THE PACIFIC : Beijing Orders Official Unions for Foreign-Backed Businesses
China has ordered foreign-financed joint ventures to set up official trade unions by the end of the year, blaming a lack of organizations for a spate of deadly workplace accidents.
Zhang Dinghua, vice chairman of the state-controlled All-China Federation of Trade Unions, said 12% of foreign-financed joint ventures had unions, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Zhang also pledged a major drive to put official unions into the 95% of Chinese township enterprises that still have no worker organizations, a move that will affect tens of millions of workers. Zhang said official unions would protect workers.
“Some small manufacturers neglect safety in production, and some overseas investors force workers into unreasonable overwork and then underpay them,” he said.
More than 8,100 trade unions now represent 1.32 million workers at overseas-financed ventures in China, Zhang said.
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