern industrial relations systems during the New Deal period in the U .S . and Germany's seminal works council legislation in the early 1920s . Western-based academics have also used such concepts to analyze the current changes in Chinese labor relations - sometimes coupled with the hope that labor systems rooted in European or Japanese coordinated market economies may promise a better future to Chinese workers than the market liberal U .S . model . However, such an analysis has to deal with two basic difficulties . First, Chinese trade unions (as well as employers' organizations) mostly lack popular legitimacy and independence from government and capital . These are the basic conditions for representing workers' interests within tripartite systems of bargaining and policymaking . Second, and perhaps more important, the restructuring of labor relations in China is increasingly taking place under those Western and Japanese models of production and labor management-cooperation that have undermined the prevailing forms of collective representation, industry-wide bargaining and job security . That is, they have broken up the foundations of what was known as the post-War social contract in industrialized countries . In spite of the truly unique characteristics of China's transformation, globalized patterns of capitalist organization and control have raised some very familiar bread-and-butter problems of trade unionism and labor organizing . Coverage of labor issues in Chinese mainstream media is dominated by neo-liberal rhetoric adopted from Western business schools . Yet the more serious industrial relations research in China raises fundamental questions about how labor standards can be legally guaranteed and politically controlled under a rapidly changing institutional framework . These debates begin with the analysis that China's transformation to a market economy has been mostly completed, but that the regulation of labor relations remains highly incomplete and fragmented . Complex questions are raised about the social character of market-oriented management and the new entrepreneurs - whether they represent a new layer of experts and technocrats necessary to run companies in a market economy, or a class antagonistic to the interests of working people . Notwithstanding divergent concepts and definitions, there is agreement that business and corporate interests have become well-represented in political decisionmaking on labor policies . Working people, however, are mostly kept out . This growing imbalance of power is seen as the basic weakness in legislative and government efforts to develop coherent labor policies and to introduce tripartite consultations between management, employee representations and government on minimum wages, wage guidelines, social insurance regulations, and other topics crucial to harmonious labor relations . One key question is the role of trade unions . For instance, Chang Kai and Qiao Jian argue that trade unions lack the ability to defend labor standards, since unions are mired in their traditional role as part of state-company management . In that role they mainly administer welfare programs, leisure activities and wedding parties . Trade unions, therefore, are mostly absent in the rapidly growing labor conflicts in the country . These include the sky-rocketing number of labor lawsuits by workers (both individually and as groups) and unofficial "mass incidents", including many workers' protests and strikes . Translating this perspective into the language of international industrial relations research, we may characterize China's current industrial relations practices as tripartism with four parties . Tripartite regulation of wages is severely limited by the lack of collective labor standards and negotiations, and the fragmented character of trade union representation . Fragmented representation limits union representation of employees' interests at the workplace, …