En un reciente viaje a China (el noveno
desde 2006), realizado como integrante de una delegación sindical-empresarial y
en aplicación del Acuerdo Marco con la multinacional española, con visita de fábricas
de calzado proveedoras de Inditex, hemos detectado importantes incumplimientos
de los estándares de trabajo decente en esta industria.
El informe completo del viaje se encuentra en:
cuyo
índice es:
1.
La novena visita a China
2.
Algunas notas sobre China-2016
3.
Características de las empresas visitadas
4.
Condiciones de vida y de trabajo
observadas.
5. Principales problemas observados:
régimen de contratación, jornada
de trabajo, la cotización a la Seguridad Social.
6.
Sobre las auditorías
7.
Sindicalismo y acción
sindical en las empresas visitadas
8. Los sindicatos oficiales chinos,
la ACFTU, y su relación con el Acuerdo
Marco y la defensa del trabajo
decente
9.
Algunas consideraciones sobre este viaje y los proyectos
de futuro
Los problemas detectados, a los que se hace
referencia en el informe y están sintetizados en el nº 5 del mismo, señalan la
necesidad de que en base al propio Acuerdo Marco que ha posibilitado esta nueva
“aproximación sindical” se desarrollen las iniciativas adecuadas para abordarlos
y avanzar en su solución. No va a ser fácil, teniendo en cuenta la ausencia de
un sindicato que represente realmente a la clase trabajadora del país y la
negativa detectada en los sindicatos oficiales chinos, la ACFTU, a considerar
esta problemática.
Todo ello supone por tanto un serio reto para el
sindicalismo internacional, concretamente para IndustriALL Global Union,
firmante del Acuerdo Marco con Inditex, así como para las grandes marcas cuyos productos proceden
de este país considerado como “la fábrica del mundo”.
A esta cuestión hemos dedicado una parte importante de la
reunión de trabajo que los Coordinadores de IndustriALL Global Union para la aplicación
del Acuerdo Marco con Inditex hemos mantenido en el día de hoy con los
responsables de su Departamento de Sostenibilidad.
Incorporamos a continuación la versión inglesa del informe:
Incorporamos a continuación la versión inglesa del informe:
Index
1.
Ninth visit to China
2. Some notes on China-2016
3. Characteristics of the factories we visited
4. The living and working conditions we observed
5. The main problems we observed: hiring system, workday,
Social Security contributions
6. About audits
7. Trade unionism and trade union action in the companies
we visited
8. China’s official trade unions, ACFTU, and their
relationship with the Framework Agreement and the defence of decent work
9. Some considerations about this trip and future
projects
1.- Ninth trip to China
The trade union-business delegation in this new
trip to China in June was made up of: 1) in the case of the unions (IndustriALL
Global Union — IGU), Isidor Boix and Víctor Garrido, as IGU’s General
Coordinators for the Global Framework Agreement (GFA) with Inditex. Once again,
as in previous visits, the official Chines trade unions, ACFTU, did not
participate, which matter is discussed below, and 2) on the part of the company,
María Morell (from Inditex’s Sustainability Department), Alejandro Pertusa (in
charge of sustainability at the Tempe supply chain –subsidiary and footwear
supplier of Inditex) and Andrew Feng (in charge of Inditex’s Sustainability
Department in China). Jing Wang was our interpreter during the trip.
This ninth trade union
trip to the People’s Republic of China was preceded by:
1)
A first trade union trip
to China in 2006, visiting Inditex and Mango supplier textile factories
in Shanghai and Shenzhen.
2) In 2013, a visit
to Inditex’s supplier garment and footwear factories in the Guangzhou area.
3)
In 2007, 2014 and
2015, we visited Mango supplier garment factories in the Hangzhou area.
4) Two trips in 2008,
one participating in the CCOO confederal delegation to Beijing for interviews
with the management of China’s trade unions, ACFTU, and another in
representation of CCOO’s Peace and Solidarity Foundation for meetings with the
management of the School of Labour Relations of the People’s Republic of China
University’s Employment Research Institute and with the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences’ European Studies Institute. This was an attempt, which
ultimately failed, at promoting a study on working conditions and labour
relations in garment factories that supply international clothing brands, as
well as the possible creation of a Chinese-Spanish forum on labour relations.
5) In
2010, a delegation of ICEM (International Trade Union Federation of
Chemical, Energy and Mining Industries, now part of IndustriALL Global Union)
participated in a meeting with a wide-ranging delegation of China’s official
trade unions, ACFTU (representatives of different sectorial federations and
departments of the confederal management).
Now, in June 2016, we visited Inditex’s supplier footwear factories in
the Guangzhou area.
All the factory visits were announced to all supposedly interested
parties well in advance. In all them, we tried to get a representation of
China’s official trade unions, ACFTU, to accompany us but were unsuccessful in
all cases (as on previous occasions). At the same time, we planned interviews
with the ACFTU management, which was “officially” possible in 2006, 2007, 2008,
2014 and 2015, and “unofficially” in 2013. However, this was not possible this
year (2016), the same as in 2013, due to an “impossibility” that has supposedly
been overcome. Below is a section on relations with China’s official trade
unions and their evident desire not to get involved in the activities of
IndustriALL Global and Spain’s CCOO-Industry, aimed at promoting decent work in
global clothing brands’ supply chains in the country.
