The Labour Politics of China’s Rural Migrant Workers

Abstract

This article analyses the Chinese rural migrant workers’ collective struggles within a framework that highlights the deepening of contradictions among labour, capital, and the state. At times of labour crisis, aggrieved workers have taken legal and extra-legal actions to defend their rights and interests in the absence of leadership by trade unions. From 1 January 2015, Guangdong provincial government was compelled to enforce new collective bargaining regulations to regulate labour relations, when an increasing number of workers leveraged their power to disrupt production to demand higher pay and better conditions within the tight delivery deadlines. In addition to discussing the workplace bargaining power at the key nodes in global supply networks, we highlight the impact of demographic changes on the potential increase of the marketplace bargaining power of workers.

Keywords:

• Chinese rural migrant workers
• the state
• labour laws
• workplace bargaining power
• marketplace bargaining power
• ACFTU (All-China Federation of Trade Unions)

Acknowledgements

We thank Andreas Bieler, Chun-Yi Lee, Barry K. Gills, Yingjie Guo, Tom Fenton, Ngai Pun, and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on earlier drafts.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCiD

Jenny Chan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4980-4048

Notes

1 Apple’s five-page email correspondence dated February 18, 2014 is on file with the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This publication arises from research funded by the John Fell Oxford University Press (OUP) Research Fund [ref. 152/015].

Notes on contributors

Jenny Chan

Jenny Chan (Ph.D. in 2014) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Prior to joining PolyU, she was a Lecturer of Sociology and Contemporary China Studies at the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, and a Junior Research Fellow (2015–2018) of Kellogg College, University of Oxford. She also serves as a Board Member of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Labour Movements. She is co-author of La machine est ton seigneur et ton maître (with Yang and Xu Lizhi, Agone, 2015) and of Dying for an iPhone (with Ngai Pun and Mark Selden, Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming).

Mark Selden

Mark Selden is a Senior Research Associate at the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Institute at New York University, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and History at Binghamton University, and Editor of the Asia-Pacific Journal. He researches the modern and contemporary geopolitics, political economy, and history of China, Japan, and the Asia Pacific. His work ranges broadly across themes of war and revolution, inequality, development, regional and world social change, social movements, and historical memory. His books include: China in revolution: The Yenan way revisited; The political economy of Chinese development; Chinese village, socialist state; Chinese society: Change, conflict and resistance; and The resurgence of East Asia: 500, 150 and 50 year perspectives.