Sunday, February 11, 2018

What Worries China but Not the U.S.?


It’s not North Korea. Both nations fret over this. It’s worker unrest.
I had a lengthy talk on Friday with a Ph.D./Law student from China. Her country is very worried about worker unrest. They are experimenting with official types of employment mediation. That’s why she is here to study.
China has a state-approved labor union. It’s for show. It’s also powerless.
When China was under the fist of Chairman Mao, inequality of wealth wasn’t a problem. Almost everyone was poor and hungry or starving. Now China is wealthy, but its wealth is very concentrated in large cities and among elites.
China isn’t waiting for regular workers who are scraping by to explode in angry street demonstrations. Nor is China eager to copy the American system of free labor unions—free, meaning that labor unions are independent of government control. They are trying to use this state union to funnel complaints into a mediation system where one-off solutions can be discussed and acted on.
As if she was being monitored, my student leaned in closely. Almost in a whisper, she said: “I do not think this approach can work because it has so much censorship.”
I leaned in and quietly said: “I worry about the decline of labor union rights in America. Today, unions don’t speak for angry workers. A power-hungry billionaire speaks for them. Someday he’ll be gone. Who will speak for them? Not unions, because they’ll be legally watered down, not far off from the one-union system in China.”

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