The factory visits, in this latest trip, were carried out following the
work model that we have been applying in this trade union activity for 10
years. During this time, we have visited more than a hundred factories that
supply Spanish brands (belonging to Inditex, and some to Mango and El Corte
Inglés) in 11 important countries in Inditex’s production chain. The first one
was precisely China, in 2006.
As on other occasions,
the work was carried out as follows:
· Joint interview between
the trade union-business delegation and the management of the Chinese company.
· Joint visit to the
facilities, during which the trade union delegation selects some workers for
subsequent individual interviews with trade union representatives.
· Individual interviews
between the trade union delegation and the workers selected during the factory
tour. The company provided us with each worker’s contract along with the
payslips and clock in/out records of the entire workforce. Although these
workers still had a reserved, fearful attitude, more than in other countries
(Vietnam, for example), we saw some improvement in this regard compared to
previous trips.
·
On this occasion, we
only had a brief encounter with a member of the official union management in
one of the factories. In all of the factories, the “trade union” leaders were
also senior managers in the company, resulting almost always in one of the
following two circumstances: either they were not in the factory or they were
part of the company delegation (often being in charge of personnel) that
received us on our arrival and with whom we had the initial interview, in which
they also gave us the employers’ view of the official “trade union” activity.
·
On other occasions, and
in other countries, after finishing the visits to the factories, when the local
trade unions have participated in this union work (which has never happened in
China to date), we have held assessment meetings with them on trade union premises.
This was followed by a meeting featuring the participation of Inditex
representatives as well, with the objective of establishing a regular working
relationship between them and local trade unions, also establishing immediate
objectives based on any matters detected in the factory visits, and on global,
trade union and business approaches.
2.- Some notes on
China-2016
As in previous trips, these words are not meant
to analyse the particular country’s current situation. There are abundant and
frequent references to China in the media, in view of the great interest in all
the news that reaches us from China on a daily basis. On the other hand, we
believe that most of the data and impressions from previous trips, particularly
from 2015, are still valid.
However, it is worth providing some
supplementary data, considerations and observations. Some feature the latest
statistics and others were spotlighted in China’s official (and only) press, in
this case in its English-language version, the “CHINA DAILY”:
· China’s current
population is 1.38 billion inhabitants, with India fast approaching (it now has
a population of 1.34 billion). According to some forecasts, India will surpass
China in 2050, or even in 2022 according to others, based on their different
growth rates (around 13 million births this year up to July in India compared
to less than 9 million in China) and with a similar number of deaths (around 5
million in both countries). This growth is also accompanied by a similar male-female
imbalance in both countries (around 30 to 40 million more men). The changes
that have been introduced in China regarding the single child policy (and
legislation) do not seem to have had any noticeable impact on this tendency.
All of this also directly influences the age pyramid in China, which faces the
danger (unlike India) of population aging (over-60s could rise from 14% in 2010
to 33% in 2050). Another difference between both countries, which does not seem
to modify the aforementioned trends, is that life expectancy in China is around
75 years compared to around 66 in India.
·
GDP growth in China in
2015 was 6.9%, 0.1 below the planned (and, it seems, desired) 7%, and lower
than that of all previous years in the latest period. However, this GDP is
still the world’s number one in “purchasing power parity” (i.e. in the volume
of goods and services at each country’s prices) and second only to that of the
USA in absolute value. The objectives set in the current Five-Year Plan are
still in force, including “annual growth of not less than 6.5%,” in order to
double its GDP from 2010 to 2020 and thereby lift 70 million that are
considered poor “out of poverty.” Prime Minister Li Keqiang has pointed out
that GDP growth in the first six months of 2016 was 6.7% and 120 billion USD
has been spent on lifting 10 million people out of poverty this year. The
“slowdown” in GDP in 2015 resulted in stock market crashes all over the world
when it was detected. The year 2015 was also the first in which the services sector
contributed more than any other to GDP, with 50.5% of the total.
·
The ongoing wage rises
(with annual increases since 2004 of around 14.3% in the public sector and
18.3% in the private sector –we will discuss this matter later) have led the
Finance Minister (Lou Jiwei) to point out that “wage rises in recent years have
been far superior to increases in productivity.” Some employers have told us
that this tendency “has finished,” although we did not observe this to be the
workers’ impression, or desire, and we are unaware of the official “trade
union” assessment in this regard.
· Differences in
country-city spending power hinder growth in the domestic market.
· The amount of “internal
migrants” is said to be 277.4 million, 20% of the population, which means that
a minimum of 10 million new jobs have to be created every year.
· The injection of Chinese
capital into the world’s “global value chains” continues to advance, resulting
in China having less technological dependence and stimulating the development
of its own technology.
