China Divide: The (Limited) Rise of Labor in China

Posted by Stan on 6/11/10 • Categorized as China Divide

Posted on china/divide on June 10:

"Steel" - Thomas Hart Benton - 1928

Lots of labor sto­ries in the news these days, the two most pop­u­lar being Foxconn’s wage hikes and reor­ga­ni­za­tions, and Honda’s repeated strike prob­lems with its China labor force. It’s enough to make one think that col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing is gain­ing the upper hand in China and that a golden age of work­ers’ rights is com­ing soon.

Think again. The rea­son why wages are going up and the demands of labor are being lis­tened to is a con­gru­ence of labor mar­ket forces, legal reform and gov­ern­ment pol­icy. Whether labor becomes more orga­nized in the future is another ques­tion entirely, the answer to which is quite elusive.

Read the entire post here.


Tagged as:

Comments are closed.