Editor’s Note:
Political reforms and market liberalisation have significantly shaped the terrain of workers’ struggles in Asia, while Cambodia, Indonesia, China, and Vietnam have also seen market liberalisation and export-oriented industrialisation. They experienced divergent political trajectories, with some undergoing democratisation and others remaining as authoritarian states.
In this discussion, we examine the impacts of these developments, including the institutionalisation of labour relations, such as in Cambodia, and the ongoing political exclusion of labour, as seen in Vietnam and China. We also discuss how labour movements responded to the political and economic dynamics by drawing on a mixed repertoire of organising, mobilisation and advocacy.
Kiang: I would like to ask about the political transitions in China and Vietnam that followed the period of industrialisation covered in the last episode.
Kevin: In both Vietnam and China, the market liberalisation proceeded largely without democratisation, but with quite serious institutional and legal reforms. I would like to emphasise the significance of this. We see those two countries as one-party, authoritarian states, and this may signal to people that very little has changed politically. However, there have been far-reaching political reforms even in the absence of democratisation.
Both countries rolled out reforms to their trade union federations, the ACFTU in China and the VGCL in Vietnam. From the 2000s onward, in response to the surge in strikes, trade unions were granted autonomy and permission by the state to reform and experience in order to be better able to represent workers so that workers won’t protest as much. You need to think of those unions, not as unions per se, but as bureaucracies and extensions of the state, designed to manage workers. They usually do not do any worker organising.
However, from the 2000s onwards, they were actually given some space to address workers’ concerns, grievances, and help resolve labour disputes at both the workplace level and the legal front. In both countries, there are serious labour law reforms. In China, the Labour Contract Law and Labour Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Law were introduced in 2008, and in Vietnam, the Labour Code was implemented in 2013. These legal reforms were all aimed at addressing labour violations and preempting worker militancy, which I think is pushing those governments to take workers’ rights more seriously. Even in the absence of democratisation, political reforms on labour relations were still taking place.
What about Cambodia and Indonesia, and especially Indonesia, which actually underwent democratisation? How did the process of democratisation impact labour politics?
Kiang: The democratisation process in Indonesia started with the fall of the Suharto regime. The Suharto regime was defined by repressive labour policies: military interventions in labour disputes and an environment of fear and suppression. But despite the regime’s effort to repress and depoliticise workers, we know that pockets of resistance persisted.
The strikes in the early 1990s to mid-90s were more complex than we thought. There were strikes locally, with the permission of the military in some areas, and some of the activism was supported by student activists. The transition to democracy brought up a lot of hope. Following Suharto, a series of legal changes opened up new spaces for workers. For example, the labour laws that were drafted and the ratification of ILO conventions on collective bargaining, freedom of association, and the right to strike.
With the fall of Suharto in 1998, the landscape of labour activism shifted again. With the once-unified SPSI, the national unions, which were primarily controlled by governments, opened up membership to small and independent unions. Workers found numerous opportunities to mobilise, and decentralisation followed during that period. For example, the issue of minimum wage has become a contentious issue where workers often mobilise around, and that was an issue that allowed workers to coordinate and mobilise at the national level. We will later discuss a general strike mobilised around minimum wage and social security issues.
I think the democratisation periods opened up a lot of space for workers and created competition between different forms of labour organisations to represent workers and try to mobilise for larger changes.
Kevin: I think the last point is very interesting in terms of opening up spaces for independent unions. Sometimes that also leads to fragmentation, which is not just the case in Indonesia. I think it’s important to avoid the view that if you only have democratisation, it will automatically lead to a strong union movement. I think there are other factors at play as well. I want to ask about Cambodia. Cambodia is kind of midway: so you still have elections, but you also basically have the dominance of one person or one party for decades.
Kiang: The first election in Cambodia was held in 1993, and the elections resulted in two parties emerging as the leading parties. The 1997 coup ousted Prince Norodom Ranariddh, solidifying the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) ‘s control under Prime Minister Hun Sen. Within this context of an authoritarian regime under Hun Sen, we saw trade unions split into two: one supported the CPP, while the other supported the opposition. It’s within this political backdrop that Cambodia’s government workers in the late 90s emerged as a force.
The politicisation of trade unions was one important factor to notice. And when the trade unions that supported, for example, the opposition, protested, they were often prosecuted or repressed violently by the ruling governments. Because, you know, the governments or the politicians use that political affiliation as an excuse to crack down on them. The labour movement is also fragmented and not very strong. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Asian financial crisis emerged, complicating the dynamics of the rise of fixed-term contracts, which hindered trade unions’ ability to increase their membership.
Kevin: What I find interesting in comparison to China and Vietnam is that in the complete absence of democratisation, the main weapon that workers have – because they cannot establish their own trade union or mass worker organisation – is largely confined to workplace disputes. It could be a strike or protest, but because there are no larger unions or union federations coordinating actions, the strike actions in Vietnam and China are taking place mostly at individual workplaces. Their main weapon is the disruption of production through strikes and other means.
That could be very powerful, because it has direct material, economic, and financial costs to employers. In many cases that we looked at, workers actually won the immediate demands, which are mostly economic, related to their wages and working conditions. But on the other hand, how do you scale this up? In both China and Vietnam, you have a few cases of coordinated action beyond individual workplaces. In the absence of union federations or mass workers’ organisations with a political presence, inputs into policy-making are minimal.
