{"id":12119,"date":"2016-03-17T01:11:26","date_gmt":"2016-03-14T18:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinaworker.info\/?p=12119"},"modified":"2016-03-15T19:06:25","modified_gmt":"2016-03-15T11:06:25","slug":"mineworkers-protests-shake-chinese-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/en\/2016\/03\/17\/12119\/","title":{"rendered":"Mineworkers\u2019 protests shake Chinese leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thousands march in Heilongjiang province \u2022 Oppose\u00a0job cuts, oppose\u00a0repression \u2013 workers need their own democratic trade union!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dikang, chinaworker.info<\/p>\n

Thousands of coal miners in the far northeast of China have been on strike for six days, demanding that China\u2019s rulers \u2013 the so-called Communist Party dictatorship (CCP) \u2013 \u201cgive us back our money!\u201d<\/p>\n

The protests, captured in dramatic video footage that is banned inside China, have shaken the Chinese regime during the very week when its ceremonial National People\u2019s Congress (NPC) has been meeting in Beijing. A key discussion at the NPC has been about how the regime will cut the workforce in state-owned industries, with widely cited reports of 5-6 million redundancies, equivalent to one in six state sector jobs. The striking mineworkers of Heilongjiang province, a\u00a0region already devastated by closures and layoffs, have given a courageous and resounding answer to these plans.<\/p>\n

The mineworkers\u2019 protests began on Wednesday 9 March in the city of Shuangyashan. Longmay Group, the largest state-owned coal producer in northeastern China, operates 10\u00a0mines in Shuangyashan and over 40\u00a0across\u00a0the province as a whole. Last September, Longmay announced 100,000 job cuts \u2013 40 percent of its\u00a0entire workforce. According to some reports 22,500 redundancies have already been implemented. The company also owes a total of 800 million yuan (US$123 million) in unpaid wages dating from 2014. There have been earlier\u00a0protests to demand payment of wage arrears by Longmay workers around\u00a0Heilongjiang, including in the city of Hegang one year ago. The strike in\u00a0Shuangyashan did not materialise from nowhere in other words, but is akin to a match being dropped into a large pool of gasoline.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the Shuangyashan incident has exposed is just a tip of the iceberg. It has been pretty endemic (workers not getting paid),\u201d a rights activist from Heilongjiang told the Voice of America website.<\/p>\n

In China, workers do not have their own trade unions. The only legal union organisation is the government-controlled ACFTU, which invariably sides with management against the workers. In the case of Longmay, the ACFTU has been invisible and played no role in supporting the workers\u2019 protests.<\/p>\n

\"Mineworkers\u2019<\/a>
Mineworkers\u2019 banner reads: \u201cPay back the money, Chinese Communist Party!\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Governor\u2019s speech angers workers<\/strong><\/p>\n

The trigger for the strike was a statement made by Heilongjiang\u2019s governor Lu Hao during the NPC. At a televised meeting on 6 March, Lu claimed there were no wage arrears among Longmay workers and held the company up as an example of successful restructuring. He also stated that annual payrolls of Longmay are 10 billion yuan, equivalent to one-third of the provincial government\u2019s entire budget, implying that the Longmay workforce is\u00a0a burden on the province. \u201cTheir income hasn\u2019t fallen a penny,\u201d said Lu, in comments that made the workers\u2019 anger spill over.<\/p>\n

Initially breaking out in the Dongrong district of the city where Longmay runs three mines, the protests quickly spread across the whole of Shuangyashan. According to local sources eight out of the ten pits in Shuangyashan are only partially working, with mineworkers facing months of wage arrears. Whereas underground workers could earn 6,000 yuan a month in the past, most receive just half this level now\u00a0\u2013\u00a0when they get paid. For surface\u00a0workers, monthly salaries have been cut to just 800 yuan (US$120) in some cases.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0miners and their families marched to the headquarters of the Shuangyashan mining authority with banners proclaiming, \u201cWe must live, we must eat\u201d and denouncing governor Lu as a liar. On Friday, up to\u00a010,000 took part in demonstrations in the city. The main railway line out of the city was blocked by protesters.\u00a0\u201cThousands of people have been protesting… the police have been taking people away,\u201d an eyewitness told Reuters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re demanding our own money, and some of us have been arrested,\u201d a worker told the New York Times. \u201cIs it illegal to ask for our own wages?\u201d\u00a0AFP reported an elderly women pleading with a government official at the scene of the protests: \u201cI\u2019m on my knees, my family can\u2019t eat.\u201d<\/p>\n

