In both countries ，in fact，there have been more labour disturbances in factoriesoperated by Taiwanese ，法语论文范文，Korean and Hong Kong investors than in the state sector.One reason is that Chinese and Vietnamese workers are experiencing very similarwork regimes on the shopfloor in these foreign-funded firms.Their managements tendnot to abide by safety regulations，and they pay workers few or none of the benefitsstipulated by law.They hire and lay off workers as the situation demands ，andshut down production lines and send workers home without any pay.They demand exhaustinglylong working hours，overtime work without overtime rates and sometimes withoutany pay at all，and deduct wages as a penalty for violating workplace regulations.[36]They provide poor and dangerous working conditions，no medical insurance or unemploymentbenefits，and at times subject workers to verbal and physical abuse.[37]Some ofthe worst factories have even recruited child labour. According to both Vietnamese and Chinese trade union officials，the most abusiveforeign bosses are the Koreans，next worst are the Taiwanese ，and then the HongKong Chinese.[38]The latter two groups are the major investors in both countries.[39]The harsh work regimes in many of these Asian firms have led to an increase in disturbancesand strikes and have instigated an adversarial pattern of industrial relations.In China，250，000strikes were recorded from 1988to 1994，and most of thesetook place in such Asian-invested firms.The number of？labour conflictsì，a broadercategory that includes incidents that stop short of strikes ，is climbing apace.In 1995there were some 210，000officially recorded cases ，a 54per cent leapover 1994，which was again a 51per cent increase over 1993.[40] In the mid-1990s，labour disturbances in China and Vietnam began heading indifferent directions.In China，strikes became not only more frequent but alsomore confrontational.China‘s official media has admitted that？the intense conflictsbetween bosses and workers in foreign ventures that have occurred in recent yearsare unprecedented ，rarely having occurred in state-owned enterprisesì；[41]and ？The problem now is that as soon as there is an incident ，the public security police，for their own reasons ，send policemen to intervene in labour disputes ，thusaggravating industrial relationsì。[42]Intimidation breeds violence.In one highlypublicized case ，more than 500workers besieged and beat up several Taiwanesemanagers of a concrete factory.[43]In Vietnam this kind of violence and counter-violencehas not yet been reported.[44] New Roles for the Trade Unions The Chinese authorities ，concerned to maintain social stability ，early inthe reform period foresaw a necessity to give the trade unions more autonomy sothat they could serve as a bottom-up transmission belt，especially in foreign-fundedenterprises.When Deng Xiaoping came to power in the late 1970s ，aware of theimplications of the Solidarity movement in Poland ，he revived the ACFTU and allowedlimited union reforms.[45]This predated the emergence of any domestic capitalismor a foreign-funded sector.The purpose was to provide a pressure valve to alleviatetensions between managers and workers ，especially since the managers were soonto be granted more autonomy.To counter-balance this，the Chinese government raisedthe nomenklatura rank of the enterprise-level trade union chair to a level equivalentto a deputy manager.[46]A few years later multi-candidate elections for trade unionchair were introduced ，[47]though these elections were not，in practice，法语论文题目，democratic.These tinkering-at-the-edges reforms have not helped much ，however，to sensitizetrade union cadres to workers‘interests，so long as the union chair is still amember of the nomenklatura and is responsible to the Party secretary or managerin each enterprise. Nonetheless ，as the Party-state decentralized authority and power ，the ACFTUat all levels continued to press throughout the 1980s for a bigger share of power.In particular ，by the mid-1980s ，as state workers‘job security and welfareprovisions experienced initial cutbacks and the first labour disputes erupted inthe foreign-funded sector ，the national union officialdom felt challenged to react.Taking advantage of the politically liberal period of 1988and early 1989，theACFTU passed a document that dropped the hitherto ubiquitous statement about？theunion being under the leadership of the Party ì。Instead，the primary functionof the ACFTU was redefined as the ？defence of staff，workers‘and the masses‘legal interests and democratic rights ì。If realized，this would have meant amore independent ACFTU.[48]Internal debates heard arguments that the ACFTU shouldshare power with the government.[49]This assertiveness was soon crushed in thegovernment‘s backlash against the Tiananmen protest movement of 1989.A month afterthe June Beijing massacre ，Jiang Zemin，the new head of the Communist Party，delivered a speech to the ACFTU that demanded union compliance with Party instructions.He pointedly declared that the union‘s number one mission was to？carry out itswork under Party leadership ì。[50]The ACFTU quickly relapsed into its formerdocility. |