Kiang: I would like to draw out a big contrast between these two groups of context. First, in the cases of China and Vietnam, workers are employing a different set of theories of change from those in Indonesia and Cambodia, where we have discussed the institutionalisation of labour relations that enabled many workers to utilise formal mechanisms, such as the tripartite system, to resolve their problems. In the case of Cambodia, a labour advisory committee played a key role in the labour landscape. A lot has been written about the limitations of the formal mechanism because, in the context where workers are not allowed to exercise their freedom of association and collective bargaining freely, there is an imbalance of power between workers and employers, not to mention the gove, which often sides with employers. The formal mechanisms of the tripartite system do not work in their favour, so workers often become frustrated with these formal mechanisms and resort to alternative mechanisms, such as protesting on the streets. They often mobilise with social movements or NGOs around specific issues to achieve their goals.
And in the context of Indonesia, where we saw the decentralisation of minimum wage determinations, there was a shift where workers who used to engage in a lot of wildcat strikes in the early 2000s shifted to mobilising nationally. There’s also a change in demand, where workers who used to demand better working conditions, similar to the cases of China and Vietnam, now mobilise more around social protection policies, right. It shifts from what we call Marxist-type labour unrest to Polanyi-type, where workers are mobilising more to obtain social protection or remedies for capitalist exploitation, rather than disrupting production at the point of their work and then directly demanding what they want from employers.
Kevin: That’s a fascinating comparison. Compared to Cambodia and Indonesia, policy-making processes in China and Vietnam are more closed and less transparent in terms of how social groups, trade unions, and other social movement organisations can advocate for and influence legislation. There was some space for an emergent civil society in China and Vietnam. There were independent labour NGOs and other civil society organisations that sometimes advocate on behalf of workers and other social groups. However, overall, the political system is much more closed, and it’s very difficult for workers to access the political process; therefore, many demands are indirect.
However, despite not directly engaging in lobbying or advocacy, the governments in China and Vietnam indirectly responded by attempting to institutionalise labour relations and labour conflicts through the introduction of labour laws that channel workers’ disputes into the legal system, while recognising the legitimacy of workers’ demands and grievances. I think there are different processes and mechanisms at work. Still, you see similar, far-reaching labour law reforms even in the absence of union federations advocating on behalf of workers. Even though there are different regime types, other factors are at play that led to somewhat similar results across all four of these countries.
Kiang: A few things that I want to highlight here. One is that, in many cases, the institutionalisation of the industrial relations framework gives workers a false impression of hope that the system can solve many of their cases. It took a while for workers to realise that the system is not actually going to solve their problems. It is trying to delay the problem-solving, and we know that time is not on the side of workers, because workers often do not have the time to wait when a labour dispute occurs. There is also a realisation that the system is not put in place to help them. For example, the union registration regulation in many countries in Southeast Asia is actually put in place to restrict and weaken workers’ powers. And workers who cannot see through this might spend a lot of time spinning their wheels or getting stuck in the system.
Kevin: Absolutely. I think, in comparison, although this is a vast generalisation, workers in Vietnam and China are less invested in the system because they have very few channels or ways to access it. If there is no way you can register your trade union, you’re not going to spend a lot of time building a trade union. Or if there’s no way for you to have serious input into the political process, you’re not going to invest a lot of energy into that. The result is an almost singular focus on disruption at the point of production in the workplace, which can be highly successful.
In contrast, when the focus of the labour movement moved away from organising at the point of production into areas of advocacy and lobbying, while it seems to be offering a lot of possibilities, it is sometime done at the expense of building workplace-based power.
Kiang: That is an excellent point. In Indonesia and Cambodia, we observe that workers have been employing a mobilising and advocacy approach, rather than traditional organising. As we learned from Jane McAlevey, mobilising and advocacy approaches rely less on building strong bases of rank-and-file workers, relying less on participation that could genuinely empower workers to develop ownership or leadership over the labour movement. I think that this trend often leads to the weakening of the labour movement when the mobilising or advocacy approach puts too much weight on a small group of experts, technocrats, or lawyers and activists to push for change.
One more thing I want to highlight is that when we examine workers’ activism, it doesn’t occur in a vacuum. All the things we discussed, the political process plays a significant role in how workers shape their organisations and strategies. It is also important to consider how the workers themselves have shaped this process. I think this is the area where, even with research on the labour movement or workers’ struggles, it is still lacking. We do not have a good understanding from the worker side when we talk about the dynamics that take place within a strike. It is important to understand how the decision-making process happens and why workers decide to take a particular route. I also believe that the role of action research is to help facilitate this reflection and thinking about how they can improve.
In this discussion so far, we have focused extensively on the political dynamics, including political reforms, labour law reforms, and democratisation. We also want to make sure that we have a clear focus and perspective from the side of worker organising and what’s happening on the ground. For both of us, the most interesting transformation is that workers are becoming more effective in their struggle. It is crucial to recognise the political dynamics as, in large part, a result of or in response to workers organising.
Asia’s Striking Decade: Integration into Global Capitalism and Making of Working Class (1990s-2000s)
