Jennifer's blog

The beginnings of workers’ culture on Weibo

21 May, 2012

Sun Heng, a migrant worker turned singer, prefers to call himself a “new worker” rather than a migrant worker. Together with his troupe, the New Worker Arts Group, Sun has been performing for more than ten years, staging over 500 free shows at construction sites and factories across the country. Now, with the rapid development of easily accessible and versatile microblogs in China, Sun has found an even larger audience.

How Weibo helped Dongguan factory workers get their voices heard

10 May, 2012

When the boss refuses to listen to workers’ grievances, those workers often have no option but to go on strike. But whether or not this tactic works sometimes depends on workers’ media advocacy skills.

Ownership of operating licenses become the focus of latest taxi strikes

23 April, 2012

Apart from skyrocketing fuel prices and high vehicle leasing fees, the ownership of taxi operating licenses is a long-standing problem that has been at the forefront of several taxi driver strikes and protests in the last few weeks. The operating license is the often biggest single investment for taxi drivers in China, costing several hundreds of thousands of yuan. But the question of what happens to the license when the contact period expires has led to numerous and intractable disputes.

Wage arrears: The problem that never seems to go away

15 March, 2012

China’s Minister of Human Resources and Social Security, Yin Weimin claimed during a 7 March press conference that the number of migrant worker wage arrears cases has been on a downward trajectory in recent years. The latest statistics from China’s official trade union tell a different story. A spokesman for the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) said in December that the number of wage arrears cases and the number of runaway bosses actually went up last year, despite the introduction of legislation making the malicious non-payment of wages a crime.

Amid high fashion, some National People’s Congress delegates show concern for the less privileged

8 March, 2012

While the popular focus of this year’s annual gathering of parliament in Beijing has been an obsessive analysis of the Hermes belts, Dior handbags and Emilio Pucci suits exhibited by well-off delegates, quite a few delegates have also voiced concern over the country’s hardworking, yet for the most part, underprivileged migrant workers.

New employment patterns begin to emerge for migrant workers in China

15 February, 2012

After the Chinese New Year holiday, migrant workers seem to have more bargaining power than ever before at their disposal and a great deal more options as to where they’d like to work, and migrant workers in different age groups now have their own preferences.

Shenzhen job hunters unfazed by economic downturn

9 January, 2012

In spite of a sharp fall in the number of job openings in the southern metropolis of Shenzhen, migrant workers are still showing up at the city’s job fairs confident of finding employment in a city where there is a significant under-supply of labour.

Social work – a growing but unstable industry in China

16 December, 2011

Despite the growing interest of college students in social work and the relatively high salary of this profession, a Guangdong-based social worker service centre said they still have difficulty finding professional social workers. In Guangzhou alone, the shortfall in social workers will reportedly be 6,000 next year.

Pepsi’s offer fails to satisfy angry workers

6 December, 2011

Although many scholars are pessimistic about the workers’ demands because they lack a clear legal base, some labor rights lawyers say no matter what the final outcome of this merger is, PepsiCo workers’ collective movement will surely have a profound impact on other foreign merger cases in China. Moreover, they point out that the lack of an effective collective bargaining mechanism in enterprises makes the situation for both workers and management more difficult to resolve.

The utilitarian tendency of the Chinese education system

28 November, 2011

The notice issued by the Ministry of Education in late November ordering universities to cut enrolment for majors that have a less than 60 percent employment rate for two consecutive years is just another example of how Chinese higher education is becoming more and more utilitarian.

You are here