Decent Work Project
Stimulating worker-management dialogue in China
The ETI Decent Work project is helping create a culture where workers in China have the space and confidence to negotiate with management about key workplace issues. Using participatory techniques, the project aims to empower factory workers to create sustainable mechanisms for worker-management dialogue and bring about long-term improvements to working conditions.
Why are we doing this?
Most workers in China have few opportunities to air their grievances or to get them resolved with the support of representatives they trust. Enabling grievances, such as forced overtime, to be raised and addressed, will not only lead to better working conditions. It will also help promote the enforcement of Chinese law, help resolve employment conflicts, improve job satisfaction and contribute to a more stable workforce.
ETI's Decent Work project aims to increase workers' awareness of their rights under Chinese labour laws and develop mechanisms by which workers and management can resolve workplace issues in the long term. A key aim is to devolve decision-making to factory-specific ‘facilitation committees' made up of representatives from various stakeholders. These committees are the first of their kind in the Chinese factory context, and their establishment represents a significant change from past practice.
Helping workers raise workplace issues
Recognising that workers are best placed to identify their own issues, the project is taking a participatory approach to identifying and developing appropriate dialogue mechanisms. We ran a workshop on participatory approaches in Shenzhen in March 2008 involving a number of civil society groups. This led to agreement on the key steps in the project, including a commitment to support workers and management to define the scope of dialogue.
The facilitation committees will oversee activities at individual factories, including conducting labour law briefings and providing support for ongoing representation mechanisms. More detailed training may take place, depending on the decisions of individual facilitation committees.
One factory (in Zhongshan, Guangdong) has already started activities, and another (in Hangzhou, near Shanghai) is ready to start project activities shortly. The first step has been to form a site facilitation committee, following which a needs assessment was carried out by civil society groups, investigating existing conditions at the factory and involving both workers and management interviews and questionnaires. Once the needs assessment is written up and discussed within the facilitation committee, work will begin on designing and delivering training for factory workers and management. A third factory will join the project later in 2010.
Increased collaboration at local level
The project is already seeing positive results, including strengthened communication between the ETI members and Chinese groups working in the labour rights field in southern China, and in-depth, sometimes very candid discussions of workers' rights by businesses and civil society groups. Through this collaboration, the facilitation committee in the first factory substantially redesigned the project to suit their needs.
ETI welcomes further interest in the project from different stakeholders. We hope to open up the invitation for more company members to join the project when we are in a position to share initial learning and offer local group support; though this is not likely to be until early 2010.
Useful links
"These committees are the first of their kind in the Chinese factory context, and their establishment represents a significant change from past practice."