All-China Trade Union Confederation

The building of the All China Trade Union Confederation in Beijing

The All-China Federation of Trade Unions (GCGB, often: All-China Federation of Trade Unions and All-China / ACFTU Chinese  中華全國總工會  /  中华全国总工会 , English All-China Federation of Trade Unions / ACFTU) is the national trade union organization of the People's Republic of China . It is the largest union in the world with 134 million members in 1,713,000 local union organizations. The GCGB is divided into 31 regional associations and 10 national unions.

history

The GCGB was officially founded on May 1, 1925 at the second National Workers' Congress in Guangzhou . There 277 delegates represented 540,000 workers and passed the constitution of the All-China Trade Union Confederation. The organization flourished between 1922 and 1927, as did the Chinese Communist Party's control over the trade union movement. The labor movement had grown enormously , especially in the three industrial and trade centers of Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Shanghai , but it also had organizational successes in other cities such as Wuhan . The GCGB was suppressed in 1927 under the rule of the nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek . The nationalists executed thousands of communist cadres and trade unionists. All communist-led unions were banned and replaced with yellow unions that were loyal to him.

With the rise of Mao Zedong in 1949, the GCGB was the only union to be re-established, but was dissolved again in 1966 in the course of the Cultural Revolution . After Mao's death in 1976, the GCGB held its first congress since 1957 in October 1978. It has been regulated by the trade union law of the People's Republic of China since the early 1990s.

Present role

The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (now the International Trade Union Confederation ) takes the position that the GCGB is not an independent trade union organization and states:

"5. There are different approaches between the ICFTU member organizations and the Global Union Federations via contacts with the GCGB. They range from 'no contacts' to 'constructive dialogue'. The ICFTU, noting that the GCGB is not an independent trade union organization and therefore cannot be seen as an authentic voice for Chinese workers, reiterates its request to all affiliates and to the global trade union federations that liaise with the Chinese authorities, including the GCGB engage in critical dialogue. This also includes addressing violations of fundamental workers' and trade union rights in such meetings, especially in cases of the imprisonment of trade union and labor rights activists. "

However, GCGB and World Trade Union Confederation activists deny the claims of the rival International Trade Union Confederation . For example, Guo Wencai, who says democratic elections are an important yardstick for measuring union effectiveness and notes that the practice of business leaders “appointing union leaders or assign someone from their human resources department to act as union leader does A union's independence and its ability to protect workers' rights ”.

In recent years, GCGB sub-organizations have taken an active part in labor disputes at the local level, trying to channel strike and protest movements - for example in successful strikes in Chinese Walmart and IBM branches. This phenomenon is new, isolated and not networked nationwide. So it seems questionable to what extent it can be interpreted as the future overall development of the trade union confederation.

literature

• Daniel Blackburn, Ciaran Cross: Trade unions of the world . International Center for Trade Union Rights, London 2016, ISBN 978-0-9933556-0-8 , pp. 99-104
• Rudolf Traub-Merz, Wage Strikes and Trade Unions in China, End of Low Wage Policy? Berlin (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung) 2011 PDF, 12 pages , accessed on March 6, 2018

Web links

• GCGB web page , accessed on March 6, 2018

Individual evidence

1. ^ Lao To Lee: Trade Unions in China 1949 to the Present. Singapore University Press, 1986.
2. ^ Rudolf Traub-Merz: All China Federation of Trade Unions. Structure, Functions and the Challenge of Collective Bargaining. International Labor Office, 2011.
3. ↑ ICFTU China policy . In: ICFTU . Retrieved on May 29, 2007.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )
4. ^ Chen Xin: More trade union heads to face election. August 31, 2010, accessed October 3, 2017 . 
5. ↑ Geoffrey Crothall: Striking behavior: Chinese workers discover a weapon against labor-market turmoil. March 29, 2014, accessed October 3, 2017 .