POST-SOCIALIST TRADE UNIONS, LOW PAY AND DECENT WORK
ANALYTICAL REPORT
How have Trade Unions Developed their Role of
Representing Workers in Negotiation with Employers
at the Workplace?
By Do Quynh Chi
Introduction
Representing workers in their negotiation with the employers is the fundamental
mandate of any union in the world, except for those in the post-socialist countries, Vietnam
included. The Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL) was established in 1929
with the first and foremost goal of serving as the “extended arm” of the Communist Party in
mobilizing the working class. At the workplace, the union is known as the welfare provider
and the transmission belt of the management. But the changes in employment relations
entailing the transition to a market economy have seriously challenged the union’s position:
workers in the private sector refuse to join the traditional union; they organized wildcat
strikes without involving or notifying the union leaders. The frustration of workers toward
the union is evidently reflected in the drop of union density from 90 percent in the command
economy to 13 percent now.
It is crucial, therefore, for the union to develop their role of representing workers in
negotiation over rights and interests with employers. This paper will attempt to explore the
underlying barriers to the unions in the realisation of their representation task and propose a
possible explanation which, at the same time, is a solution to overcome these difficulties by
analyzing some cases in which the unions have managed to play their role. The report
consists of three section. Section one explores the barriers to the union in representing their
members at the workplace. Section two dwells on case studies to identify what is the key to
effective representation in some unions. The last section refers to recent responses from the
national union and the direction to reform workplace unions and concludes the paper.
1. Barriers
workplace
to
the
union
in
representing
workers
at
the
The VGCL has been vocal in blaming the employers as the major obstacle to
enterprise unions in protecting workers. According to union officials, the employers,
especially the foreign ones, bar the establishment of unions and intimidate the union leaders
to keep them away from truly representing members’ rights and interests. “Union leaders are
all part-time, they rely on the employers for job and income and they dare not go against
their boss”, said one of our union informants, who echoed the generally accepted explanation
of the weakness of workplace unions. But where on earth would an employer happily
embrace the idea of having a strong union leader in his enterprise, who would tell his
workers how to claim for higher wages and better working conditions? Neither is it realistic
to expect employers to create all necessary favourable conditions for a union leader to
comfortably do his job. Clearly, the real problems of Vietnamese union’s representation
capacity do not lie in the lack of cooperation of employers.
The case studies carried out so far show that barriers to unions to represent workers in
negotiation with employers root primarily from how union leaders are elected and how they
manage their relationship with rank-and-file members. There can be also other reasons for
union’s weaknesses such as poor support by the higher unions, the non-supportive union
legislation etc. But within the limit of this report, we would focus on two key underlying
causes which have not been addressed in previous studies. These two causes, I would argue,
are fundamental in determining the success or failure of a union.
Union election
Whether union leaders are appointed provisionally by the higher-level unions or
elected by workers, the employers always have a legitimate voice in determining, directly or
indirectly, who would become union leaders. In the first case, the higher-level union
officials, in preparation for the appointment of a provisional union board, have to rely on the
HR department to make a list of candidates. A union official explained: “we have no idea
about the people in the company, who can be union leaders; therefore, we have to ask the HR
manager to do it. Any way, it is only the provisional union, not official one”. It is
understandable, therefore, that only the candidates favoured by the management are
nominated for union posts.
Box 1: Appointment of Provisional Union
Like employers every where, those in Binh Duong IPZs are reluctant to work with unions.
Needless to say, meeting with them to discuss the establishment of union in their companies will
be much harder. Therefore, if the IPZ union is lucky enough to get 'a nod' from employers for a
company visit, they try to set up union in two visits. In the first visit, after persuading the
employer to allow for setting up a union in the company, the IPZ union will ask the company or
the HR department in particular, to prepare a list of candidates for the provisional union executive
board. The reason is simple: we have no idea about the people in the company, who can be union
leaders; therefore, we have to ask the HR manager to do it. Any way, it is only the provisional
union, not official one, B explained.
