ABSTRACT
The proletarianization of rural migrants is distinctive to contemporary China's development model, in which the state has fostered the growth of a “semi-proletariat” numbering more than 200 million to fuel labor-intensive industries and urbanization. Drawing on fieldwork in Guangdong and Sichuan provinces between 2010 and 2014, supplemented with scholarly studies and government surveys, the authors analyze the precarity and the individual and collective struggles of a new generation of rural migrant workers. They present an analysis of high and growing levels of labor conflict at a time when the previous domination of state enterprises has given way to the predominance of migrant workers as the core of an expanding industrial labor force. In particular, the authors assess the significance of the growing number of legal and extra-legal actions taken by workers within a framework that highlights the deep contradictions among labor, capital, and the Chinese state. They also discuss the impact of demographic changes and geographic shifts of population and production on the growth of working-class power in the workplace and the marketplace.
Notes
10. In March 2003, the central government implemented the Rural Land Contracting Law, which upholds the “thirty-year no-change rule” to household contracted farmland and provides cultivation rights to a plot of land for migrant workers including those who left the village years earlier.
15. Unless otherwise stated, we draw on our worker and manager interviews from a larger ongoing research project on Foxconn's production regime and rural migrant labor in China.
26. State Council of the People's Republic of China Citation2013.
27. The latest data in 2013 indicated that China's Gini is 0.47 (internationally, a Gini coefficient of 0.4 or above is considered high)—a level comparable to Nigeria, and slightly higher than that of the United States, all of which rank high in social inequality. See The Economist Citation2013.
29. In addition, male workers need to save money to enhance their attractiveness as husbands—the gender imbalance amongst the current generation of young people means that there is a shortage of brides. See Wei and Zhang Citation2011.
37. Despite strong opposition from the “sweatshop lobby” of transnational business, as represented by the American Chamber of Commerce, the US-China Business Council, and the European Union Chamber of Commerce, the National People's Congress of China promulgated the Labor Contract Law in June 2007 (effective 1 January 2008), after three rounds of revisions. See Cooney et al. Citation2007.
48. Yue Yuen workers bypassed the company union to organize the factory-wide strikes in April 2014. Activists called on Adidas, Nike, Timberland and other global footwear brand-buyers, in collaboration with Yue Yuen (and its parent Pou Chen Corp.), to pay health insurance and pensions owed to factory workers. See Sacom Citation2014 (Adidas).
55. China Labor Statistical Yearbook 2012 Citation2013, 405–6.
62. For example, in June 2014, workers at a 600–person Hong Kong-invested shoe supplier in Shenzhen pooled efforts to reorganize its union to make it more accountable. The action won support from the International Trade Union Confederation, Trade Union Congress, and Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (Sacom), among others. Workers demanded active participation in union activities in the face of counterattacks by management and upper-level union federations. See Sacom Citation2014 (Strongly).
63. Taking immediate control of the newly formed union, Foxconn founder and CEO Terry Gou appointed his special personal assistant, Chen Peng, to become the union chairwoman. See IHLO (International Trade Union Confederation/Global Union Federation Hong Kong Liaison Office) Citation2007.
65. The open letter, in original Chinese, is on file with the authors.
67. Foxconn Technology Group's seven-page statement dated 31 December 2013 is on file with the authors.
68. The Standing Committee of Guangdong Provincial People's Congress Citation2013.
69. Corporate concerns center on the restriction of the employer's ability to implement company rules, the growth of trade union or employee-elected representatives’ power, and the rising costs in negotiation over wages, production quotas, sick leave and annual leave, and other labor welfare benefits. See The Bulletin Citation2014; Li Citation2014.
73. China conducts national censuses in the years ending in 0 (and 1% population census, known as mini-census, in the years ending in 5). See National Bureau of Statistics of the People's Republic of China Citation2011.
74. Under the “selective two children policy,” which was endorsed by the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China in November 2013, couples are allowed to have two children if either parent is an only child. Previously, each spouse needed to be an only child to have a second child.
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