IN AN industrial zone near Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in south-west China, a sign colourfully proclaims the sprawl of factories to be a “delightful, harmonious and happy district”. Angry steelworkers must have winced as they marched past the slogan in their thousands in early January, demanding higher wages. Their three-day strike was unusually large for an enterprise owned by the central government. But, as China’s economy begins to grow more sedately, more such unrest is looming.

CLB translates two Chinese media accounts of labour disputes that give a detailed insight into how China's embryonic collective bargaining process is beginning to develop. Photo by attack the darkeness@flickr.com

A three day strike by several thousand workers at an automotive plant in the south-eastern province of Jiangxi has reportedly forced the provincial government to intervene and suspend plans to restructure the company.

The recent upsurge in worker activism in China is continuing into the New Year with five more strikes and protests in five different provinces getting media attention last week.

It's back to work for these workers at a factory in Nanjing in Eastern China after South Korea's LG Display, agreed to double their year-end bonus. The workers downed tools earlier this week - angry that they were getting a smaller payout than their peers in South Korea.

China Labour Bulletin Director Han Dongfang is quoted in this half-hour radio documentary on migrant workers in Guangdong, produced and presented by Mukul Devichand for the BBC.

Less than two years after the worker suicides at electronics giant Foxconn and a strike at Honda (HMC) suppliers in Guangdong province, labor troubles are again roiling China.

With such a shoddy economy, Europeans aren't buying as many Chinese goods. And China today said its industrial output slowed -- again. Marketplace's Rob Schmitz reports from Shanghai now, regular and overtime pay is down for thousands of factory workers. And street protests are up.

Over the past decade or more, watchdogs of corporate activity, governments, business leaders and non-governmental organizations have all struggled with how best to deal with human rights abuses caused by business activities. One response has been the Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR) movement. A plethora of CSR actors now exist: with a wide array of codes of conduct, multi-stakeholder initiatives, and labelling schemes. And although the CSR movement has made many positive contributions, it is now at a turning point.

Protests have erupted over the last week in a wide range of industries and locations across China, indicating that worker unrest is far from confined to just the manufacturing heartland of the Pearl River Delta.