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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