·
The “CHINA DAILY” of
those days featured almost daily, and on the front cover, concern about what it
calls a “commercial war” in relation to the West’s “antidumping” measures, and to
threats from others, particularly in the case of iron and steel. The newspaper
claimed that China “does not” want such a war and pointed out that both the USA
and European countries “subsidised their iron and steel” companies in the
crisis, further highlighting that in 2015 China “only” exported 7% of its iron
and steel production.
·
This matter was also
stressed, according to the same source, during the visit of the country’s
president, and the Chinese Communist Party’s secretary-general, Xi Jinping, to
Poland, Serbia and Uzbekistan, as part of its efforts to activate the modern
“silk road.”
·
Another front, at least
in the media, is the fight against corruption. On June 16, “China Daily”
devoted a lot of coverage and headlines to the 27-year prison sentence that was
given to Zhou Yonghang (former member of the all-powerful Permanent Committee
of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party’s Central Committee), as well as
the 19-year and 9-year sentences delivered to his son and wife, respectively.
It also underlined that this was “a verdict that took place 6 months after”
President Xi Jinping “called on an intensification of the fight against
corruption” (I do not think that this implied a lack of independence on the
part of the judiciary, who are constitutionally subject, on the other hand, to
the Party). A Chinese TV series on the repression of corruption was also
announced.
· Another front in the
official press is the permanent and ostentatious proclamation of the defence of
“human rights” in the country. On June 15, the newspaper devoted 6 large pages
to a “Report on the Implementation of the National Human Rights Action Plan of
China 2012-2015.”
· And without mentioning
that the news had a direct relationship with the above, on June 17, the
newspaper announced that “in 2018 Shenzhen will most probably be the safest city
in the world” as a result of the installation of numerous cameras in the city
streets and their permanent monitoring, generalising what has already been
applied to the district of Longgang and its demonstrated effectiveness for
“detecting and arresting any suspect in seconds.”
·
It is worth remembering,
in relation to the Chinese people’s political rights, what was pointed out in
previous reports, namely that economic development seems to be accompanied by a
slow public transformation process. The Communist Party’s Political Conference
in September 2014 spoke about “consultative democracy” as a “gradual objective,”
so that the “people can participate in governing the country.” However, it
placed the Party “above the judicial system” and “meritocracy” above universal
suffrage, all based on the country’s specificity, its culture, its tradition,
with an express rejection of separation of powers (also backed by an
authoritative quotation: “as Deng Xiaoping declared back in 1987”). And
accompanying the renewed leadership with a certain formal revival of “red
symbols” (“the 2nd generation of reds has come to power,” is an
expression used by some China watchers). The young people of the Cultural
Revolution are now leading the country, with a return to certain symbols and
rites from Mao’s time, as well as references to “Marxism” and “socialism.”
3.- Characteristics of
the factories we visited
The footwear of Inditex’s different brands is managed by its subsidiary
TEMPE, with its supplier factories mainly located in Vietnam and China,
although it also has a few in other countries that supply Inditex. We were
unable (as we have indicated on other occasions and will discuss below) to
carry out what we are progressively attaining in most of the countries where we
visit factories: the participation of local trade unions in the union work
project, which enables them to suggest factories to be visited based on their
knowledge of Inditex’s production chain. We therefore suggested to Inditex that
we visit 4 factories of different sizes, with recent assessments, corrective
action plans underway in order to improve their conditions and, in the case of
some, a subcontracting relationship with another of the visited factories.
Below is a summary of
the characteristics of the factories we visited:
·
One of them was
Taiwanese owned (belonging to an industrial group with more than 100 companies
in different sectors, ranging from footwear to food), another from Hong Kong
and the other two belonged to continental China (one of them had a
subcontracting relationship with the larger one, which regularly transferred
part of its production to the smaller). In the first two, the top executives and
senior technical managers were also from Taiwan and Hong Kong.
·
They all essentially
worked for exportation (for large global brands), without their own brand, but
with a small amount of their production for China’s domestic market and also
for online sales worldwide. The factories we visited work for Inditex (between
30 and 90% of their production), as well as for other client brands such as GAP,
Adidas, Nike, Columbia, George, Timberland, Next, Tesco, Walmart, ... In one
factory, 50% of its production is for Inditex and the other 50% for America’s
GAP. These figures are of special interest in view of the initiative that we
will refer to below as regards some important problems that have been detected,
particularly in relation to the exorbitant number of work hours.
·
The explanations we were
given seem to indicate a progressive increase in the quality of the
manufactured product, with simpler footwear being displaced to other countries
in the region (Vietnam, Cambodia, India, …).
·
The delivery terms for
other brands were generally 50% longer than those of Inditex (generally with
larger orders), although this did not seem to be problematic as regards
organising their work. In fact, they admitted that in the case of urgent
orders, they nearly all resorted to an increase in overtime and workdays in
order to satisfy demand. Only one of the four factories (with about 500
workers) told us that during peak production periods they transferred part of
their production to several regular workshops (with about 200 workers in
total), which are authorised and audited by Inditex.
· The number of workers
ranged from 135 to 950, with the smallest one working for the largest; the
other two had 300 and 500 workers. Women made up between 50 and 60% of the
workers, more so in offices in all cases compared to the workshop. All of this
indicates a noticeably different female-male ratio in the footwear industry
compared to the garment industry, which has a higher proportion of women.
