Calendar: Labor Day: The need for global reformational action in labor relations and Christian unions

                                                                                         

It's Labour Day today in the USA and Canada.  Not all the world celebrates wage-earmers, whether unionized or not, on this day.  Many celebrate Labor on May 1, the day elevated especially by socialists and Communist-founded unions, as in France, to name but one instance of the contrary practice.  But the day observed by the different r+ts is not so important because not all countries observe either day, or any at all.  Does Saudi Arabia observe Labor Day at all?  Why do I doubt that?, having no info on the matter yet.  Because Saudi Arabia with over a million foreign workers living in special compounds, not permitted for housing to mingle with the Muslim population nor permitted to establish Christian churches or Hindu temples to practice the r+ts of their respective faiths, is a labor- and religion-intolerant society.  All that said for the sake of our calendar, let's turn to a few instances where reformationals and all Christians shoud be supporting a distinctive world project of unionization.  In the mentioned countries below, the need for Christian organization may not seem feasible but remains requisite.

The information in most of the items below, comes from The Global State of Workers' Rights: Free Labor in a Hostile World, a recent report by Freedom House, with text prepared by Arch Puddington, Freedom House's director of research.

China

China tolerates only state-endorsed and CommunistParty-led unions which tilt their representation function to benefit first the interests of the state and the party.  Wildcat strikes (there is no provision for legal strikes, even in matters of health and safety) and other spontaneous actions break out, often for reasons not only related directly to labour conditions, wages and benefits but too often for intertwined reasons of the repression of the workforce segment who are repressed due to China's pro-Han ethnic represssion -- especially in the situation of the Uigher Muslim minority in western China where the Han immigrants have taken over (Tibet is another instance of Han Chinese takeover, but I've heard of no wildcatting labour actions there).

China, at the same time, has a huge Christian minority, where again the state has set up official churches ultimately supervised by party-members under the auspices of the govt's agency to control religions.  The Christian minority is numerically dominated by house churches and unsequelched free churches with their own church buildings.  The state constantly interferes with free religion in China, just as in the case of free labor unions, which like the free churches, must operate clandestinely or semi-clandestinely.

China needs Christian labor organizations outside the control of the state and respective of other free unions with which it must function cooperatively wherever possible, morally and strategically.  A future Christian labour organization in China must work not only for its own freedom of function but also in that project, work for a genuine pluralism in labour representation.  The model for that is not the USA or Canada or England or Australia in their present configuration of labor relations, but is better advised to use the model of the national Christian labor federation in the Netherlands (Christelijke Nationaal Vakverbond -- CNV -- English language webpages) , where law permits and encourages a genuine cooperative pluralism of all unions in the country.  A single shop floor in a large factory, for instance, woud have several unions chosen by the several segments of the workforce there, all of which woud have reprsentation on the greivance and negotiating joint committee (most negotiations, however, take place thru the national labour "centrals" in tandem with business and government).

See also:  China's workers raise stakes (The Call, Jun22,2k10)

Belarus

A new frontier for labour organization with normative labour representation of Christian inspiration.

Burma

Another new frontier for normative labour representation of Christian inspiration.

Cuba

A repressive regime has released from prison some veteran Christian labour activists, who were organizing an independent Christian union clandestinely just a few years back.

Workers are not permitted to organize outside the state-controlled labor federation, and Cuban law does not grant workers the right to strike. Those who do join independent trade unions face beatings, loss of employment, confiscation of property, and imprisonment; a number of the current generation of political prisoners are locked up for workplace dissent. Because the state controls the labor market, it determines pay and working conditions for almost all workers. In the small private sector, foreign investors are required to contract workers through state employment agencies, which pocket up to 95 percent of their salaries. The minimum wage in 2008 was about 225 pesos -- about $9 -- per month. Workers are also required to keep an eye on their colleagues and report any "dissident" activity.

Eritrea

Another new frontier for normative labour representation of Christian inspiration.

The Eritrean regime uses the same tactics common among authoritarian states -- controlling unions, crushing strikes, suppressing collective bargaining -- but goes a step further by imposing forced labor and national service on its citizens. This harsh system effectively renders meaningless the country's legal protections for workers; citizens between ages 18 and 50 can be made to perform compulsory labor in any given year and are required to serve in the military or civilian work programs for an indefinite length of time determined by the government. 

Equitorial Guinea

Another new frontier for normative labour representation of Christian inspiration.

Dictator Teodoro Obiang Nguema makes little effort to conceal his contempt for trade unions. Several years ago, his government told the International Labor Organization that "there were no trade unions in the country because there was no tradition of trade unionism." Obiang -- reelected last November with 96 percent of the vote -- and his cronies have enriched themselves on oil revenues while ordinary citizens subsist on less than $1 a day. The government has refused to recognize several nascent labor organizations and has violently repressed protesting workers.

