Unmaking the authoritarian labor regime

Abstract

Can Chinese workers deploy limited resources to coordinate sustained protest? The prevailing literature describes Chinese labor unrest as leaderless, disorganized, and short-lived. Because of these characteristics, many scholars did not view Chinese workers’ collective struggles, although more numerous than those of any other country, as forming a labor movement. Prior research has suggested that many institutional factors constrain the emergence of an organized labor movement in China. These institutional inhibitors include China’s decentralized legalistic authoritarianism, the state’s bifurcated strategy that confers individual rights on workers but restricts their collective rights, uprooted official unions and the ban on independent worker organizations, and state repression of external support to worker collective action. Based on one year of participatory observation of Chinese labor nongovernmental organizations’ (NGOs’) mobilizing activities and sustained strikes and worker protests, I argue that collective bargaining, which was promoted by some Chinese labor NGOs, served as a viable mobilization mechanism that enabled Chinese workers to coordinate and sustain collective action. Specifically, I found that a leading organization, Laowei Law Firm, devised a Chinese version of worker-led collective bargaining practice and promoted it among labor NGOs and workers. Several labor NGOs have altered their prior individualized approach to promote worker-led collective bargaining to empower worker collectives, enhancing workers’ leadership development and collective action. The newly emerged worker protest leaders were veteran skilled workers who flexibly framed and staged contention. This new collective bargaining practice has contributed to more sustained and successful strikes by building workers’ strategic capacity to adeptly deploy power and resources to achieve goals. I argue that this development manifested embryonic forms of Chinese workers’ associational power, which is based on labor movement NGOs as an organizational vehicle and the collective action of worker-led collective bargaining initiatives. This manifested form of associational power results from the strategic agency of Chinese labor activists and workers: mobilizing limited resources to affect social change in a hostile environment.

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