Despite the existence of legislation to this effect, in practice pregnant women
are not given the easiest jobs. Normally, we were told, women “decide to leave”
for their home village when they find out that they are pregnant.
·
Staff
turnover was normally around 30% per cent, although it could reach 50% some years.
In several factories we observed that several workers chose to stop working for
a spell (several weeks or months) and then return to the same company, which
generally rehired them. On other occasions, especially in the case of young
people, they left to work in the services sector, receiving less pay but
working in jobs that were “not so hard.”
·
The number of workers
between the ages of 16 (the minimum working age in China) and 18 was very
small; they did easier jobs but worked for the same number of hours as the rest
of the workforce.
·
Absenteeism was around 1
to 2%, reaching up to 3 or 4% at the beginning of the workday, taking into
account those arriving late.
· The technology was
Japanese, Italian, German, Taiwanese for the best machines, and Chinese for
simpler tasks, although this seems to be attaining a better technological level.
·
One of the four
factories we visited was in an area where the monthly legal minimum wage was
1,210 RMB (or “yan,” about 165 euros), another with 1,530 RMB (€ 209) and other
two with a minimum wage of 1,510 RMB (€ 206), all of them in the province of
Guandong, whose capital is Guangzhou (formerly Canton).
·
Although wages in the
country have been increasing (but, as indicated above, some factories told us
that they have the impression that these important annual increases carried out
by the Government “have finished), this is the not the case with the prices
paid by Inditex and other brands (one factory told us that these could even
decrease by around 5% per year). Even so, on this occasion the employers had
practically no complaints nor did they use any arguments or pretexts to oppose
the improvement of working conditions. Rather, they pointed to improvements in
work productivity, although we did not see any formal projects to improve
productivity. The figures provided by one of the factories show that, in only a
few years, it had doubled its workforce while tripling its production. This
matter, however, came to light thanks to our questions in this regard, rather
than by its own, spontaneous formulation, and could be linked to the fact that
the new workers (who were hired with a lower turnover rate compared to before)
were, increasingly, young people born in the region, which led to a decrease in
the number of recent migrants from inland China (in one factory, however, they
still made up 90% of the workforce). And some of the new workers were from
other footwear factories, which produced for the domestic market or were
secondary workshops for other brands.
·
Half of the factories
had Inditex’s Code of Conduct (generally along with that of other brands, as
well as that of the BSCI) on display in English, one in Chinese, although
almost all of them in places were the majority of workers did not pass by. When
we asked the workers about this, they did not know what we were talking about.
In the case of the “trade union leaders” (business executives) that we
interviewed, Inditex’s Code of Conduct sounded “familiar” to them but none of
them had heard of the “Global Framework Agreement” with international trade
unions. In relation to China’s sectorial “Code of Conduct” (similar to the
first of Europe’s BSCI), nothing was known about it in any of the factories
(although in previous trips we saw that the management of China’s official
trade unions were familiar with it).
· The subcontracted
factory belonging to the primary supplier claimed that Inditex audited them but
not GAP, the other brand for which they both worked.
·
In one of the factories
(located in an area with a fair amount of tourism), our visit coincided with
that of two “government” (seemingly municipal) inspectors, which enabled us to
include this matter in our interview with employers in direct relation to our
own management. Apparently, they told us, the government was interested in
everything, but they in fact came (more frequently that the brands’ auditors)
to verify the environmental impact of their activity (waste treatment and other
matters, since this was a tourist area) and if overtime was being paid, although
they did not ask about the amount of such or whether it exceeded what is
stipulated by Chinese legislation. In the other factories, there was a lot less
governmental monitoring. In relation to the possible control of the “local
trade union,” they were either not aware of it or mixed it up with that of the
“government.”
· All
of the factories did piecework, either formally or de facto (but with payslips
based on worktime).
4.- The living and
working conditions we observed
Our interviews with the companies’ management and with several workers
in each of them produced fairly similar results, with important differences
regarding the workday, which we will discuss specifically below.
a) Work contracts:
According to China’s labour legislation, after two temporary contracts,
the third one must be permanent. However, non-compliance regarding this matter
does not concern companies and its fulfilment is not demanded by the workers or
trade union. In one factory, they became permanent workers after completing a
first contract of 3 to 5 years, although due to staff turnover, only 20% had
worked for more than 5 years. In another factory, they became permanent after
10 years, although at that time only 4% had attained this goal. In another two,
they renewed the contract of the entire workforce, including technicians, every
year without any limit. Few companies have trial periods for new contracts,
although we have seen some cases of 6 months for an assembly job.
b) Wages
We have already mentioned the diversity of minimum wages established by
law (165 and 209 euros per month), which gives rise to different salaries in
the workshop. However, wages are almost the same in the offices and in the case
of line managers and department heads. Remuneration in the workshop, in fact,
was based on piecework, but in payslips it was indicated and calculated
according to hours worked, including overtime. In all the factories wages were
paid by bank transfer, except for the “red envelopes,” which we refer to below.
