Sacom

Labor group pricks Mickey Mouse’s bad conscience
Jenny Chan, Chief Coordinator of Hong Kong labor rights group Students and Scholars against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM).

In January 2009, Hong Kong labor rights group Students and Scholars against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) caused a stir by censuring working conditions on mainland construction sites operated by New World China Land (NWCL), and alleging that the company – owned by one of Hong Kong’s biggest property developers – had repeatedly violated China’s labor laws.
Facing unwelcome media attention, NWCL invited SACOM to inspect one of their major construction projects in Shenyang, capital of northeast China’s Liaoning province. I spoke to Jenny Chan, SACOM’s Chief Coordinator, the day after she returned from leading a delegation of Beijing students to the site.
“It was a very calculated visit.” said Miss Chan. “NWCL controlled where we could go and what we could see, so it was more like a public relations gesture. But, on the other hand, it gave us an opportunity to talk to the management. They said they would allow student groups to organize training and other activities for the workers, and we have high hopes they will keep their word.”
SACOM was founded in 2005 to improve wages and working conditions for migrant workers in China’s mainland. Since China started its reform and opening up policy, around two hundred million people have moved from the countryside to the cities in search of work, but lacking permanent residency rights and often employed on a casual basis, life is tough for the newest section of China’s working class. And while their direct employers are often may be Hong Kong or Taiwan-owned contract manufacturers, the ultimate beneficiaries of their labor are top-ranking Western and international brands.
SACOM’s strategy is simple, says Miss Chan: ‘We name and shame the big corporations and use the media to amplify the scandal.” Their approach can put a lot of pressure on brands that care about their corporate image. Bad publicity reaching consumers and shareholders can have serious consequences as increasingly socially aware middle classes in the West modify their consumption patterns or move their savings into ethical investment funds.
The group’s first major campaign “Looking for Mickey Mouse’s Conscience,” targeted Disney, one of the world’s top ten brands. Soon after the Hong Kong Disneyland opened in 2005, SACOM began investigating souvenirs sold at the Park. Chan says that in Shenzhen and Dongguan they found factories supplying paper for story books where the machinery was so unsafe that a number of workers had lost fingers or hands. SACOM confronted Disney with allegations that their suppliers were running sweatshops, and demanded compensation for the injured workers. The drip of bad publicity – SACOM released ten separate reports – forced the US giant to the table. But Disney has a reputation for hostility to labor activism. “Negotiations with Disney were very tough,” says Chan. “They did not want us to gain an advantage.” Eventually, SACOM was able to secure 40 percent of the compensation the workers had demanded – a result Chan regards as a draw. SACOM, she says, is gearing up for another campaign focusing on the planned Shanghai Disneyland.
SACOM aims to force brands to reform their pricing and sourcing policies. How transnational companies deal with suppliers has a huge impact on workers, says Chan. “If they place their orders at the last minute and ask for a shipment within 2 weeks, then workers have to work day and night. And if they squeeze the price of their order to the minimum there is no room for workers’ welfare.”
But ultimately, says Chan, the most important thing is that workers organize themselves and acquire the confidence to bargain directly with their employers. One of SACOM’s key demands is that it be allowed into workplaces to give workers basic training on their legal rights and the basics of labor organization.
Chan is proud of a project the group carried out after negotiations with American computer giant Hewlett Packard. HP allowed SACOM to present training courses on labor law to workers in two of its supplier factories in Dongguan. The company also began to look at ways in which they could provide stable order books for suppliers to give managers room to improve labor rights. “Delivering ideas about legal rights is just one part of the training program. We hope that in the long run workers will be able to elect their own representatives so that they can communicate with their managers,” said Chan.
SACOM’s foot soldiers are university teachers and students in Hong Kong and China’s mainland. Often the student activists come from a similar background to the rural migrants. Chan herself was born in Hong Kong in the 1970s’ after her parents migrated from a poor area of Guangdong Province. The group has over 100 academic advisors who give the campaigns focus and direction. They organize seminars to provide a theoretical framework for the group’s work but fieldwork and investigations are carried out by SACOM’s full-time staff and student volunteers.