A banner pictured on Weibo (China\u2019s Twitter) proclaimed\u00a0\u201cPay back the money, Chinese Communist Party!\u201d This confirms the worst fears of the one-party regime that workers\u2019 anger\u00a0can soon be directed against the political regime and not just against local bosses for creating these problems.<\/p>\n

State repression<\/strong><\/p>\n

The workers\u2019 decisive action forced governor Lu to issue a statement admitting his previous information was false. The governor said the provincial government would \u201csupport\u201d Longmay in its restructuring programme, contradicting\u00a0previous statements that the government could not keep \u201cbailing out\u201d the company, but without giving a clear commitment to rectify the non-payment problems. Lu did not mention the workers\u2019 protests as the reason for\u00a0his public retreat\u00a0and China\u2019s news media have of course refused to report on the protests. They fear that the Shuangyashan workers\u2019 action could inspire other groups to take to the streets. Despite the censors\u2019 efforts to hide the news about\u00a0Shuangyashan, this has been\u00a0among the\u00a0top trending topics on social media in China.<\/p>\n

At the same time, as graphically shown in amateur videos, the provincial authorities mobilised a huge contingent of armed police to forcibly disperse the protests. The government of Shuangyashan warned in\u00a0a statement on its website that it would\u00a0\u201cstrike firmly\u201d against unrest such as \u201cblocking state railway lines, disrupting production activities, organising joint actions and picking quarrels\u201d. This clearly shows the CCP regime\u2019s fears that strikes and\u00a0\u201cjoint actions\u201d by workers could spread.<\/p>\n

As AFP\u2019s report noted, \u201cThe situation in Heilongjiang exemplifies the dilemma faced by Chinese authorities, who say they want to reform the world\u2019s second-largest economy and at the same time seek to avoid unrest.\u201d On a similar note, Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post called the\u00a0Shuangyashan strike, \u201ca scene likely to be repeated as [the] nation undergoes economic restructuring.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government is planning to close 500 million tonnes of coal capacity and up to 150 million tonnes of steel capacity in the next 2-3\u00a0years,\u00a0at a cost of 1.8 million jobs in these two industries. The media is full of reports of \u2018zombie\u2019 companies and the need to deal with China\u2019s plague of overcapacity. But the working class, whose wages are too low to afford\u00a0higher consumption, cannot be held responsible\u00a0for\u00a0this overcapacity.<\/p>\n

\"Heilongjiang\u2019s<\/a>
Heilongjiang\u2019s governor Lu Hao in the hot seat after workers\u2019 protests erupt.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Xi Jinping says\u00a0\u201cface the market\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the coal and steel boom years of 2006-2012, a great many capitalists and corrupt officials got very rich through speculating in these sectors. But a glut was created due to unplanned and speculative expansion, with coal prices falling by more than 50 percent since 2012. Last year, 90 percent of coal mines in China were reported as loss-making. This has pushed\u00a0companies like Longmay into debt. But\u00a0it is the workers rather than the speculators who are being made to pay.<\/p>\n

With China\u2019s economy also needing to upgrade to climate-friendly renewable energy and shift away from fossil fuels such as coal, there is an urgent need for more investment in green alternatives.<\/p>\n

The Chinese dictatorship, which serves the interests of the billionaires who have enriched themselves during the past three decades of capitalist restoration, wants us to believe that large scale closures and killing off the \u2018zombies\u2019 is the only way out. Xi Jinping\u2019s attitude was spelt out at the NPC meeting on Monday 7 March, when he said Longmay must \u201cface the market\u201d. This was reported on the company\u2019s website.<\/p>\n