In the second visit, the IPZ union has to do a number of activities (often in no more than 2
hours): meeting with workers to encourage them to join the union, announcing the members of
provisional union (basing on the list prepared by HR Department) and the decision of the IPZ to
establish union in the company.
(Extract from a case study by Vietnam Research Team)
The first union election, in which workers are supposed to be able to choose their
union leaders, is organised 6 months after the establishment of the provisional union. The
Trade union Consitution provides that the enterprise union has to organise rounds of
consultation at the workshop union level, allowing workers to have the chance to nominate
their own candidates. Apart from workers’ nominations, the management and the provisional
union also have the right to make nominations themselves. The employers usually want to
manipulate the union election outcome to ensure that the new union leaders are “cooperative”
with the management and the union election rules do give them room to do so.
Box 2: Shortlisting candidates for union leadership at a Korean company
In preparation for a union election, the incumbent union committee would send registration forms
to all production units for them to nominate candidates. Workers can vote for candidates inside or
outside of their unit. Based on nominations of the unit unions, the union committee will develop a
list of ten candidates with highest nomination and consult the employer about the list. We have to
consult him because sometimes the company would not like a person in a certain position to be
union chairman due to management and production plan. If the employer disagrees with the list of
candidates, we would negotiate. If he has good reasons for that, we would revise the list, the union
chairman explained.
(Extract from a case study of the Vietnam research team)
There are three legal loopholes for management manipulation. First, the union has to
consult the management on the candidature list and it often happens that the list is revised if
the former opposes one or more nominations (see Box 2 for an example). Second, the
management (often the director or HR manager) is invited to attend the union election and
his/her appearance alone is sufficiently intimidating for workers (see Box 3 for such a case).
Box 3: Union election at a Vietnamese company
In a union election of a Vietnamese domestic company in Song Than 2 industrial park, seven
candidates were nominated for a five-member union board. Five candidates were nominated by
the employer and two by the provisional union. With the presence of the director, workers kept
silent at the suggestion by the IPZ union officials to make their own nominations. After a long
persuasion, workers made two more candidates. Votes were counted in the room next to the
meeting room by an HR staff and a member of the provisional union. The director of the company
kept on walking to their table, checking the ballot result, making sure that her candidates win.
Though disagreeing with this type of election, IPZ union often keep silent as they do not want to
spoil the relationship with the company: Finally, that is their company, they are the host, we are
guests, we have no way to force them to do the way we want, B said.
(Extract from a case study of the Vietnam research team)
And thirdly, there is no monitoring mechanism maintained by the higher-level union
to ensure that the union elections are organised in accordance with the rules set by the Union
Constitution. Sometimes, the higher-level union officials are invited to attend union elections
but if they are not invited or do not have time to attend these workplace events, which is the
more common case, a report on election result is all they require. In shortage of a monitoring
mechanism, many enterprises even ignore the whole election procedures and a union is born
out of the informal agreement within the management (Box 4).
Box 4: How the union in TRF company was elected?
TRF union was set up in 2006 with the Warehouse manager as union chairman and HR manager
as vice chair. But most workers we talked to have never attended any union meetings and have no
idea how the union committee was elected. One worker told us: I got to know from rumours
among the girls in the factory that one day all managers, including line leaders, were invited to a
lunch. After the lunch, a union committee was elected and their names were placed on the
company bulletin board the next day.
(Extract from a case study of the Vietnam research team)
In relations to the selection and election of union leaders at the workplace, the
question of who should become a union officer provides another insight into the problems of
workplace union. Vietnamese managers enjoy the right to join the union like workers and
they can become a union leader if they win union elections. It is often the case in Vietnam
that a manager, even an HR officer, becomes union leader and this is attributed to not only
the manipulation of the employers but also the support of VGCL as a whole. A high-ranking
union official claimed: “I see no problem with a manager acting as a union leader at the
same time. First, a manager understands the business better and enjoys a higher position in
the company, therefore, he has comparative advantage in negotiating for workers’ interests.
