My 20 Years with a State Enterprise

On January 1, 2008, China enacted powerful new protections for workers.  Using hundreds of interviews with Chinese migrant workers and business managers, ILRF's new report examines the impact of the Labor Contract Law on workplaces in the country's export manufacturing hubs.  The report finds persistent low rates of signed contracts between employers and employees and only modest advances in social insurance coverage, with older workers lagging behind younger workers in both categories.  It also contrasts the channels through which different generations access legal informati

(This article is written in Chinese only.)

(This article is written in Chinese only.)

Job2709 BA A5 Flyer the Facts Final

Labour movements in Asia employ a wide range of means to defend workers from the control of capital, and make gains in their ability to control their work conditions and participate in decision-making about their welfares as workers and citizens. The key known tools are those of collective bargaining with employers at the workplace. They may also engage in actions including strikes, protests and demonstrations, with the target of their actions being either employers or the government, or even public sympathy. Another major avenue is through battle in courts, challenging capital through judicial processes. These are methods guaranteed by constitution, but confined by regulatory frameworks, such as the labour law, the trade union law, freedom of expression, etc. However, while offering leverage and protection to the trade unions and workers, they also put up barriers and narrow the range of measures workers can take to bargain for improving their conditions. Going beyond the legal frameworks immediately puts workers into illegal status or even criminality. Workers are forced to struggle politically as well as economically, when the state and its related institutions tend to limit workers’ legally acceptable demands to economic ones only. This explains the immediate interest of the labour movement in state and politics – ‘politics’ understood in the limited sense of electoral politics.

By Sri Wulandari

In democratic politics, the art of the possible means the art of extending the possible, the art of creating the possible out of the impossible. It is true that the logic of realpolitik is the only logic that is effective in the state of public despair. Democratic politics has the power to bring about a political change of state and make possible what was impossible before. This is not sentimental idealism but plain realism: it can happen and it does happen.

Q: Is AITUC affiliated with any political party? A: No, AITUC is not affiliated with any political party within India. We are a leftist trade union, only affiliated with the global union federation, World Federation of Trade Unions. AITUC is the first national trade union of India. We were established in 1920, and through 1947 AITUC remained the only national trade union federation.

INDIA - Interviews with Two Trade Unionists