China’s recent crackdown on labour activists may have little to do with their own actions

Manfred Elfstrom says the arrest of Zhang Zhiru and other activists may have been connected to university students’ support for agitating workers in Shenzhen, China’s economic slowdown and the US being distracted with its own government shutdown

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Zhang Zhiru, who was detained in January, promoted worker-led collective bargaining. Photo: Handout

Published: 11:30pm, 7 Feb 2019Updated: 11:58pm, 7 Feb 2019

When I first met Zhang Zhiru in 2006, it was at the headquarters of his organisation, Spring Wind. The office was a couple of flights up a modest residential building in an industrial park. Books were neatly organised on shelves for workers to borrow. Long tables facilitated discussion. A portrait of Lu Xun, China’s great modern social critic, gazed down on the scene.

When I say Zhang’s organisation, I mean his second one. The first had been disbanded by the government shortly before we met. That earlier group led an unusual campaign to abolish the fees charged to workers who wanted to file for arbitration of grievances. Thousands of signatures were collected as part of this effort.

In China’s employment law system, arbitration is a necessary prelude to having your day in court. When the country enacted a new Labour Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Law in 2008, the fees were removed.

Cases doubled from the year before. The concurrent passage of a new Labour Contract Law and the 2008 financial crisis were probably the main causes of this spike, but abolishing the charges for arbitration probably played a role, too.

A former employee who had tried unsuccessfully to win compensation for a work injury, Zhang has since helped workers on thousands of cases, covering everything from injuries like his own to wage arrears and social insurance.

Participants in the scores of free legal training sessions that he organised have gone on to become not only successful litigants but also resources for their coworkers.