 Laos 

 Like other unreformed post-communist societies, Laos is a one-party state in which practically all significant institutions, including the Lao Federation of Trade Unions (LFTU), are controlled by the Lao People's Revolutionary Party. The LFTU's quasi-state function gives it a dubious dual role, controlling workers while it is supposedly defending them. The government, meanwhile, unilaterally sets compensation for government workers; for private-sector employees, collective bargaining, while called for under labor law, barely exists in reality.

Libya 

Civil society and freedom of association were among the first casualties of the 1969 coup that brought Muammar al-Qaddafi to power. Qaddafi's brand of socialist revolution has meant the elimination of unions that aren't controlled by the regime. The government sets minimum wage rates, work hours, night-shift rules, and other workplace laws. Collective bargaining barely exists, and strikes are illegal. Foreigners, constituting about one-third of the workforce, are victims of systematic discrimination.

North Korea 

 Strict state control of work is, unsurprisingly, a basic fact of life in North Korea; it's written into the country's constitution. Work is obligatory, and failure to meet the state's workplace standards can result in a five-year stint in the gulag -- or, in some cases, a death sentence. The officially sanctioned trade union federation is given the responsibility of mobilizing and regimenting workers to meet production quotas and adhere to work discipline. Collective bargaining, needless to say, is not an option. In some enterprises, workers are paid episodically, receiving nothing for months on end..

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia, which bans all political parties, also offers one of the world's most inhospitable environments for workers' movements. The labor code denies them the right to form unions, bargain with employers, or strike; anyone who does those things risks imprisonment or, if he or she is a foreigner, deportation. Migrant workers, mostly from South Asia, are treated with particular harshness and are paid much lower wages than are Saudi and Western workers. Their workplace conditions are often so deplorable that some actually try to get arrested and deported. Exploitation and mistreatment is rampant among the 1.5 million female domestic workers, many of whom are effectively forced laborers.

Sudan 

Sudan's 1992 Trade Union Act handed the government-controlled Sudan Workers' Trade Union Federation a monopoly over organization, or what passes for it under the regime of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Strikes require government approval, which is never granted. There is no collective bargaining. Activists who operate outside government-sanctioned channels face arrest. Workers in Sudan's oil industry are closely monitored by the intelligence service, and their movements are restricted. Forced labor is common, as is the conscription of men and boys into the country's armed forces; women and children are often forced into domestic servitude and sexual slavery.

Syria 

Syrian labor groups are required to belong to the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU), a nominally independent organization that is funded by the government and closely linked to the ruling Baath Party (its president is a senior party member). When several Syrian journalists came under threat from the government for reporting on sensitive subjects, the officially sanctioned Journalists' Union refused to support them. Strikes are legal but rare, and can result in jail terms for labor activists; in any case, the GFTU rarely calls them. Collective bargaining hardly exists.

Turkmenistan 

Since gaining independence in 1991, Turkmenistan has an unbroken record of rigged elections, suppression of the press, and marginalization of civil society. Private property has only recently been introduced, and corruption is rampant. Given this background, it is hardly surprising that the country keeps its trade unions safely under the state's thumb: The state-sanctioned Center for Professional Unions is led by a presidential appointee, and individual unions under its umbrella function as government appendages. On the bright side, the government did ban children from working in the cotton harvest in 2009.

Uzbekistan 

Although Uzbekistan's laws theoretically permit independent unions, in practice union activity is controlled by the brutal regime of Islam Karimov, the Soviet-era holdover who has run the country since 1990. The leaders of the state-run Board of the Trade Union Federation of Uzbekistan are Karimov appointees. There are no independent unions, and collective bargaining, though legal, seldom occurs. Although the Uzbek Constitution forbids forced labor, the authorities are said to compel university students, medical workers, schoolchildren, and government workers to assist in bringing in the annual cotton crop.

Vietnam   

In theory, working people enjoy a broad array of rights in Vietnam. The government has adopted a labor code that calls for union recognition and collective bargaining. In reality, however, workers enjoy few of them. To begin with, they cannot form unions of their own choosing, but rather must join a union affiliated with the Vietnam General Conference of Labor: a pliant, state-controlled entity that functions as a pass-through for the Communist Party. The legal hurdles to calling a strike are monumental. Virtually all recent protests were wildcat strikes, reflecting workers' mistrust of their union representatives. The government cynically allows these protests -- most against foreign-owned firms -- because they give workers an opportunity to demand higher wages without forcing the government to raise the minimum wage, which authorities fear would discourage foreign investment.

Obviously, these neo-Communist and Islamic-totalitarian labour regimes are the worst-case scenarios of the world's repression of free and plurally-represenative unions.  But they constitute the greatest challenges to the coming of the Shalom Kingdom of Christ in labour relations, representation, and negotiation.  Except in the case of China, which contains a critical mass of Christian believers, some of whom already are active in clandestine and semi-clandestine free independent labour organizations.

Thanks to Arch Puddington, Freedom House's director of research, for his set of captions to the photo series for Labour Day in Foreign Policy (see the series of pix-gallery captions, "Labor Day in Hell" (14 items on as many webpages) by Arch Puddington, starting here).  The pictures are fantastic!


-- EconoMix, compiler