Trade Unions and Management in the State- Owned Enterprise Sector

Abstract

As has been made clear earlier, Chinese trade unions largely represent workers in the state-owned sector (and related urban collective enterprises) as opposed to the other parts of the economy. Given the nature of the relatively recent industrialization of the economy, this description is not surprising. There has been a significant institutional time lag, thus causing the official representational bodies to be currently out of ‘synch’ with the most recent structural changes in the economy and labour force. Given the latest phase of the economic reforms since the early 1990s (see Table 5.1), we shall argue that even in the state-sector there is a management- union ‘crisis’ in the making. The primacy of the state-sector cannot be underplayed in the context of union power in the PRC. State-owned enterprises (‘owned by the whole People’, in the official jargon) have long been the main pillars of Chinese industry.