Second, the success of a union leader whether or not he is a manager or a common worker
lies in his personal capacity and devotion to protecting workers’ interests not in his position
in the company”. Workers, however, perceive this situation in their own way. In a recent
strike, when we interviewed a worker, asking her why she would rather walk out than
making her complaints through the union, she burst into laughter, saying: “Are you kidding?
He [union chair] is a manager. If I open my mouth, the next day I am gone. And you know
who would sign my dismissal decision? The union vice chair – the HR manager”. Clearly,
for the workers, managers can never become trustworthy union leaders.
In summary, loopholes in the legal procedures of union appointment and election
have created room for management manipulation and prevent workers from electing in a
democratic way to choose their true representatives.
Loose connection between enterprise union and rank-and-file workers
Depending on the size of the enterprise, the membership of a union executive board
may consist of 4 to 15 members. With the influence of the management on the appointment
of the provisional union, and later the union election result, it has become common that union
executive boards are dominated by white-collar staff and managers. A review of the case
studies show that representatives of the blue-collar workers (often line managers or
technicians) account for around 20 to 30 percent of the union board membership. There is no
case in which a production worker is included in the union board.
In a company, material differences between office staff and rank-and-file workers are
highly visible. Office staff work in air-conditioned, clean and modern offices while the rankand-file workers work in hot, noisy and poorly ventilated workshops. Except for the Japanese
companies where all workers and staff wear the same uniform, in other firms, office staff do
not have to wear uniform like blue-collar workers. They often have lunch in separate
cafeteria. Due to different recruitment criteria (office staff must have a university degree
while rank-and-file workers need a high school degree only), it is extremely rare for a bluecollar worker to shift to an office job. The management and the office staff, in other words,
live in a different world that is unapproachable for blue-collar workers. Then, how can a
union board dominated by managers and office staff communicate effectively with the rankand-file workers, not to say to represent the latter’s interests in negotiation with the
employer?
In bigger enterprises that employ over 1,000 workers, each production line or
shopfloor makes up a union unit that is subordinate to the enterprise union board. The
shopstewards, in many cases, are the line leaders or experienced workers in the units. The
communication between the enterprise union board and the rank-and-file workers is
supposed to be carried out through these shopstewards. When a new business policy that
potentially affects workers is going to be made, such as wage adjustment, overtime
extension, increase of work norms etc., the union board, as described in the union legislation,
has to consult members. The union leaders, however, do not talk to workers directly but
disseminate information at union meetings to the shopstewards who, then, inform workers in
their units. In practice, this consultation is reduced to a ritual because the information is often
provided in a one-way mode without expecting any feedback.
So, there exists little direct two-way communication between the union leaders and
their rank-and-file members, which in most enterprises, have created a vacuum of mutual
understanding and trust between them. Without understanding and trust, obviously the
workers will not confide in the union leaders their concerns; neither do they have confidence
that the union officials will stand on their side when it comes to conflicting with the
employers. The fact that 100 percent of strikes so far were not organised by the unions is a
strong evidence of this mistrust by rank-and-file workers about the union. Even worse, the
union rarely knew about the plan for a strike among workers before it happened. During a
recent wave of strikes in the South which involved hundreds of thousand workers, both
enterprise unions and employers were taken by surprise. Disappointed with the enterprise
union, many employers refused to negotiate with the official union during the settlement of
strikes. After labour conflicts, a number of employers set up their own network to contact
with workers, instead of relying on the union as before. A Korean employer said:
"Previously, we depended on the enterprise union as the bridge to workers but it is clear that
workers do not trust the union. They planned for strike but the union did not know until it
happened. Now, we had to approach the workers ourselves to understand their concerns and
demands to prevent future strikes".
2. Best practices - How some unions have managed to represent
workers effectively?