All
of this results in the following situation:
· Workshop salaries ranging from 350 to 550 euros per
month for a total number of weekly hours ranging from 66 to 74, i.e. between 26
and 34 hours of overtime per week, apart from the normal legal workweek of 40
hours. It is worth highlighting, in relation to the remuneration detected in
previous visits, the increase in bonuses in the final amount compared to the
basic wage.
· Line and office managers, between 400 euros (with no
overtime from Monday to Friday, but working on Saturday, which is considered
overtime) and € 1,000 (with overtime) per month.
· The highest wages in companies (we were told) ranged
from 1,500 to 2,700 euros per month for the top executives.
These
totals are calculated according to the following salary structure:
1.
Basic wage, i.e. the local legal minimum; on this occasion, we
found a greater variety of amounts in nearby localities within the same
province.
2. Overtime, which proved to be the most important part of the
salary, although in practice it was a theoretical calculation that was adjusted
in line with the piecework remuneration that exists in most companies and that
results in a certain “flexibility” of worktime (in several factories, the
workshop workers told us that they could leave “a little earlier,” in relation
to the usual 2 or 3 hours of overtime, “if they attained” the required
production). The estimated calculation for an hour of overtime, according to
their legislation would be 150% of the normal hourly rate, 200% in the case of
a Saturday/Sunday and 300% for working on a public holiday.
3.
Different types of bonuses
(the usual name for extra pay), which may be subsumed, at least partially, in
piecework:
a.
Attendance bonus, between 4 and 5 euros per month if they work and
arrive punctually every day. Around 90% of the workforce receives this bonus.
b.
Production bonus, ranging from 7 to 40 euros per month, established by
the line manager when piecework is not paid directly. Some factories have a special
bonus if the workers exceed a certain number of pieces established by the
company (the concept of these being amounts that could be negotiated, as
regards production volume or remuneration per piece, does not even exist).
c.
Flexibility bonus, around 18 euros per month, applicable to half of the
workforce.
d.
“Good behaviour” bonus, assigned at the line manager’s discretion to a few
workers (around 5 to 10%) and amounting to 30 or 40 euros per month.
e.
Heat bonus. One factory told us that they had a bonus during the
hottest months (June to October) of around 20 euros for working “at more than
350C.”.
f. Seniority bonus, which exists in theory but has gradually been
disappearing due to pressure arising from the hiring of young people, who are
generally more productive and felt that they were being discriminated as
regards remuneration.
g.
“Red envelopes,” with a long tradition, at least in this region; once
or twice per year (always at New Year according to the Chinese calendar),
sometimes almost symbolic (from 2 to 50 euros), handed over to each worker and
generally with the same amount (although sometimes they vary somewhat and are
distributed randomly). Another more important one (of up to €700) is handed to
managers and executives at the company management’s discretion.
h. 13th payment, which some companies pay to executives and generally
amounts to a complete monthly wage.
c) Social
Security Contributions:
There are 5 types of insurance in China, with contributions from both
the company and workers (the latter pay approximately half compared to the
former); the same amount is paid for all (based on the minimum wage), around € 70/month
on the part of the company and € 35/month by the worker. We found a
variety of practices in the different companies, always with the argument that
they only pay for a few because the workers “didn’t want to pay” (one factory
told us that if they discounted Social Security contributions then “the workers
left”). Some workers still claimed that they “paid it in the villages,” and it
seems that when they change company then they lose what they have contributed,
also with reference to a municipal insurance system for a future retirement
pension (a 19-year-old worker told us that he paid about 130 euros for this,
but he did not know what pension he would receive).
The situations we found
range from a company that pays such contributions for practically the entire
workforce (except for around 15 people that worked after retirement age -60 for
men, 50 for women– who did not receive a pension and did not have to
contribute) to another that contributes for 5% of the workforce, including
another that paid for half of its workers but claimed to have them covered by a
private accident insurance policy. One factory claimed that the government
requires that they pay Social Security for “60% of the workforce”; another,
that the government checks its Social Security contributions, but not the hours
worked.
d) Worktime
This is, undoubtedly, the main problem we detected. Chinese legislation
establishes a maximum of 36 hours of overtime per month, in addition to the
“ordinary” workweek of 40 hours. The maximum of 60 hours per week indicated by
the ILO would therefore amount to a maximum of 80 hours of monthly overtime
(above the amount of worktime established by Chinese legislation). However, the
normal situation is 11 hours of daily work from Monday to Saturday, and often 8
hours more on Sundays, which amounts to 20 to 34 hours of weekly overtime
(which would mean from 85 to 145 hours of overtime per month, well above the
legal maximum of 36). We observed that some workers occasionally worked more
than 100 hours of overtime during some months. This is not a sporadic situation
but seems to take place, with some variations, throughout the year.
The labour system that gives rise to this worktime consists of 8 hours
daily, from Monday to Saturday, with a break of 1 or 1½ hours for lunch, with
another break of 30 minutes to 1 hour before working 2 or 3 hours of overtime
from Monday to Friday, and normally on Saturday too. Work on Sunday is
generally limited to 8 hours, with one or two Sundays off per month, as the
“normal” work model, particularly during peak periods.
