We may have reached a crucial turning point in the history of China’s trade union movement. For the first time since 1949, trade union officials are openly stating that the union should represent the workers and no one else, while new legislation in Shenzhen places collective bargaining – previously a no-go area – at the core of the union’s work. Photograph by lille abe@flickr.com

Draft regulations currently before the Shenzhen municipal legislature represent an important development in China’s labour law which could lay the groundwork for improved labour relations and give trade unions the opportunity to effectively represent workers in collective bargaining with management. Photograph. Migrant Workers in Shenzhen by Jervetson@flickr.com

Global retail giant Wal-Mart plans to sign collective labour contracts at all of its more than one hundred outlets in China by the end of September, according to the official Chinese media. Photo by h.dot@flickr.com

Retail giant Wal-Mart has signed a collective labour agreement with the trade union at one of its stores in China. The landmark agreement at the Shenyang store in northeastern Liaoning province covers employee remuneration, annual pay rises, over-time, paid vacations and social security payments.

The lack of legal compulsion and the impotence of many enterprise level trade unions are making the implementation of the Chinese government's collective wage consultation system an uphill struggle, union officials in the central city of Luoyang have conceded. Photo by Saad Akhtar@flickr.com

Workers in China do not have the constitutional right to strike. Yet, every day in the Pearl River Delta alone there is at least one major strike involving over a thousand employees and dozens of smaller strikes and stoppages. Photograph by Sebi

Inflationary pressure has forced Shenzhen to raise the minimum wage, already the highest in China, by 20 percent to the unprecedented level of 1,000 yuan a month. However, simply raising the minimum wage will not be enough to guarantee workers even a basic standard of living.

Labour disputes and strikes are as natural as arguments between a husband and wife, the vice-chairman of the Shenzhen Federation of Trade Unions has said. In a speech reported by the Southern Metropolitan Daily, Wang Tongxin, called for a more relaxed approach to strikes, which he said were the inevitable result of market economics and something society would have to learn to accept.

Guangdong trade union officials have publicly acknowledged that the most effective way to protect workers' wages is through direct negotiations between labour and management. Will their actions match their words?

CLB director, Han Dongfang, argues that China needs genuine collective bargaining between labour and management to make the promise held out by the new Labour Contract Law a reality.