In the last section, we have argued that the unions’ failure to represent workers in negotiation
with employers at the workplace is mainly attributed to two reasons: first, workers do not
have the opportunity to elect their real representatives and second, there exists a vacuum of
communication, understanding and trust between rank-and-file workers and the enterprise
union board which is dominated by office staff and managers. This section will discuss three
cases in which the enterprise unions have managed to overcome these problems to represent
workers in negotiating with the employers. Though the degree of success among the unions
discussed below varies, each has managed, in their own way, to depart from the traditional
role of a “transmission belt” of the management and to some extents, protect and promote
members’ interests. Interesting enough, these unions share one common feature – they all
maintain good communication with members through the effective coordination and
cooperation of line managers.
Coordination between blue-collar and white-collar members of the union board
The union board of Ford assembly plant should be described as typical of traditional unions
in Vietnam. The union board consists of six members, among them four are white-collar
staff, including the union chairman, and two blue-collar workers – an engineer from the carbody workshop and a technician who is in charge of shopfloor maintenance. The union
chairman is an officer at the customer service division. He was entrusted to replace the
former chairman because, as he claimed, he can speak English while the other can not: the
first union chairman does not speak English at all so he could not talk to the American
managers; he was like a puppet only, unable to do anything for workers; therefore workers
disliked him; he knew that so he voluntarily withdrew from the post. But what makes Ford
union different from a traditional union is the coordination among blue-collar and whitecollar members of the union board to facilitate the communication within the union structure
from union board to rank-and-file workers.
In 2006, Ford union initiated a negotiation with the HR department on payment for
workers during factory shut-downs. The automobile market during that period faced with
severe competition from imported cars and most car-makers had to shrink their production or
shut-down the factory for a while due to reduction of sale. During the shut-down time, Ford
offered 70 percent of basic salary for affected workers. Ford union managed to negotiate for
75 percent after months’ of serious consultation and bargaining with the HR department. The
initial idea for negotiation came first when the union board informed workers about the plan
of the HR department to pay 70 percent of basic salary during shut-down time. Workers were
concerned that such a low payment can hardly help them get through the shut-down period
and return to work for Ford when things get back to normal. These concerns spread around
the workshops and were conveyed to the union chairman through the two blue-collar union
board members: the body shop engineer and the maintenance technician (see Box 5 for
details on how communication is carried out at the shopfloor). The communication between
Box 5: Communication at the shopfloor
After lunch, workers in the same shop, engineers and technical workers alike, chat a bit
and take a short nap on the shop floor. The body shop engineer told us, he does not often organize
formal meetings with other workers in the same section. When something needs to be discussed or
informed, they talked over lunch, before the lunch nap or after work. During working time, they
have to stand in the assembly line and would not have chance to gather and talk: the technical job
is first priority so we focus on our job during working time to ensure the overall productivity; we
can flexibly find time during lunch or after work to discuss union issues. The whole assembly line
from unboxing to body shop and welding, painting and quality checking sections are placed in one
building. So when necessary, heads of different sections can meet and talk shortly: I talk to heads
of other shops frequently over various issues: technical matters, productivity, workers’
complaints, and also about union work because we are all heads of workshop unions. The body
shop engineer expressed his concern: Two years ago, you would never see cars lining up like that,
they would be sold immediately after being made. But now, we are having bad time and our
salaries are getting lower comparatively while the living costs are getting higher. Workers in my
section complained a lot to me. I told the American technical manager once that I know we are
having difficulty but if Ford does not pay workers higher, they would lose the best workers.
(Extract from the case study on Ford Assembly Plant)
the bodyshop engineer and the technician with workers is far from being formalized. In fact,
the union issues are discussed informally during lunch time or small talks after work. More
importantly, there is no clear-cut separation between union issues and production matters,
between consultation for negotiation with the employer and concerns about quality. As it
remains informal and flexible, the communication between shopstewards and workers has
been effective and intimate. As shown at the end of box 5, the shopsteward even approached
the American manager himself, warning him of raising salaries otherwise they would lose the
best workers. The intimate relationship between the shopsteward and workers has instilled in
the former a real concern for the interests of workers – the concern that would not come to
him if it is only because he is a union officer.
