When Wal-Mart opened supercentre No. 1035 in this town near China’s coast in late 2005, the stage was set for a showdown. The local branch of China’s state-backed union took pride in having penetrated more than 90 per cent of the companies within its jurisdiction, including foreign ones — way above average.But the world’s biggest retailer — known for shunning unions — had fended them off since entering China in 1996. Eight months later, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), the only one allowed in the country, emerged victorious, opening its first Wal-Mart branch and triggering a tide of similar openings across the country.Now, labour experts wonder if — and how — the union will leverage its foothold and newfound clout nationwide. Critics deride the ACFTU as a sham. Over 25 years of market reform, it has been accused of putting the creation of an attractive investment environment above workers’ rights.Whether it will begin acting on behalf of China’s legions of labourers or whether its aggressive membership drive is simply a way for the Communist Party to extend its reach to workers outside of state-owned enterprises, is still an open question.“The whole debate that the trade union has to resolve internally now is: does it go for protecting workers’ rights, and will that mean capital flight?” said Stephen Frost, a corporate social responsibility expert at City University of Hong Kong. “Or should it continue essentially assisting, or ensuring, that workers aren’t creating trouble for foreign direct investors?” The story of the Wal-Mart union’s inception reads like a thriller, with secret party machinations and midnight rendezvous. Since coming to power in 2002, Communist Party boss Hu Jintao has taken a populist approach toward economic development, paying lip service to protecting the swelling ranks of urban workers — many of whom pull long shifts for tiny salaries — who are seen as a potential source of instability.Hu issued what would become a call to arms on March 14, 2006, writing about “instability” in foreign-invested companies and pressing for the opening of more union branches in a document the ACFTU decided to distribute for nationwide study two days later.At the same time, the ACFTU set ambitious goals of unionising 60 per cent of foreign firms in 2006 and 80 per cent by end of the year 2007. That spurred an early April visit to Quanzhou, a city in coastal Fujian province with the one of the highest rates of unionisation, by a senior union team from Beijing.A month later, the union branch in Quanzhou set up a working group to plan the assault. It enlisted heavyweight consultants from Beijing to get past managers from the Arkansas-based retail giant that had rejected its overtures.“If such a globally influential company wouldn’t allow the establishment of a union it would definitely have an effect on China’s union,” said Zhang Huiping, vice-director of the Quanzhou federation of trade unions.To finally crack the nut, the ACFTU had to do something it had never done before — organise workers from the ground up.-JOHN RUWITCH
