As part of its campaign against “SEIU’s Secret Deals,” UHW’s SEIU Voice has criticized SEIU’s engagement with the Chinese labor confederation ACFTU. It features a video made from a talk by Han Dongfeng, editor of the China Labor Bulletin, at a UHW meeting in March 2008. SEIU Voice states that “in 2007, SEIU leaders helped organize workers in China, including Wal-Mart employees, by brokering deals between the government-run union and the companies.”
This statement exaggerates SEIU’s role and influence with both the ACFTU and Wal-Mart. The views expressed by Han Dongfeng, an influential advocate for union democracy in China, do not reflect the latest reports of academics who are studying the concrete union experiences at Wal-Mart in China.
The reality is more ambivalent and more promising. By 2005, under prodding from high government and party officials, the ACFTU decided to “organize” foreign companies. The ACFTU’s choice of Wal-Mart as a primary target may have been influenced by SEIU representative Josie Mooney.
The ACFTU untypically engaged in underground grassroots organizing at a dozen Wal-Mart Superstores in 2006. Elections for union executive committees and chairpersons were conducted secretly. It was only after Wal-Mart ceased resisting union organizing efforts and agreed to recognize union branches in its other stores that the ACFTU, perhaps with relief, reverted to its usual “organizing” technique of letting the employer “set up” the union. Little genuine union activity resulted at most Wal-Mart stores.
However according to Anita Chan (a respected academic who has long studied labor in China), speaking at the 2008 Labor Notes Conference, at least one elected union chairperson at a Wal-Mart store has been fighting and bargaining with Wal-Mart management for the past year and a half. The ACFTU central headquarters in Beijing has helped him by overriding decisions of the pro-business city level union. Hundreds of Wal-Mart workers across China have been following the struggle and posting blog entries hailing this local Wal-Mart branch chairperson as their hero and leader. This may be only a tiny step towards genuine unionism in China, but any step forward is valuable.
SEIU’s engagement with the ACFTU should receive little credit or blame for the failures or successes of the ACFTU at Wal-Mart China. Han Dongfeng is certainly right that schmoozing with top Chinese leaders over Peking Duck can not constitute a strategy nor a real conversation benefiting workers. But a number of foreign union organizations, including SEIU, have begun to move beyond that. Creating genuine unionism in China is a huge undertaking, that will require a careful and strategic commitment from unions external to China to support reformers in the ACFTU.
Let’s work that what is now a mere talking point in the internal SEIU conflict might evolve into a serious discussion within U.S. unions on how to accomplish that task.
Filed under: Global organizing, Low wage workers, Organizing, Solidarity Tagged: | ACFTU, China, SEIU, Wal-Mart
[...] Chinese stores are now unionized, but are those unions effective? It appears to be debatable but all signs point to “yes”: As part of its campaign against “SEIU’s Secret Deals,” UHW’s SEIU Voice has criticized [...]
Jonathan,
“Yes” is premature. “Maybe” is more accurate.
In your blog posting you ask whether SEIU should be promoting national legislation that permits “fake” unions. Ironically SEIU is accused by its critics at UHW of promoting the same by negotiating agreements with companies. I do not agree that U.S. legislation should give management any more tools to subvert unions than it now enjoys. The Employee Free Choice Act would make it less difficult to organize workers without promoting management domination.