China’s new trade union law strengthens Communist Party control

On 24 December 2021, the National People’s Congress adopted a series of amendments to the Trade Union Law of the People’s Republic of China, which will become effective on 01 January 2022. Originally adopted in 1992, this law was amended in 2001 and then again in 2009, and it has gradually extended trade union rights within companies themselves. The new amendments do not fundamentally change the previously established rules of the game. So, while the right to form and join a trade union is universal, company trade unions can only be legally affiliated to a single central body, the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), one of the regime’s ‘mass organisations’ that was founded in 1925. The Trade Union law never allowed and still does not allow the creation of unions that exist independently of the ACFTU. Indeed the amendments to the law serve to reinforce this ‘centralisation’ of power, with the new Article 2 of the law now explicitly stating that the ACFTU is under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. However, the right to unionise is being extended to employees of ‘social organisations,’ the equivalent of our NGOs but more state related (Article 3), and the role of ‘the collective contract system’, a kind of negotiated collective contract agreement that is less broad and never at sector level, is also being bolstered (Article 6). Noteworthy is that contrary to some expectations, the law makes no reference to the coverage of employees in the platform economy.