From the article of 'Petrel'
No.601 / October 13, 1996

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The labor dispute increases suddenly in China

Resist the shifting on of contradiction



<> A popular drama in Shanghai

It is said that a continuous drama "The winter has passed" which describes a bitter struggle of a middle age woman worker who was laid off a spinning factory wins an great popularity in Shanghai now. Though the audience rate is 10s % usually, this drama just recorded an unprecedented height of 37 %, so we can understand the degree of popularity.

The heroine "ˆ¢’¿" ("Achin" in Japanese pronunciation) who becomes 40 years old are laid off because the government-owned spinning factory where she works was closed due to the recession.

Though she finds employment in the needlework factory of a Taiwanese enterprise again at last, but she retires because of the severe control. Her home collapses in hard living and husband's immoralities, afterward she starts a small factory with her companions before after piling up the hardship such as peddling umbrella with holding her child. This is the synopsis.

It is a drama that reminds somehow of "Oshin" the popular program of NHK before.

In the background of the popularity, there is a reality that the middle age women workers who are laid off go up to as many as 600 thousands only in Shanghai.

Shanghai that has about 14 millions population more than Beijing is a huge city that holds the bay east development plan aiming at the construction of a financial center of the Asia Pacific Ocean region and boasts of the especially outstanding growth even in China where keep the highly economic growth of two digit level.

However, the wave of the competition is closing in without mercy on this large city that looks as praising prosperity and the all contradictions of the open development of the capitalism are being shifted to the workers.

"The spinning industry of Shanghai has been the super recession business type in this two or three years under the pressure from the high-quality foreign products and the domestic products of inland where the pay is cheap. It is difficult for the middle age women who do not have any special skill as 'ˆ¢’¿' ('Achin') to starting afresh. If the income of the family will be reduced by half by the layoff, life will become difficult, too. The viewer might see the drama overlaping with them." ('The Asahi News Paper' dated September 28)



<> The labor dispute that increases rapidly

However, the unemployment unrest and the fighting hard of workers are not the problems of Shanghai alone. The employment situation is deteriorating nationally in China now in the circumstances of the management deterioration of the government-owned enterprises becoming aggravated.

"Mr. Lee Yonghai of the Policy Laboratory of the Total Industry Association of the Chinese Whole Country, who thought 'The 20 or 30 % of the 150 millions workers in the city part is surpluses,' forecasts 'The state that the supply of manpower exceeds the demand continues long' in the future. In addition, the income difference of the city part workers is '1.67 times between the highest and the lowest in '1990 and it expand to 2.19 times in 1995.'" ('The Japan Economic Newspaper' dated October 3)

It is not possible to say necessarily that a thorough "Rationalization" = personal cut for the "Surplus" workers of the government-owned enterprises is progressing.re are many government-owned enterprises holding the "Surplus" workers by "the Guidance" of authorities dreading that social unrest becomes aggravated if they start a large-scale restructuring at a stretch.

NeveNevertheless, the substantial personal cut progresses gradually., it can do nothing but wake up the sharp repulsion of the workers at once. The rapid increase of the labor dispute might be the above all evidence.

"The number of the labor dispute is increasing more rapidly in China where the shift to the market economy is advancing. According to statistics of the Work Ministry, the number that the public mediation organizations had intervened in 1995 was 23 thousands and it swelled up to 1.7 times or more the previous year and exceeded the expansion rate of 1994 years (1.5 times or more).

The cause of the rapid increase of the dispute is that the right consideration of the workers has risen as the life level goes up in addition to that the enterprises are increasing the dismissal person by the restructuring.

The number of labor disputes that the court processed besides the mediation organization also increased rapidly, and it reached about 28 thousands in 1995 and about 18 thousands only in one-June this year. It stayed in 10 thousands on the average in year until 1994." ('The Japan Economic Newspaper' dated August 16)

The paper tells the following cases and the like.iA big business department store in Shenyang city Liaoning province dismissed virtually the 1,100 employee in April this year, and the repulsing workers stood up dispute.eAn event that the employee in a factory holding a large debt jostled with the policemen who came to distrain the products occurred in Harbin city Heilongjiang province in the same month.

<> The sprout of class struggle

The central demand of the workers is the treatment improvement demands of the opposition to dismissing and the raise in wages and the public welfare and so on, and as for workers' struggle, the character of the economic struggle is strong. However, the truth that the struggle of the united workers is, though with hoisting the economic demands, a sprout of the class struggle does not change.

ThesThese struggles are the appearance that the workers are awaking to the consciousness as the workers and these are only the first steps of a long series of struggle that might never stop in spite of passing many twists and turns.hen farmer's struggle happened frequently in various places in several years before we evaluated that it is a skirmish of the workers' struggle, that time might probably be coming. The reason for it is that a real personal cut is about to start.

"The big factor that the labor problem become aggravated in spite of settleing of the violent inflation is that the 40 % of the government-owned enterprises panting with the deficit are carrying out the restructuring and the personal cut in full-scale. There is an analysis that though the official unemployment rate (in the city part) is a little less than 3 %, it reaches 8 % actually, too." (the same as above)

If "20 or 30 % of the 150 millions of the city part workers are surpluses" as being in the point ahead, it reaches from 30 millions to 45 millions of persons only by it.

Additionally, there exists a large crowd of the unstable employee = the substantial unemployed who flow out from the farm village to the city by 10 millions of persons every year.

If this huge workers' group stands up once in whatever shape it will be, the influence is inscrutable. The worker's struggle will do nothing without blowing off the maneuver of the bureaucrat of Jiang Zemin and the like who try to avert the people's dissatisfaction toward the graft and the rot of the high-level bureaucrat spreading more and more with the ideal silly talk of "the Soul Civilization Construction" at a stretch and shaking the rule of the bourgeois bureaucrat.

It is why we gaze at the struggle of the workers in China with the soul of class unity.



(Ken'ichi Suzuki)