Repeat after me: this is not about us.
China’s legislature has enacted “sweeping reforms” in labor law:
BEIJING, June 29 — China’s legislature passed a sweeping new labor law today that strengthens protections for workers across its booming economy, rejecting pleas from foreign investors who argued that the measure would reduce China’s appeal as a low-wage, business-friendly industrial base.
The new labor contract law, enacted by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, requires employers to provide written contracts to their workers, restricts the use of temporary laborers and makes it harder to lay off employees.
The law, which is to take effect in 2008, also enhances the role of the Communist Party’s monopoly union and allows collective bargaining for wages and benefits. It softens some provisions that foreign companies said would hurt China’s competitiveness, but retained others that American multinationals had lobbied vigorously to exclude.
This is a welcome development but, honestly, I’ll believe it when I see it. In China where, as likely as not, the same guy who’s supposed to be enforcing the labor laws owns the factory or mine that’s violating the laws (or his brother does or his son does) I think it’s somewhat unlikely that this is a great deal more than window-dressing. And it will probably put China in somewhat better odor with European and American critics. As I noted earlier today: it’s been a tough week for China in foreign press.
But as I started this post: this is not about us. This is for domestic consumption. The multiple stories of child kidnapping and slavery in the brick kilns (and who knows where else) have been big news in China even if they’ve scarcely been mentioned here. No one knows how many labor protests there are in China every year (the stories are frequently suppressed) but it’s estimated to be nearly 100,000 per year so it’s a very, very big deal.
Freedom is the most important thing in the world after you’ve eaten and, with China’s prosperity improving and wages rising, I think we can expect more concern about things like working conditions and fair treatment. Whether the Chinese authorities see workers’ concerns as a threat to harmony or the the poor working conditions themselves will be critical for China’s future.