Work is carried out on a daily basis, except
for 11 official inter-annual public holidays (which always seem to be free of
work) and 5 days of “holidays” for the Chinese New Year, which are sometimes
extended to 10 or 15 days for the entire workforce (workers with more than 10
years of seniority in the company should legally have 10 days of holidays, but
this seems to be applied in very few cases). Some factories pay the basic wage
during these official holidays, while others do not pay anything. During this
time, people generally travel to their home village to see their family or
their children who are with the grandparents (one worker told us that he sends
around 85 euros every month to the grandparents for looking after his son).
In one of the factories, every day workers signed a list regarding their
availability for overtime. When we asked several workers about the hard working
conditions, the older ones replied that “farm work was harder.” This confirms
our impression from previous trips that the compulsory nature of working
overtime is being relaxed. A fair amount of workers never even think about the
possibility of not working overtime, while some (generally younger ones)
indicated that “sometimes” they do not stay on (most said that “you have to
justify” not working overtime –and they are always granted permission to not
stay on– and others said that it was not necessary). Although it was difficult
to quantify, some figures indicate that 5% did not work overtime 1 day per
month. One worker told us that, when he was hired, he was told that the factory
worked on Saturday and Sunday. Another explained that permission was required
in order not to work overtime during the week, while this was not necessary in
the case of not working on Sunday.
All of this is based on the factories’ clock in/out records and the
workers’ explanations (some workers told us, however, that they did not work on
Sunday, contrary to what the clock in/out list indicated). The initial
information provided by the companies’ management was not very clear, although
they later acknowledged the situation with some curious considerations. Some
employers claimed that the government or official trade union was interested
only in overtime being paid rather than in the actual number of hours of
overtime (sometimes “workers even demanded overtime”).
Up to now, the visits to Chinese factories had
been basically directed at the garment industry. Although the problem here was
also important, it did not have the same scope and overtime rarely amounted to
more than 60 hours per week (although it frequently exceeded China’s legal
maximum of 36 hours). This visit shows, however, that the problem can be
considered generalised in the indicated amounts in the visited area’s footwear
industry. This clearly poses an important problem for applying standards of
“decent work,” which we refer to below.
e) Health
and Safety
The audits carried out in the companies we visited had detected some
health and safety problems (noises in the cutting department, finger protection
in sewing machines, activated carbon masks, dormitory evacuation plan, air
quality control, canteen evacuation signs, suitably located fire extinguishers,
lack of gloves in gluing process, location of storeroom and dormitories), with
different correction deadlines. The observations established in the audits with
fulfilled deadlines showed that some of the CAPs (corrective action plans) had
been applied, while others were still pending. On the other hand, the
factories’ official trade union structures were not at all worried about or
interested in this matter.
Although it was not the year’s hottest period, we noticed that some
working areas were very hot. We were told that, according to Chinese
legislation, work has to be stopped from 40o upwards, which was not
then the case (they said that this temperature is never reached).
f) Food
All the factories had a canteen and provided meals, both lunch and
dinner (before the customary overtime). They all have dining rooms where food
is provided; its cost, whenever it has to be paid for, ranges from 10 to 13
€/month. Food was always free in two of them and free from the third year
onward in another (they charged 50% in the 2nd year).
g) Accommodation
Although the factories were close to city centres, they all provide
accommodation (dormitories with bunkbeds alongside the factory, in the same
area) for part of the workforce, about 50%, although they were never full. The
rooms measured about 3 x 8 or 9 metres with 8 bunkbeds, of which 5 or 6 were
used, with a small closet and the unused bunkbeds for the workers’ scarce
personal belongings. Two of the factories had a few dormitories for couples
measuring 3 or 4 x 4 to 6 metres.
One factory had a
residential block for managers outside its facilities.
In two factories bunkbeds were free for everyone, with one charging for
water and electricity; in another two, workers paid around 8 euros per month
for a bunkbed. In one of them managers paid 16 €/month (in another
accommodation was free for managers) and € 3 for water and electricity
consumption.
We asked some workers that did not sleep in the factory about their
living conditions. They generally had small flats near the factory and paid
from 40 to 150 euros per month for a two-room apartment. Some rented a room for
about 28 euros per month.
5.- Main problems we observed: hiring system, working time
and Social Security contributions
We have already referred to these problems on previous pages. Below are
some additional observations, which we will then discuss in relation to audits,
trade union work and the application of the Framework Agreement.
1. Hiring:
Chinese legislation, particularly the law that came into force on
January 1, 2008 (called precisely the “Law on Employment Contracts” and which
serves almost as a “Work Code”), establishes that, after a second temporary
contract, a worker’s contract automatically becomes a permanent one; the same
is true after working for ten years without a formal contract. But nobody
(neither the company nor the workers or “trade union”) sees a problem in this regard;
they believe that periodical renewal is the “custom.” However, this is still a
breach of Chinese law. And when there are employment problems, or the risk of
discrimination on the part of employers as a reaction to effective trade union
action (i.e. when this comes about, although this does seem to have been the
case in the factories we visited[1]),
this periodical renewal may be a serious problem for the worker, as we have
seen in other countries.