And Ford union has benefited from its good coordination with these shopstewards.
Whether it is consultation on a wage increase or handling of workers’ complaints, the
shopstewards serve as the communication coordinator between the union chairman and rankand-file members. For instance, when there is a worker complaint, the shopsteward will try to
address it first within his authority. If he fails, he will take the complaint to the union
chairman and explain the problem. The union chairman, after that, takes the complaint to the
HR department to discuss a solution. As the shopstewards maintains close relationship with
workers, they are often the first people that workers approach to if they have complaints.
Ford union structure as a whole, therefore, has been relatively effective in negotiation with
the management and handling grievances. These initial successes may als be attributed to the
tolerance of the management and the fact that the union has not attempted to negotiate for
major revision of working conditions. Yet, the union here has somehow departed from the
traditional way of Vietnamese unions.
Fighting for better working conditions in the public sector
BM is one of the biggest public hospital in the North of Vietnam, employing over
three thousand medical specialists and workers, among them two thousands are union
members. Apart from the hospital union board which consists of 15 members, each faculty of
the hospital has a union unit with 2 members only, a unit union chairman and a vicechairman
who are elected by the faculty union members. In terms of career path, there is a marked
difference between the union posts at the hospital union level and the faculty union level.
Being a hopsital union chairman or vice chairman is regarded as a step to higher position in
the Party as well as management structure. Therefore, the heads of the union boards are often
(male) faculty directors or vice directors. The hospital union, however, remains extremely
detached from its members at the faculty level (see Box 6 for details).
Box 6: BM hospital union
BM hospital union seems to be a part of the management itself. Every month, the union
meets with the management to discuss human management issues and other matters related to the
general operation of the hospital. In these meetings, the hospital union leaders are supposed to
present the proposals and concerns of workers to the management. In fact, these proposals, if there
is, rarely concern wage and working conditions but social events or philanthropic campaigns.
Apart from the proposals of the union, the management also has their own policy to improve the
income of the workers basing on the hospital revenue, for example: bonus for keen workers.
Therefore, it is difficult to point out the real impacts of the hospital union on the wages and
conditions of workers in Bach Mai.
The hospital union has even less time for their members. Normally, apart from regular
meetings held 3 times a year, they are supposed to talk to faculty union leaders if any problem
emerges and at the latter request. But this has rarely been practiced according to our informants.
The only occasion for them to meet directly with the grass root members is the annual workers’
congress. Therefore, while union members would know who is their faculty union chairperson,
not all of them can tell the name of the hospital union chairman.
(Extract from a case study by the Vietnam research team)
Yet, the union posts at faculty level that are widely regarded as a burden rather than a career
advantage are left for non-management employees, normally women. Like line managers in
factories, these unit union officers who are doctors and nurses work with their members day
and night. Low wage, poor working conditions, and overloaded work are problems that they
face every day with other members of the faculty. As the chairwoman of the respiratory
faculty told us, she felt the pressure from members every day on her to do something to help
them. The pressure sometimes comes from their complaints about workload and low salaries,
sometimes it comes from her own feeling of responsibility as a union officer. The intimate
relationship between these shopstewards and their members has encouraged (and pressured)
the faculty union officers to take actions to improve working conditions (see Box 7 for
examples).
Box 7: Attempts to improve wage and working conditions for members by faculty unions
The policy of the hospital union is that only the staff with permanent labour contracts are
eligible to join the union. As a result of this policy, a number of lower-level staff with a number of
short-term contracts who have been actually working in the hospital for a long time can not join
the union and have no official channel to convey their concerns to the management. The union
chairwomen collected support from the members then managed to persuade the hospital union to
allow all staff in their faculties who has at least 6 months’ experience to apply for union
membership.
In another faculty, the union executive board initiated different ways to improve the
income of their staff. For instance, they organise off-hospital visits of their doctors and nurses to
nearby provinces or send staff as visiting teachers to seminars, workshops and colleges.
