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

Apple Inc. agreed to let outside monitors into factories of partners, such as Foxconn Technology Group, and listed suppliers for the first time to counter criticism about conditions of workers making its gadgets.

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.

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.

A planned increase in Guangdong’s minimum wage of up to 20 percent, which was scheduled to go into effect on 1 January next year, has been put on hold, Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper reported today.

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.

Just like China’s massive foreign debt holdings, China’s workers’ movement is an economic reality that is now too big to ignore. What China’s 800 million workers want and what they get will impact not only on the cost of consumer products in the West but on the development of the market for international products and services in China. It could also, in the long run, affect the development of workers’ rights globally.

Determination, patience and considerable ingenuity were required by a group of workers at a sports equipment manufacturer in Shenzhen just to get their boss to the negotiating table. SJ Photography.

Trade union officials in Shanxi, the traditional heartland of China’s coal industry, plan to establish a system of collective wage negotiations that will help boost miners’ incomes across the province, the official Xinhua news agency reported on 6 September.