Employees in China can establish labor unions without the
approval of the employer, the country’s trade union watchdog
confirmed on Tuesday.
"It’s necessary to hold discussions with the enterprises and try
to win their support but that doesn't mean workers can't set up
labor unions without their employers' approval," Guo Wencai, a
director responsible for union establishment with the All China
Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), told Xinhua.
On December 31, 2006, a labor union was set up at the IT company
Foxcoon's Shenzhen plant, where iPods are assembled, without
management permission. Foxcoon, the largest Taiwan-invested company
on the Chinese mainland, has at least 200,000 workers but had
refused to establish a labor union after years of negotiations.
The local union federation sent five officials to organize the
plant’s trade union and local media reported that no representative
from the company's management attended the inaugural meeting. "The
success was a breakthrough in our work and demonstrated the power
of the law, which must be followed by all enterprises in China, no
matter where the investors come from," said Guo.
The law allows a trade union to be formed in any domestic
enterprise with 25 or more workers and doesn't require approval
from the employer. About 300,000 foreign-funded enterprises
registered in China directly employ more than 25 million people.
This is over 10 percent of the urban employed. But only about 40
percent of those enterprises had trade unions by last October,
ACFTU figures show.
Wal-Mart, which has been widely criticized by human rights
groups and labor organizations for not allowing trade unions in its
stores, founded its first trade union at its outlet in Jinjiang
City, east China's Fujian Province on July 29.
All 62 Wal-Mart outlets in China had set up trade unions with
more than 6,000 members by the end of September, while KFC,
McDonald's, Roche, Pepsi, French bank BNP and Kodak all followed
suit. The ACFTU has said it’ll build on the Wal-Mart success to
promote trade unions in the world's top 500 transnational companies
in the country.
Public calls for a labor union in the Shenzhen subsidiary of
Foxcoon, the Hongfujin Precision Industry Co., erupted after a
newspaper reported last June that many of the plant's workers had
to work standing up for 12 hours a day. This had caused some to
faint from fatigue.
In early July the two journalists who wrote the report were sued
by Foxcoon for 30 million yuan (US$3.75 million). This was the
first such defamation case in China against individual reporters
rather than media organizations. Foxcoon dropped the lawsuit in
September.
(Xinhua News Agency January 17, 2007)