2. Working
time:
There is clearly a generalised infringement of Chinese legislation that
establishes 36 as the maximum number of hours of overtime per month, as well as
the maximum limit of 60 hours of weekly work established by the ILO. We have
already referred to the government’s and official trade union’s lack of
interest in relation to workdays that clearly violate the concept of “decent
work.” Despite this, we believe that the Framework Agreement is a commitment to
correcting this situation.
The objective now, on the part of Inditex and IndustriALL Global Union
(or vice versa), is seeing how we can correct this situation, aware of the
added difficulty of this being a general situation. This requires initiatives
that impact the sector as a whole, although they do not necessarily have to be
simultaneous. We also have to start from the fact that the factories that
should take the lead in the solution work for several global brands. Therefore,
all (or at least a significant part) of the main brands should be involved,
although those that have subscribed the Framework Agreement (Inditex and
H&M at present, Mizuno, Next and C&A in the near future) should
undoubtedly play an essential role. It is worth highlighting that the largest
factory we visited works for both Inditex and America’s GAP (50% each).
3. Social
Security Contributions
This is another important field in which both
Chinese legislation and the basic concepts of decent work are violated. It
should be easier to solve than the workday matter, since its infringement does
not seem to be so generalised. It is clear that the fact that the system still
offers few benefits limits the workers’ interest, along with the lack of
rigorous control and enforcement on the part of the country’s institutions.
However, we also have to think about how to overcome this situation.
6.- About audits
We have already pointed out several matters
that were detected by the audits and are being solved, but others are still
pending despite having passed the deadlines set by the auditors. There are
other important matters that have not been sufficiently detected by the audits
carried out, such as worktime or Social Security contributions. Comparing what
we observed in our visits with the score derived from the audit highlights
another matter that we sensed in previous trips but did not see as clearly as
on this occasion, namely the way that detected problems are scored, i.e. the
significance of each matter analysed and each one’s score in the total mark.
Therefore, in the last six-monthly monitoring
meeting of the application of the Framework Agreement, held after our trip to
China, it was agreed that we coordinators would participate in some upcoming
audits as observers. Thereafter, we will therefore be able to
analyse the entire system, the audited matters, the scoring system and the
final grading formats. That is what we are working on at present.
7.-
Trade unionism and trade union action in the companies we visited
Trade unionism, trade union action, in the factories we visited did not
provide anything new with regard to the Chinese “trade unionism” that we are familiar
with, i.e. in relation to official trade unionism, the only one that we were
able to examine in the garment and footwear garment. In fact, we could speak
about “non-trade unionism.”
In a 2015 interview with the ACFTU management, they spoke about a
curious pilot experience precisely in the Guangzhou area (which, along with its
importance in China’s footwear industry, was one of the reasons that brought us
back here), explaining that they had established a new rule that forbade the
company owners or their relatives from “chairing” the company trade union. The
ACFTU management then rejected our suggestion to agree on a joint trade union
approach to this “new and interesting” initiative and its application.
However, we returned to Guangzhou and we found a similar situation. Now
in all the “big” companies (not in the one with 150 workers, considered
“small”), membership was officially 100%. However, some workers did not know if
their company had a trade union and found it difficult to identify the trade
union –we had to ask them if they knew who “organised the karaoke” (they had no
identification problems in this case). The term “trade union” had no meaning
for them.
It is true that we did not find any company
owners, or their relatives, chairing the unions. In this regard, we only came
across a vice-manager in one, the head of accounting in another, and an
official designated by the local ACFTU organisation and hired as such by the
company, in the third factory; and the head of personnel as vice-president and
other top executives.
In relation to the election system, only one had recently applied (and
this was an excuse to tell us that they were still learning what was expected
of them and were even participating in training courses in the trade union’s
local premises) the procedure contemplated in Chinese legislation. This
involves a first electoral phase in which a few delegates are voted for and
then these in turn choose the trade union management in the next phase. In the
rest, the procedure varied little from more or less irregular systems
summarised as follows: the bosses, or the company management directly, choose
the President and Vice-President, and each departments chooses a delegate that
is more or less agreed on or indicated from above. However, all of this takes
place without most workers’ participation and even without their knowledge.
In relation to trade union action, the only
matter that everyone agreed on was in the organisation of events, particularly
karaoke. And some opinions related the “trade union” with some kind of welfare
work. When asked about the concept of collective bargaining, agreements, nobody
knew about its existence; even a company union vice-president (who was also
head of personnel) was unaware of this concept. One of the workers we
interviewed mistook the “bosses” of the company trade union (one that I knew
existed but had heard little about) for those of the Communist Party (ChCP).
In relation to the trade union quota, the situation was the same as the
one detected on previous trips. In two companies, the trade union managements
knew about an individual quota of 2 RMB (less than 0.30
Euros) per month, but it did not appear in the payslip and nobody was aware
that they were paying it. In two of the three with an officially organised
trade union, they knew that the company paid an important amount to the trade
union (they thought it was 2% of the payroll in one factory, while in another
they mentioned a monthly total with a fair amount of zeros, although they had
doubts about the exact amount).
