If you ask a factory worker or a waitress in Dongguan if they have had a pay raise recently, they will either stare at you blankly or just burst out laughing.

For all the hype in the Chinese and international media about  30 percent wage inflation and a "famine" (民工荒) of more than one million labourers in the Pearl River Delta, the reality for migrant workers remains the same; low pay, long hours and no job security.

In December 2009, a magazine article exposed the extent to which labour relations in China had deteriorated over the last year, with enterprises deliberately taking advantage of the government's leniency during the global financial crisis to exploit their workforce. The writer called on the government and trade unions to take concerted measures, including the introduction of collective bargaining, to alleviate the growing conflict between workers and management.

In this e-bulletin, CLB director Han Dongfang argues that moves by the authorities in Shanxi, the province at the heart of China's coal country, to close and merge small privately-run mines with larger state-run mines will only improve coal mine safety if, in addition, the miners themselves are allowed and encouraged to play a key role in safety management and engage in collective bargaining with their bosses over pay and work conditions.

China's workers are taking to the streets in ever increasing numbers. Angered by management abuses, and emboldened by the passage of new labour legislation, they are staging strikes, roadblocks and protests to demand the payment of wages in arrears, better working conditions and even the right to set up their own trade union branches.

This year, as every year, China Labour Bulletin mourns all those who died in the brutal government crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement on this day 20 years ago, and our hearts go out to the bereaved families, all of whom have paid a bitter price for their loved-ones' fateful efforts to bring China peacefully out of autocracy. Many of the bereaved families, turning pain into strength, have continued to campaign for vindication of the dead and for an official apology from the government for two decades now.

The mass unemployment, lower wages and job insecurity created by the global economic crisis threatens the livelihoods of millions of Chinese workers, especially rural migrants who have little or no social security net to fall back on. Will the Chinese government and trade unions give workers the help they need, or will workers be forced to take matters into their own hands?

HONG KONG / MONTREAL – Sept. 24, 2008 – A large part of China's remarkable economic development has been achieved at the expense of the basic rights of millions of former state-owned enterprise workers, says a new report released today by the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin and Canada's International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, commonly known as Rights & Democracy.
 

CLB is helping a retired miner in Sichuan with third-stage pneumoconiosis sue for work-related illness compensation after his boss, a local coal baron and parliamentarian, refused any payment. The trial began on 11 September 2008 at the Qu County People’s Court with the exchange of evidence.

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.

The nascent workers' movement in China is helping to drive the county's legislative development, CLB Director Han Dongfang told a Congressional-Executive Commission on China hearing in Washington DC on 18 June.