'Guangdong’s workers mobilize to protect leaders from arrests and reprisals', 13 October 2015

As industrial unrest in China intensifies, worker activists in Guangdong are seeking more effective ways to counter management reprisals and arrests or detentions by the local police...The relatively harsh response of business owners and police in Guangdong reflects the economic downturn…as well as the well-established ability of factory workers in the province to organize…

On 12 September a group of organizers, lawyers and scholars met in Guangzhou to discuss this pressing issue. Veteran labour lawyer Duan Yi argued that the protection of worker representatives was now the key task for the workers’ movement in China. If worker representatives are not protected, he said, no one will be willing to stick their neck out and organize workers…

Currently, only enterprise trade union presidents and committee members are legally protected from management reprisals. However many workers are reluctant to get involved in the union because they feel it will not have sufficient power to stand up to management...

While recognising the current limitations and failings of the trade union, Director of the Panyu Workers’ Centre Zeng Feiyang, argued that getting workers elected to the union was an important first step and still the most effective and sustainable way forward in the long-term.