Between company and community: The case of a community-based protest and its implications for employment relations in an acquaintance society context in China

Abstract

Research on labour disputes in China has primarily adopted a political economy perspective to focus on state-owned enterprises inland and foreign-invested plants in economically developed zones. Research has neglected community-based protests in small private firms in urbanising areas and their implications for human resource management and employment relations. This paper addresses this gap through an in-depth case study of a community-based, village cadres and clan leaders-led protest (including strike actions) against a privately-owned metal work factory located in a local community. Deploying the notion of community politics and ‘acquaintance society’, the study enriches our knowledge of industrial actions in China by extending the analytical scope of the context to understand the motive and choice of actions of individuals in participating in the disputes, and modes of dispute resolution. The study reveals the important role of social institutions and cultural norms, as well as the significance of discrete interventions of bureaucrats in the outcome of the dispute. We find that the settlement of community-based (labour) disputes may not officially involve key formal institutional actors, such as the trade union and legal/government authority. Rather, these institutional actors may be involved in an unofficial capacity, though drawing on power derived from their bureaucratic position in the intervention.

Keywords:

• Acquaintance society
• China
• community-based protest
• community politics
• political power
• strike

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Correction

Data availability statement

De-sensitized empirical data used in this paper can be made available upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2024.2360241

Notes

1 The actual percentage would be higher when those employed informally without a formal employment contract are included; this phenomenon is widespread in domestic firms.

2 Labour Geography is a sub-discipline of human geography and economic geography that deals with the spatial relationships and geographic trends with labour and political systems (see Castree et al., 2004).

3 The administrative hierarchy in China consists of the following: the central government→provincial government→municipal government→county government→township government→village. In principle, the higher level of government has authority over the lower level administration. However, the former is at the same time dependent upon the latter to meet the performance targets (e.g. economic growth, environment control). Villages, though part of the administrative structure, are not part of the government structure, they have village committees. By the same token, although village leaders are part of the administrative system, they are not part of the government officials and hold very little political power.

4 The adversarial business environment for domestic private firms in China has been widely observed (e.g. Huang, 2008).

5 Chen and Gallagher (2018, p.1030) defined ‘political fixes as the state’s structuring of institutional entities and processes in order to effectively dismantle collective action and disempower social movement actors during instances of dispute and conflict.’ ‘These include the procedural fix, for which court procedures work to curb collective action and atomize workers, and the representational fix, in which official organisations—specifically the ACFTU—monopolize the space for labor representation’ (Chen & Gallagher, 2018, p.1035).

Additional information

Funding

This article was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China.