SACOM has received project funding from Swiss-based Catholic NGO Bread for All, and German NGO World Economy Ecology and Development. Chan makes no apology for seeking overseas funds. “We can’t get adequate funding from Hong Kong. We are quite confrontational,” she said, smiling, “but we get also quite generous donations from our academic advisors.”
Chan welcomes the new Chinese labor contract law that took effect in January 2008. One of the law’s main provisions aims to stamp out abuses associated with casual labor by forcing companies to draw up written contracts of employment. The law allows workers to claim compensation of double their wages for every month they work without a written contract. The new law, says Chan, “has increased the cost of noncompliance, and provided concrete compensation for workers.”
Workers have been able to bring many successful cases to labor disputes committees, says Chan. They are often assisted by labor support groups offering hotline services and legal advice. Most workers are aware of the labor contract law, she said, and are keen to take legal action if they believe their contracts are not valid. But according to Chan, there is still a big gap between the law’s paper provisions and effective enforcement.
One of the main challenges facing labor organizers in China is the mobility of the workforce. Migrant workers may be in the same factory for just a year or so before changing jobs or going home to get married. Given the high turnover, workers’ actions usually take the form of wildcat strikes and protests that flare up and die down over a few days. The workers organize their own informal groups, say Chan, often locality-based – for example workers from Sichuan Province may group together. Workers dormitories, Chan says, are also a focus for organization where workers raise funds and organize petitions to the government.
The key issue, says Chan, is that China’s residency laws make it difficult for migrant workers to put down permanent roots in the cities. The “hukou” system institutionalizes an assumption that they will return home to marry, have children and eventually retire. But for young people used to the greater opportunities and aspirations of urban life, going home to poor rural areas is an increasingly remote and unattractive prospect.
As regards China’s official labor movement, the All China Association of Trades Unions (ACFTU) Chan said some grassroots cadres are sympathetic to the workers and negotiate with employers or use their administrative power to get justice for individuals or small groups. But in general Chinese unions do not take industrial action. Unions are becoming more aggressive in organizing foreign invested enterprises and private companies but Chan maintains this is a membership drive to replace numbers lost in state sector downsizing rather than a sign of militancy. Branch chairmen often double up as HR managers, and if individual leaders become outspoken and confront the management they can be easily fired, said Chan.
One episode that summed up the union leadership for Chan came after SACOM organized a campaign last April against what it says were sweatshop conditions at Chinese-owned multinational Nine Dragons Paper. SACOM were surprised and pleased to receive a call the following month from the Guangdong Provincial Committee of ACFTU, inviting them to a meeting. “Their attitude was, on the one hand, quite open,” said Chan, “debating with a Hong Kong student group about what we meant by a Chinese sweatshop. But they quickly concluded that it was wrong to characterize such a big, developed enterprise as a sweatshop, criticized our report as biased and said we should present it in a more balanced way.”
“In fact, they should be glad civil society groups are carrying out this work. Otherwise workers might take radical actions and disrupt social stability,” said Chan, pointing to a recent incident in Shenzhen when a group of laid off workers locked factory gates and cut off power to the shop floor.
One problem, says Chan, is that union leaders follow the twists and turns of government policy. At first enthusiastic about the new labor law, after the government called for a relaxed enforcement of its provisions to ease pressure on companies hit by the financial crisis, the unions quickly fell in line. Union leaders are shaky and unstable allies, she concludes.
But Chan has nothing but praise for the young mainland students who carry out SACOM’s grassroots research. “This young group of students is so energetic, creative and well organized. They go into the factories in the summer and really experience the condition of the workers on the shop floor. I have high hopes for them and their concerns are for a more open, democratic, fair, sustainable China, and I really share their vision.”
(China.org.cn by John Sexton, May 4, 2009)