Update on Unionizing Wal-Mart, China
China's official newspaper reports that within roughly one week of the Shenyang Wal-Mart LLC signing a collective contract with the union, the other nineteen Wal-Mart locations all signed such contracts as well. Many companies in China have been signing such contracts for years--but they often just memorialize the minimum standards required by law and management-beholden unions do not even hold them to that. Will these be any different?
In terms of the substance of the agreements, the terms will be better simply because Chinese law, at least on paper, is getting better for workers. The news report is not very helpful in determining if the Wal-Mart contracts go beyond the law; in discussing the collective contract signed in Shenzhen, it simply states that the contract covers pay, work time, rest time, insurance and benefits, worker training, etc. In terms of the amount of pay, the contract states that wages must "clearly exceed" Shenzhen's minimum wage. The contract does establish a "collective wage consultation mechanism" though, by which, every December, the union and company will negotiate over the extent of wage increases for the coming year.
Thus, the critical question remains of how strong the unions that will be negotiating these wage increases and other terms will be. Is this campaign to sign collective contracts just a publicity stunt led by the national ACFTU officials in Beijing and Wal-Mart's China headquarters? Wal-Mart officials' enthusiasm about signing collective contracts that is reported in the story--they "support" and "urge" every Wal-Mart branch in China to sign a collective contract within two months--should raise some eyebrows. Wal-Mart and the national ACFTU are also said to be reviewing the collective contract to ensure its consistency with Chinese labor law and negotiating a finalized text so that copies can be sent to all Wal-Mart stars.
Well, we will have to wait and see what happens next December.
Strikes me as a nonstory.
So long as Wal-Mart is continuing to resist the unionization of its workers in the US, where it is headquartered and derives most of its revenues and profits, how can we even care about what it does in China?
Heck, given that Wal-Mart benefits exceedingly from China's sparsely unionized factory workers, this entire story is a farce.
How can you allow your service employees to unionize while squeezing your non-union, slave labor factory workers for the goods that your marginally unionized workers will then sell for "more than minimum wage" and even merit note at TPMCafe, unless the post is far more skeptical and derisive than the one offered here?
July 31, 2008 12:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
destor23,
In response to the comment above, Wal-Mart cares immensely about expanding its stores abroad, so it does matter that this unionization is happening somewhere other than where the company "is headquartered and derives most of its revenues and profits."
It is indeed frustrating that Wal-Mart's service workers in China are being brought into the ACFTU before the company's factory workers. But this move is ultimately more about the ACFTU's internal reforms than it is about Wal-Mart. If taking on an unpopular global retailer gives reformers in the union a bigger platform for touting the benefits of their agenda, then I don't have any real problem here.
That said, this collective contract sounds--at least judging from the People's Daily report cited--to be step down from the Shenyang contract, which, as the union and official media proudly noted, guaranteed 8% pay raises.
It will be interesting to read the other details when they do come out---how the contract actually came about, whether there is any variety in the contracts signed by different Wal-Mart stores, etc.
July 31, 2008 9:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent points, Manfred.
July 31, 2008 10:20 AM | Reply | Permalink