Recognizing that staff working night shift are overloaded with too many patients at night,
the union in several faculties proposed to the management to increase the number of doctors and
nurses for one night shift and arrange a flexible shift schedule to move more staff to the busier
shifts.
Faculty unions in Bach Mai also ally with one another to fight for better working
conditions. In a recent case, all faculty union leaders are working together to propose the provision
of experience allowance (by the Ministry of Health) for all the staff.
(Extract from a case study by the Vietnam research team)
In the public sector, as salaries and benefits are fixed by the Government, there is
often little chance to bargain for changes in working conditions. But the faculty unions have
used the strong support they enjoy from members to make a collective push for changes, for
instance: they collected signatures from all members to persuade the hospital union to recruit
junior staff of under 6 months’ experience and in a more ambitious attempt, they allied with
one another to propose to the Ministry of Health for a provision of experience allowance.
However, the faculty unions are cautious to refrain from embarking into any conflict
with the faculty management and the hospital union. The management’s cooperation and
support are important for union officers to do both their technical and union jobs well. A
faculty union chairwoman told us: “I need to be careful not to get involved in too many union
works for a while because the faculty director is not happy with me spending too much time
on non-technical work. I’d better not make thing worse”.
Coordination between ‘black’ leaders and ‘red’ leaders
As mentioned earlier, when the official unions (informally dubbed as the “red”
unions) fail to represent workers’ interests in negotiation with employers, workers resort to
wildcat strikes as an effective way to bargain with employers. These industrial actions are
very well-organised (see Box 7 for an example). Apparently, strikes have been organized by
some ‘black’ leaders who are not the union officials.
Box 8: Strike in Sumitomo Bakerlite (as told by the company Director)
In October 2004, a female worker handed the Director a petition asking for a wage
increase. Upon this petition, the company was thinking that then they would talk about workers’
pay, but workers did not know about this intention. Two or three days before the strike, workers
gave the management a notice that they would go on strike for 24 hours unless the company raise
salary by thirty percent across the board. The Director got angry, refused the demand, thinking
that it was just a threat. On December 4, all Vietnamese employees had a 24 hour strike -- "a
special Sunday". After the 24 hours' strike, they all returned to work.
(Source: Diary of ILO's Vietnam IR field study in 2005)
In our case study at Carimax, a Korean supplier to Samsonite, both the HR manager
and the union leader admitted the existence of these black leaders. The union chairman
described them as a group of three people, both men and women, who are line managers in
the factory. They have managed to develop a network among different production lines and
factories: since I am a mechanic, I often work with these line leaders and workers. Line
leaders and workers are actually close to each other, they work together, eat together, even
live in the same houses. While the foreman and other office staff enjoy better treatment from
the company, line leaders and workers receive little, they are treated the same, the union
chairman said. It is natural, he claimed, that these line leaders become workers' leaders.
When we visited the factories, we observed the chemistry between line leaders and workers.
Line leaders are actually more experienced workers in their 30s or early 40s. Among over ten
line leaders, only two of them are male and a vast majority of workers are female. In some
lines, the line leaders went to each worker, helping them with difficult tasks. Their
relationship is strengthened by the fact that most of them are from Cu Chi or areas close to
the district.
The Korean employer maintains an authoritarian management style. He rarely shares
information with the Vietnamese staff, including the HR manager who has no idea what the
real wage table applied in the company looks like. The union chairman in his meetings with
the Korean director, tried to make clear that all the demands or proposals he presented came
from workers not himself in fear of being dismissed. Naturally, the Korean director has
driven away from him all the Vietnamese employees and managers who, gradually, became
sympathetic to workers and their black leaders. As the union chairman explained to us, the
black leaders not only enjoy the protection from blue-collar workers but also the empathy of
office staff and union committee members because their protests also benefited the latter.
During the last two strikes, though the office staff knew that workers were going on strike
and who the leaders were but they kept silent. They did not go on strike but they never
revealed what they knew about strikers and strike leaders to the employer.
