ORIGINAL FRENCH ARTICLE: Chine : quel avenir pour le mouvement ouvrier ?
by Dominique Bari
Translated Wednesday 19 October 2011, by Bill Scoble
and reviewed byThe international conference Transform! gathered recently in Vienna, bringing together researchers, trade unionists and campaigners from Chinese and European NGOs. Members there related their experiences regarding work-place struggles in China and Europe.
Major strikes broke out in 2010 among Honda workers at Foshan, in the province of Guangdong, and lasted several weeks, giving rise to a vast social movement in numerous China-based companies. This has created an unprecedented situation in the country with regard to the capacity for social mobilization and is the prolongation of the forging of a new working-class conscience there. The power of the movement has forced the government and the official All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) to respond on different levels. The demands of the workers refer to the representation of wage-labourers within companies, either by a transformation of ACFTU or by the emergence of autonomous organisations.