Top Biz News

Firms should be compelled to unionize

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-07-06 10:51

The retailer also said it had constituted a series of regulations under Chinese laws, especially those that relate to trade unions, offering effective channels to resolve complains from employees.

However, ACFTU officials said though many employees of foreign-funded companies wish to join a trade union, they cannot afford to raise the issue for fear of losing jobs or other benefits.

Chinese law stated that a trade union is usually required to be installed at every company of a certain scale, which is different from that of the United States, which allows workers to establish their own trade unions, without organizational affiliations to their employers.

Up to date, China has more than 100,000 overseas companies, plus those from Taiwan, Hongkong and Macao, but no more than threetenths have built labor unions.

"Without trade union's protection to employees, many foreign companies only grant the least standard of salary to workers to save costs," Wang Zhaoguo said.

"In a long run, these companies will also hurt domestic producers by squeezing the purchase price at a very low level to afford the cheap prices of their goods, thus cause vicious competition within the industry," the top unionist said.

ACFTU now have 1.17 million branches across China with 150 million members. About 7.7 million trade unions are set up in companies.

Wal-Mart is accelerating its store openings in China - it plans to open at least 18 this year, according to a Los Angeles Times report, it had bought goods worth 18 billion U.S. dollars from Chinese manufacturers last year.