Page contents > Asian Trade Unions in Transition: Responding to Labour or Facilitating Capital? Research from China, Vietnam, India and South Korea
Asian Trade Unions in Transition: Responding to Labour or Facilitating Capital? Research from China, Vietnam, India and South Korea
One-Day Seminar hosted by Department of Development Studies, SOAS and the ESRC Non-Government Public Action Programme
9:30am - 5:15pm
28 September 2009
Room 116, 1st Floor, Main Building, SOAS
Enquiries to Dae-oup Chang (dc13@soas.ac.uk|) or telephone Tim Pringle 07969190018
Programme
9. 30-10.00: Introduction: Unions in Transition: From what to what?
Chang Dae-oup, SOAS
10-00- 10.30: Vietnamese Trade Unions and the challenge of labour unrest
Simon Clarke, University of Warwick
10.30-11.00: Question and answer / discussion
11.00-11.15 Tea Break
11.15-11.45: The All China Federation of Trade Unions: the biggest dinosaur, whose representative?
Apo Leung, Asia Monitor Resource Centre, Hong Kong
11.45-12.15: Chinese Trade Unions and the challenge of labour unrest
Tim Pringle, University of Warwick
12.15-13.00: Question and Answer/Discussion
13.00-14.15: Lunch Break
14.15-15.00: Labour Market Institutions in Indian Industry: A Comparison of Mumbai and Kolkata
Satoshi Miyamura SOAS
15.00-15.15: Question and Answer/discussion
15.15-16.00: Korean Trade Unions at the Cross-roads: Resurgence or Retreat?
Chang Dae-oup, SOAS
16.00-16.15: Question and Answer/Discussion
16.15-16.30: Tea break
16.30-17.15: Open discussion chaired by Simon Clarke
The purpose of this seminar is to discuss the forms, nature and effectiveness of the responses of Asian trade unions to globalising capitalist development. Particular focus will lie in trade unions and labour relations in Vietnam, China, South Korea and India in the face of informalisation, deregulation and a global economic crisis. Although trade unions are facing similar challenges, their responses take different forms and the effectiveness of the responses differ from one to another, depending on the way in which trade unions place themselves in relations to capital, the state and rank-and-file workers in the transformation. China and Vietnam remain one-party states in which governance retains many of the characteristics and institutions of the command economy era. Although industrial relations in both countries have undergone extraordinary changes, the official state-sponsored trade unions have retained their legal monopoly on trade union organising and are thus not subject to competitive pressures for members from rival unions or union federations. The principal stimulus to trade union reform has not been initiatives handed down from above, which tend to degenerate into bureaucratic formalism, but the pressure of worker activism from below, which requires workplace and local trade unions to develop their capacity to represent the needs and aspirations of workers in both the restructured public sector and a powerful private sector. On the other hand, workers in India and South Korea, with a long history of labour activism, have established the right to organise independent trade unions that played important roles in pursuing more democratic socio-economic reforms for labouring population. However, it is also the case for those trade unions that they have to struggle hard to overcome the new challenges imposed by the increasing integration of Asian societies into the crisis-ridden system of global capitalism, by which the basis of organisational strength of the unions has been seriously threatened. The seminar will present the findings of a three-year research project on post socialist trade unions funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The results of this research will be compared with presentations of research on trade unions, the labour movement and labour market institutions from India and South Korea. This seminar will address trade unions in these countries not only as being passively subjected to the global-scale transformation of capitalism but also as active players in shaping global labour relations and labour movements. As all four countries begin to haul their respective economies out of a deep global recession, it is already becoming clear that the flow of international investment into South and East Asia will likely continue in the coming decade. The influence that labour relations and labour movements in these countries have on the transformation of industrial relations under capitalist globalisation will also continue to grow. The seminar aims to shed light on these movements and examine the potential for workers and trade unions to shape the transformation.
Speakers include:
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Apo Leung (Asia Monitor Resource Centre)
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Dae-oup Chang (SOAS)
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Satoshi Miyamura (SOAS)
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Simon Clarke (University of Warwick)
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Tim Pringle (University of Warwick)
Enquiries – please contact Dae-oup Chang (dc13@soas.ac.uk|) or telephone Tim Pringle 07969190018