The socialist approach is that workers\u2019 should not pay for this crisis. Only last November, 21 miners at one of\u00a0Longmay\u2019s mines in Jixi city died in an underground fire. This is just one example of the incredible sacrifices made by coal miners in China in order to power the \u2018economic miracle\u2019 that the global capitalist economy now depends upon. China\u2019s coal industry has the worst safety record in the world.<\/p>\n

Socialists argue that the transition to alternative energy must be planned and managed democratically, not by bureaucratic diktat, but through democratic control and management of major companies, banks and natural resources by employees themselves and working class communities. There should be guarantees that all jobs and salaries will be safeguarded. This could be accomplished by creating a vast array of new jobs\u00a0in branches such as solar, wind and wave power, as well as the development of green technologies\u00a0and\u00a0public transportation systems, and a completely different approach to\u00a0urban planning and construction based on meeting environmental and social concerns.<\/p>\n

\"Shuangyashan<\/a>
Shuangyashan (red) is in the eastern part of Heilongjiang province.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bailout for the stock market<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the past year, the Chinese regime\u2019s \u2018national team\u2019 has bailed out the stock market repeatedly. More than a trillion yuan of government funds have been poured into supporting stocks to save the financial speculators and banks from making bigger losses. But for those like the miners of Heilongjiang there is \u201cno money\u201d according to the CCP officials.<\/p>\n

The strike in Shuangyashan is an important sign of what is happening in China. It comes at a time when the number of workers\u2019 protests is soaring, with 90 percent of labour\u00a0conflicts linked to wage arrears or non-payment of social entitlements\u00a0such as\u00a0housing and pension funds.<\/p>\n

Last year, according to Hong Kong-based NGO China Labour Bulletin, there were 2,774 strikes in China, which is double the number in 2014. But CLB\u2019s strike data is based only on social media posts and the very few strikes reported in official media \u2013 it believes the real number of strikes in China could be eight times higher.<\/p>\n

The northeast, including Heilongjiang, has been the scene of huge workers\u2019 struggles in the not-so-distant past. In 2002, tens of thousands of workers in coal, oil and metal industries protested against redundancies, even launching for a short period an independent trade union. That movement was brutally crushed by the CCP, with workers\u2019 leaders imprisoned. At that time the CCP\u00a0regime under former premier Zhu Rongji presided over\u00a0mass downsizing and privatisation of state-owned enterprises. Around 40 million state sector workers lost their jobs between 1997-2002, in a reform that was praised by the global capitalists and held up\u00a0as a model for China\u2019s\u00a0current rulers to follow.<\/p>\n

Today, Xi Jinping and his government are preparing a new wave of downsizing and layoffs\u00a0aimed at\u00a0the \u2018zombie\u2019 companies. They say this will be \u201cgradual\u201d and insist it won\u2019t be on the same scale as\u00a0the job destruction under premier Zhu. At the NPC, the government unveiled a \u2018resettlement fund\u2019 of 100 billion yuan to compensate workers. But these funds are insignificant compared to the scale of the job cuts being announced and the devastating effects this will have on regional economies such as Heilongjiang and the northeast.<\/p>\n

This region is already a social powder keg. Unemployment and crime are\u00a0rising. Some\u00a0cities are experiencing a shrinking\u00a0population as the younger generation move away to find jobs. The Shuangyashan strike was undoubtedly a wake-up call for China\u2019s leaders gathered at the NPC meeting. There are voices warning that the working class, not least in the hard-hit northeast, will rise up to fight these draconian cutbacks. Because the gap between rich and poor is much wider than in the late 1990s, and the global economy no longer offers new markets and sources of growth, the mood of resistance can be even more determined\u00a0than it was at that time. The idea of an independent trade union movement in China, which\u00a0was\u00a0briefly realised in the mass protests of 2002, will be resurrected as an unstoppable force in the period we are now entering.<\/p>\n

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