Google Inc.'s challenge to Beijing is not a first: Levi Strauss & Co. 17 years ago walked away from China. Today, Levi's brand jeans are produced in China, and in Beijing last November the company opened its 501st store in the country. What happened in between?

The American retail giant Wal Mart has run into trouble in China again, after some of its suppliers were accused of serious abuses against their workers.

Up to 500 employees at hi-tech giant Intel’s factory in Chengdu, Sichuan staged a one day strike last month in a protest over wage discrepancies with employees recently transferred in from the multi-national’s Shanghai facility, according to a report in China Business Journal. The workers claimed that the employees from Shanghai were being paid up to four times more for the same production line positions.

A university student-worker at Coca-Cola’s bottling plant in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, was threatened and beaten by the managers of a labour supply company after he sought wages in arrears on behalf of himself and his colleagues, the Hong Kong-based pressure group Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) reported today.

Table of Contents

Part one: Those left behind

CLB presents a detailed examination of the current struggle for workers’ rights in China at an international conference to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which opened in Paris on 4 December. Photo by Saad Akhtar.

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

Corporate and Social Responsibility is steadily gaining acceptance in China, but for CSR to effectively protect workers rights it must encourage the active participation of workers in the process. Photo by Photograffiti Shanghai

China  Labour  Bulletin  appears  in  this article. Copyright remains with the original publisher
Beijing got the biggest big-box to go union. It's a sign the government is paying attention to employees' issues, but it doesn't mean the workers are on easy street
by Bruce Einhorn

Two journalists of China Business News have been sued by a subsidiary factory of Taiwan-based Foxconn for their reports about labour rights violations in the factory in Shenzhen. The compa . . .