8.- China’s official
trade unions, ACTU, their relationship with the GFA and with global trade union
action with a view to its monitoring, for the defence of decent work in supply
chains
Isidor Boix’s trip in 2015[2],
with a visit to factories in Hangzhou and then passing through Beijing for an
official meeting with the ACFTU management, seemed to indicate a new period in
the relationship between global trade unionism and China’s official trade
unionism, including the latter’s approach to the Framework Agreements and their
possible interest in global trade union action in defence of decent work in our
world. We therefore sent them the trade union report of the aforementioned trip
as well as those of previous trips. And we told them that there would be
another visit in 2016 in the Guangzhou area in spring; we then asked them when
it would suit them best, in order to coordinate with them and then visit
Beijing with a view to what they had proposed in 2015.
However, there was no reply to our initial messages, neither as a comment
to the reports we sent nor with regard to the notification of the project for
2016; neither did they reply to a second message reminding them about the
matter two months later. We had therefore given up on the idea of visiting
Beijing, when we received a strange proposal regarding possible joint work and
a meeting to specify such. Nothing to do with the subject, but it came from the
same person that led the ACFTU delegation in the 2015 meeting. We therefore
modified our itinerary and told them a month in advance when we would be in
Beijing, so that they could arrange an interview and, perhaps, other
activities. And again silence, until the day before our flight from Guangzhou
to Beijing, when they told us that, unfortunately, there would be nobody in
Beijing to meet with us.
The anecdotes from 2013
and 2015, as well as this one from 2016, basically underline the fact that
China does not formally have trade unions and, unlike Vietnam for example, the
official trade union structure does not feature attitudes and interests
coinciding with what could be regarded as the individual and collective ones of
the country’s working class. The GFA with Inditex (as well as Mango’s CSR) has
provided us with an interesting look at working conditions in an important
sample of the country’s garment and footwear industry, as well as the reality
of China’s official trade unionism.
What we have seen up to now confirms what we have detected since our
first trip to China in 2006, i.e. the lack of effective channels in order to
express the interests of China’s important (due to its number, but also to its
history) working class. This situation undoubtedly generates elements of
instability whose future development is, at least for us, unforeseeable.
However, we are convinced that at some time a new trade unionism will arise, although
only a few visible expressions of such have taken place to date.
9.- Some considerations regarding this trip and future
projects
What we have explained up to now enables us to
reproduce almost word for world the last paragraph of the 2015 report. It
mentioned there that previous notes highlighted important conclusions for
future trade union work in relation to the international brands’ production
chains in China, aware of the fact that our function is not that of replacing
each country’s trade unionism (whether effective or latent), regardless of how
important the detected problems are. Rather, our objective is to support the
workers therein in exercising the basic labour rights specified in ILO
Conventions. This approach involves not only supranational trade union
solidarity, the very essence of trade unionism, but also demanding that the
multinationals manufacturing in such countries ensure that their subsidiaries,
contractors and subcontractors, and their supplier companies respect the
exercising of such basic rights. It is also clear that it is not up to
multinational brands to govern the country or organise its trade unions.
In any case, from the trade union perspective of the Global Framework Agreement
with Inditex, we have to continue with the work that has been carried out to
date, in order to update the situation in the garment industry and monitor the
problems that we have now detected in the footwear industry and the process of
their necessary solution.
International trade unionism’s relationship with the official union
organisations of some countries, such as China or Vietnam, has always been
present in the problems examined by the governing instruments of our global
organisations, IndustriALL Global Union in our case. There have been some
advances, such as some of Vietnam’s Trade Union Federations joining the
international Trade Union Federation or support for the participation of
China’s ACFTU in the ILO’s administrative bodies.
Based on what we have seen in this and previous trips to the People’s
Republic of China, we believe that this is an important moment, with an
uncertain future, in our working relationships with the country’s official
trade unionism. The market relationships that are advancing therein are
generating evident class interests, which are undoubtedly new in some cases and
will continue to develop in one way or another. Global Framework Agreements and
their application in China may be an interesting instrument in this regard.
September 2016
International
Coordination of CCOO-Industry
Coordination of
IndustriALL Global Union for the Global Framework Agreement with Inditex
[1] We should not forget, however, that in April 2014 one of the most
important strikes (defined in Art. 27 of the China’s Trade Union Law as
“interruptions of work”) in recent Chinese history took place, precisely in the
footwear industry. In the locality of Donguang, in the same province of Guangdong
that we visited, a two-week strike broke out with the participation of the
great majority of the factory workers of Yue Yuen Industrial Holdings, a
Taiwanese company based in Hong Kong that is considered the largest sports
footwear producer in the world and works for Nike, Timberland, Puma, Crocs,
etc.
[2] See http://www2.industria.ccoo.es/comunes/recursos/99927/doc245349_China_-
2015 Una nueva aproximacion sindical - VII -.pdf
2015 Una nueva aproximacion sindical - VII -.pdf
