China's trade union to promote collective bargaining

ACFTU via WikipediaThe All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), the only allowed federation of trade unions in China, has initiated a campaign to start collective bargaining, write the state news agency Xinhua, suggesting this might increase the level of wages in China. The ACFTU met in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province.
Officially collective bargaining, formal negotiations between representatives of the employers and those of the employees, is already possible since the year 2000, but there have been quite some barriers.

...trade unions in many private companies are established by the business owners and are affiliated to the company. Therefore, they are unable to effectively bargain salary rises for the workers," said Xu Xiaojun, a professor from China Institute of Industrial Relations who specialized in trade union study.

Increasing social pressure on labor relations has put collective bargaining as a negotiation tool again on the agenda.

Authorities in Shanghai issued a detailed plan in March to promote such practices. It aimed to establish the bargaining mechanism in 75 percent of state-owned enterprises and 60 percent of non-public enterprises with trade unions this year. The plan would expand the number of laborers covered in the mechanism by 10 percent.