Trade unions are required in overseas firms
All overseas-funded enterprises will be unionized by the end of next year, an official from China’s top trade union body said yesterday.
Wang Ying, a division chief of the grassroots organization and capacity building department of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), said more than 4,100 major foreign companies run by the Fortune 500 are doing business in China.
She said that until now 82 percent of the companies have set up trade unions, and the figure would come up to 90 percent by the end of this year. As of July, in less than 50 percent of the Fortune 500 firms workers had been able to form trade unions.
Wang attributed this substantial change to a three-month national unionization campaign that began in June.
The ACFTU is directly supervising the formation of trade unions in 10 of the Fortune 500 firms.
Currently, Maersk Logistics, Lotus, IKEA, TNT, Kodak, FedEx, Home Depot, Emerson, Canon, Sony and ABB have trade unions.
“Most of the foreign companies have been cooperative, as they are clear that they must abide by China’s laws if they do business in China,” she said.
She said the ACFTU had also been resisted by some foreign companies especially American companies.
“Some US companies, such as Wueth, Microsoft, 3M, AstraZeneca and Pwc, have been quite uncooperative and have applied various excuses to delay the formation of trade union, ” she said.
“Workers do not need to be approved by their employers to establish trade unions, because the Trade Union Law, issued in 1992, entitles them the right,” she said.
“However, the support from the employers is important in practice in forming unions.”
She said over this issue both the American Chamber of Commerce and the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in China have expressed their support for the ACFTU.
According to the law, employers must allocate 1 percent of workers’ pay for trade union funds. Wang said that 40 percent go to the superior trade union while 60 percent remains in the company.
Senior ACFTU official Yang Honglin said that misunderstanding about trade unions still exited among foreign companied.
“Trade unions in china not only protect workers’ rights and interests but also are good for the development of a company,” she said.
ACFTU vice-chairman Sun Chunlan said on a press conference yesterday in Beijing that the ACFTU is initializing another nationwide push for collective wage negotiations.
She said that through the negotiations all the 108 Wal-Mart in China had signed collective contracts with their workers by Sept 16.
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