Man­u­fac­tur­ing work­ers are feel­ing the ten­sion between mid­dle-class aspi­ra­tions and work­ing-class prob­lems, and many are grow­ing increas­ing­ly mil­i­tant in assert­ing their labor rights. The report’s author, Chi­na Labour Bul­letin (CLB) observes that the shift is dri­ven by a deep­en­ing sense of social rights on the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic fronts, includ­ing ​“earn­ing a liv­ing wage, cre­at­ing a safe work envi­ron­ment and being treat­ed with dig­ni­ty and respect by the employer.”

Despite Chi­na’s seem­ing­ly mirac­u­lous eco­nom­ic boom, in many ways, its emer­gent labor strug­gles are strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar to those expe­ri­enced by work­ers in more devel­oped economies: weak-to-zero col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights, a lack of social and health pro­tec­tions, the pover­ty and insta­bil­i­ty fac­ing inter­re­gion­al migrant labor, glob­al eco­nom­ic volatil­i­ty and con­se­quent job inse­cu­ri­ty. And of course, that’s all in a frac­tious atmos­phere of break­neck nation­al growth rates, greater eco­nom­ic ambi­tions among the work­ing class and soar­ing inequality.

A new report on China’s labor move­ment , cov­er­ing about 1,170 strikes and oth­er labor actions from mid-2011 through 2013, illu­mi­nates how what is arguably the world’s biggest pro­le­tari­at is grow­ing more agi­tat­ed and polarized.

Chi­na is the big busi­ness sto­ry of the 21 st cen­tu­ry, but is it also the big labor story?

The ris­ing mil­i­tan­cy (and even class con­scious­ness) across the indus­tri­al work­force is being facil­i­tat­ed by the expan­sion of dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­works — as more work­ers begin to enjoy the tech gad­gets they’ve been pro­duc­ing for rich coun­tries all these years — as well as the desta­bi­liza­tion of work­ers under volatile glob­al trade flows. CLB reports: ​“Many work­er protests were ignit­ed by the clo­sure, merg­er or relo­ca­tion of fac­to­ries in Guang­dong as the glob­al eco­nom­ic slow­down adverse­ly affect­ed China’s man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­tries. Some 40 per­cent of the strikes record­ed by Chi­na Labour Bul­letin from mid-2011 to the end of 2013 were in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sector.”

With­out a free media or inde­pen­dent unions, it’s hard to tell how uni­fied China’s work­ers are or can be, but CLB describes bread-and-but­ter strug­gles at var­i­ous multi­na­tion­al fac­to­ries, as well as pub­lic sec­tor work­forces such as teach­ers bat­tling wage arrears and san­i­ta­tion work­ers denied social insurance.

In March 2013, a strike erupt­ed at the Nan­hai Hon­da plant in Guang­dong, involv­ing 100 pro­duc­tion-line work­ers who reject­ed an offer of a 10 per­cent raise after learn­ing that senior employ­ees had been offered near­ly 20 per­cent. After the gov­ern­ment inter­vened in the nego­ti­a­tions, CLB reports, ​“the strik­ers agreed to a revised offer of 14.4 per­cent, about 310 yuan per month, plus a hous­ing sub­sidy of 50 yuan.” The work­ers and the man­agers may well have learned the hard lessons from a pio­neer­ing Nan­hai Hon­da strike in May 2010, which made inter­na­tion­al head­lines and, accord­ing to CLB ​“cat­a­pult­ed the work­ers’ move­ment in Chi­na into high gear.”

And as with the U.S. labor move­ment, the auto indus­try may prove to be a bas­tion of work­er unrest and mobi­liza­tion. A recent arti­cle in Asia-Pacif­ic Jour­nal describes the Hon­da strike as part of a glob­al and his­tor­i­cal trend toward work­ers exer­cis­ing col­lec­tive pow­er at key points in the glob­al pro­duc­tion chain, espe­cial­ly in high­ly inte­grat­ed indus­tries like cars.

Elec­tron­ics, which has a sim­i­lar­ly inter­de­pen­dent rela­tion­ship between sup­pli­ers and buy­ers, has also been a hotbed of Chi­nese work­er action. Labor scan­dals in that sup­ply chain pose a unique prob­lem for West­ern tech com­pa­nies: The hyper-clean, slick­ly glob­al­ized image of Sil­i­con Val­ley con­trasts trag­i­cal­ly with oppres­sive work­ing con­di­tions, such as those sur­round­ing the spate of work­er sui­cides at the fac­to­ry com­pounds run by the infa­mous Apple sup­pli­er Fox­conn. One young work­er wrote a poet­i­cal­ly glib let­ter to Fox­conn CEO Ter­ry Gou:

If you don’t wish your com­pa­ny to again be called by peo­ple a sweatshop, Please use the last bit of a human­i­tar­i­an eye to observe us. Please allow us the last bit of human self-esteem. Don’t let your hired ruf­fi­ans hunt for our bod­ies and belongings, Don’t let your hired ruf­fi­ans harass female workers, Don’t let your lack­eys take every work­er for the enemy, Don’t arbi­trar­i­ly berate or, worse, beat work­ers for one lit­tle error.

