CLB was first established in Hong Kong in 1994 as a bi-lingual, monthly newsletter designed to inform international trade unionists of events inside China and to let Chinese workers know about domestic labour news and the role of trade unions. The Chinese version of the newsletter initially mimicked official newspapers such as the Workers Daily (工人月报) or Reference News (劳工参考消息) before being published under its own name China Labour Bulletin (中国劳工通讯). See photo left.
In 1998, CLB’s founder and executive director Han Dongfang started broadcasting on Radio Free Asia. His program, the Labour Bulletin (劳工通讯) gave Han the opportunity to talk directly to workers in mainland China and for the first time influence events on the ground rather than just reporting them.
The radio program also gave CLB the chance to work with lawyers in China who were willing to take on the cases of the aggrieved workers Han interviewed. The internet was just getting established in China in the early 2000s and this allowed CLB to create a small but dedicated network of lawyers across the country, including well known human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng who represented the workers at the Stella Shoe factories in Dongguan in 2004.
By 2005, CLB realised that while taking on individual legal cases could make a difference, there were simply too many cases of labour rights violations in China for any one organization to handle. CLB took the tactical decision to focus instead on developing the collective bargaining capacity of China’s workers as a means of resolving labour disputes before they escalated into conflict. While the received wisdom at the time was that you cannot have collective bargaining without freedom of association, CLB took the view that this approach was simply not a practical option in China given the ACFTU’s monopoly.
Initial success was limited due to worker apathy and a lack of knowledge about unions and collective bargaining. It was not until 2011, when several hundred workers at the Citizen Watch factory in Shenzhen went on strike and demanded collective bargaining with management that the program really began to gain traction.
The first half of the 2010s was a period of rapid expansion for CLB in which they forged new partnerships with labour activists in mainland China. They also developed new initiatives in international and domestic media and communications, including their online maps, and trade union education programs. The Chinese government’s crackdown on civil society organizations that began in 2014 and escalated in 2015 has made the operating environment more challenging for CLB and its project partners. However, CLB remains committed to supporting the workers’ movement in China and in creating genuine trade unions that can take the movement to the next level.
Provide practical help and encouragement to workers in China engaged in collective struggle. Enhance the ability of workers to engage in collective bargaining with their employer. Encourage worker activists to see themselves as trade unionists and stand for election in their enterprise trade union.
Create a network of democratically-elected trade union representatives in key industries such as manufacturing and retail. Establish a firm base for collective bargaining by trade union representatives in individual enterprises and gradually enlarge that base to link-up enterprises in the same region and industrial sector.
Establish a viable and stable collective bargaining mechanism across different industries and regions of China. Facilitate the transformation of the official trade union into a federation of industry unions that can effectively represent a wide range of workers in bargaining with specific industry representatives.
