Instead, it has used the new law as the basis for a huge registration drive by the ACFTU that began in June and is intended to sign up 80% of the largest foreign companies by the end of September.
Some companies responded by forming in-house workers' groups, but the ACFTU objected, claiming that this amounted to the creation of an alternative labour union, and was thus illegal.
Chinese leadership has begun to recognise that stronger worker representation is necessary to avoid massive disturbances and strife, but the solutions contemplated are more mediation by the ACFTU and more sympathy from courts for suits by workers alleging labour-law violations, as Christian Caryl reported in Foreign Policy recently.
The aim, allegedly, was to reclassify them as new employees.The new law has been a boon to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), an umbrella for all China's unions that is in effect an arm of government.
In recent years it has seen its power eroded as state-owned industries have collapsed and the private sector has flourished, eschewing niceties such as unions and Communist Party cells.After persuading Huawei, which denied trying to evade the law, to revise its plans, the ACFTU this week issued a stern warning to other companies not to try anything similar.
Competing unions are not allowed and by discouraging any sign of dissent, including strikes, the ACFTU has often been accused of failing to act in its members' best interests.
The most positive role the ACFTU can play is to step in to mediate after strikes take place; and, to its credit, it has been doing that increasingly frequently, according to the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin.The reason it's illegal to organise workers in China is the same reason it's illegal to organise any independent potentially political organisation in China.
Like it or not, Walmart now has a business partner, and if it wants to close stores, lay off employees, or change other aspects of its business such as operating hours and work quotas (what employees are expected to accomplish), that partner must be consulted.The history of the ACFTU is, in many ways, the recent history of China.
Far more important are the other implications of Walmart's new ties to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), a monopoly that claims 193m members and is deeply intertwined with China's government and Communist Party.
The role of the ACFTU, in the government's eyes, is to prevent worker unrest.One of the main aims of the new law is to counter the widespread complaints in China that the country has been over-zealous in its embrace of capitalism.
Unions in China are controlled by the Communist Party through an umbrella organisation, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), to which all unions must be affiliated.