Yet beyond the occa­sion­al angry poem, work­ers are lack­ing direct chan­nels for air­ing griev­ances. Although Chi­na is tech­ni­cal­ly home to the world’s largest union orga­ni­za­tion, the All-Chi­na Fed­er­a­tion of Trade Unions (ACF­TU), the many spon­ta­neous strikes and protests of recent years reveal that the state-run labor bureau­cra­cy, while not com­plete­ly an arm of the gov­ern­ment, has large­ly been inef­fec­tive in respond­ing to work­ers’ inten­si­fy­ing needs and demands.

Geoff Crothall of the CLB tells In These Times via email that while the ACF­TU has failed many work­ers, the rank-and-file are devel­op­ing a greater sense of polit­i­cal agency:

We have seen some offi­cials in munic­i­pal and provin­cial trade union fed­er­a­tions take a more pro-active stance but it will take ordi­nary work­ers to get involved to real­ly push for change for any sig­nif­i­cant move­ment to occur. It is very ear­ly stages at present but [based on] talk­ing to some of the work­ers at labor rights groups in Guang­dong, they do under­stand that reclaim­ing the union for the work­ers is the most ben­e­fi­cial long-term strat­e­gy for the work­ers movement.

CLB found that in their pur­suit of ​“bet­ter pay and con­di­tions,” work­ers are bypass­ing tra­di­tion­al trade union orga­niz­ing entire­ly in favor of orga­niz­ing actions themselves.

At the multi­na­tion­al Ohms Elec­tron­ics fac­to­ry in Shen­zhen, for instance, work­ers rose up after becom­ing frus­trat­ed with their union leader, whom they believed ​“had failed to live up to the much-hyped expec­ta­tions of the trade union elec­tion held just nine months ear­li­er in May 2012. The elec­tion had been orga­nized with the help of the Shen­zhen Fed­er­a­tion of Trade Unions and was seen as a show­case of the federation’s demo­c­ra­t­ic reforms.” They then post­ed a peti­tion at the fac­to­ry entrance ​“demand­ing the ouster of their trade union chair­man,” soon gath­ered more than 100 sig­na­tures, and then, pub­licly defy­ing their des­ig­nat­ed leader, ​“took their demands to the dis­trict trade union for action.”

One work­er told the local press, ​“We don’t want a union chair­man who is par­tial towards the employ­er. We want to elect a chair­man who can speak up for us.” (That sum­mer, as Work­ing In These Times report­ed pre­vi­ous­ly, under­cov­er stu­dent researchers revealed that often the sup­pos­ed­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions at fac­to­ries had failed to real­ly improve work­place conditions.)

But in the absence of a gen­uine­ly pro-work­er union struc­ture, the report notes, ​“One of the most intractable obsta­cles to the devel­op­ment of the work­ers’ move­ment in Chi­na thus far has been the inabil­i­ty of work­ers to main­tain the sol­i­dar­i­ty and momen­tum cre­at­ed by iso­lat­ed vic­to­ries in the workplace.”

The CLB report high­lights the work of grass­roots labor advo­cates, such as the Panyu Ser­vice Cen­tre for Migrant Work­ers in Guangzhou. As a com­mu­ni­ty-based NGO, they lack the for­mal author­i­ty of a union, but in 2012, the group helped work­ers at two jew­el­ry fac­to­ries win major back pay­ments for unpaid social insur­ance pre­mi­ums. It has also helped san­i­ta­tion work­ers claim unpaid social insur­ance pre­mi­ums from the local gov­ern­ment. They recent­ly pub­lished a Code of Col­lec­tive Bar­gain­ing, which CLB describes as ​“a pos­si­ble tem­plate for col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing leg­is­la­tion in the future,” pro­vid­ing basic guide­lines for struc­tured labor-man­age­ment negotiations.

Ulti­mate­ly, the reclaim­ing of the union from state and cor­po­rate pow­er depends on how work­ers’ raised con­scious­ness evolves into more sys­temic mass action and inter­nal union reforms. But it looks like China’s cap­i­tal­ist mir­a­cle has opened the poten­tial for its work­ing mass­es to cre­ate the century’s labor mir­a­cle as well.