In fear of losing his job if confronting with the employer, the union chairman chose to
support workers by secretly coordinating with the black leaders. The black leaders have
managed to develop a network among different production lines and factories. When a
problem relating to the company policy on wage, bonus, benefits, working hours, or overtime
hours emerges, these line leaders will gather opinions of workers then consult with each
other. Their demands will be given to the union chairman who, then, talks to the director or
the human resource manager. The feedback from the management will either go through the
union chairman or, as it is practised now in the company, be addressed publicly by the
management through information channels of the company such as notice board, speakers
etc. Sometimes, the management turned down workers’ demands and the result was two
strikes led by the black leaders. The strikes have been relatively effective in changing the
management in a positive manner. In the past, strikes happened mostly because the company
turned down workers' demands, the union chairman said, but now they [the company] have
learned the lesson. The Korean director has become more responsive to the union’s
proposals. Regular meetings between the director and union committee have been organized
primarily for the former to get to know the major complaints/demands of workers. Legal
standards on overtime hours, remuneration, bonus, allowances, social insurance contribution
are strictly complied with.
Though our informants believe that the Korean director know about the existence of
the black leaders and their organisation of strikes but he dares not victimize or dismiss them
in fear of being retaliated by the local people. As the director and other Korean managers live
in a dormitory inside the campus of the company, they have frequent contact with local
residents. Cu Chi district where Carimax is located, is well-known for its strong sense of
solidarity. Any act of retaliation against the black leaders, therefore, may put the Korean
managers into danger.
Summary of the three cases
The three cases show that it is almost impossible for the official union to represent
workers if they remain detached from rank-and-file workers. This detachment not only
results in lack of communication but also lack of understanding, mutual trust, and even
protection of the union officials against employers’ unfair practices. This gap of connection,
however, can be filled by the line managers. The three cases prove that these quasishopstewards not only plays the role of a bridge of communication between workers and the
union board but the intimate relationship with rank-and-file members poses a constant
pressure on them to take actions to protect and promote workers’ interests. The way they
push for negotiation with employers, however, is largely informal: they may integrate it into
daily technical work (Ford) or ally with each other to make a collective impact (BM) or
secretly coordinate with the sympathetic formal union leaders to bargain with the employer
(Carimax).
However, this job is dangerous and difficult for them all. The formal shopstewards
have to balance their relationship with the management and the workers (BM and Ford)
while the black leaders need to rely on both workers and the formal union to hide themselves
away from the employer’s retaliation.
3. Future directions and Conclusion
The VGCL points to the lack of protection of the part-time enterprise union officials
from unfair labour practices and poor union skills as a subjective reason for their inability to
represent workers in negotiation with employers. It is a generally accepted explanation in the
VGCL that enterprise union officials have to rely on the employers for job and income and
they are not trained with sufficient union skills; therefore they dare not confront the
employers in negotiation. What the VGCL plans to do now, therefore, is to separate the
negotiation function from the enterprise union and shift it to the district union. It is expected
that after the legal revision at the next national union congress, the district union officials
who are well-equipped with negotiation skills and independent of the managements will
represent workers in negotiating with employers.
Though admitting that there are black leaders behind wildcat strikes, the VGCL
opposes to the idea of incorporating them into the union because a union leader should be a
moral person who has certain position in the company so as to be able to talk to the
management. As an informant expressed it: A union guy should leads a moral lifestyle, not
involved in drinking, drug abuse, family problems and should be a disciplined worker. When
they need someone to lead the protest against the employer, workers will turn to the black
leaders but they vote for other people who meet these criteria in union elections. At the same
time, the union organisation structure at the enterprise level remains highly fragmented. The
union board maintains no more than a formalized relationship with shopstewards and rankand-file workers. And the union election rules normally bar real worker representatives to
come to the official union positions.
The analysis of the case studies evidences that without improving the relationship
between the union and rank-and-file workers, of which one solution is to incorporate the line
managers more closely and systematically into the official union structure, the union will
hardly be able to fulfil their role of representing workers in negotiation with employers.