The Chinese working class is on the move: there is a wave of strikestaking place across China, and they’re winning. Workers at Honda have won a 30% pay increase in the latest strike affecting that company, while workers at FoxConn have reportedly been offered a 100% increase in ‘basic pay’ (with strings attached) after strikes and a string of employee suicides. The strike at FoxConn is particularly auspicious since that company has so far demonstrated considerable success in maintaining a divided, weakened, timid workforce. Across the country, a series of hard-fought strikes have pitted workers against the usual double act of management and cops (strikes are effectively legal, but the Chinese police force is hardly more pacific than the LAPD, and management frequently beat insubordinate workers) resulting in injuries but also some signal successes. The analysis of the China Labour Bulletin suggests two factors here: [READ THE REST]
April 10, 2010
COMMENT: Party of well, duh [Left Outside]
No one can have believed there wouldn’t be job losses, can they?
The firm I work at has undergone “efficiency savings” and a large portion of it has involved sacking people and making those left work harder. People have noticed.
New Politics Review 