CHINA-INTERNAL: CALL FOR NATIONWIDE STRIKE BY CRANE OPERATORS

China Change reported on May 7, 2018 that a WeChat group named “Changsha tower crane operator federation” posted an "open letter' om April 25 asking construction, crane, and mechanical equipment operators and engineers in China to trigger a wave of simultaneous strikes among crane operators around the country, in order to protect our basic labor rights and dignity, and gain an equal salary, the Changsha tower crane operator federation has decided to unite, stand-up, and declare that we have the right to basic dignity in our labor and the right to engage in collective bargaining. It issued a call for a united strike on the eve of International Labor Day of May 1, in Changsha’s May First Square. While the letter went viral on Wechat, one of the workers who posted the message said because he had posted the message, the Changsha Ministry of State Security collected all possible information about him within a day, including address, telephone number, work unit and more and came to his workplace and demanded that he come to the police station and explain himself. The worker promised to the MSS agents that he would not participate in any of the activities and was then allowed to leave. However, on April 26, the spokesman for crane operators in Hainan published a video on Weibo calling on all operators in the province to join the national strike on the morning of May 1. On the same day, crane tower workers in Zigong, Sichuan Province, held a demonstration demanding wage hikes. The following day, workers in the following eight cities in eight provinces also held banners and circulated photographs of their protests online: Nanchang in Jiangxi, Tianshui in Gansu, Zhumadian in Henan, Xiantao in Hubei, Qingzhen in Guizhou, Huaian in Jiangsu, Hengyang in Hunan, Xiamen in Fujian. Over the next three days, workers in at least 13 cities (Wuhan, Shijiazhuang, Yinchuan, Sanmenxia, Luoyang, Lankao, Yuncheng, Zhuzhou, Yueyang, Pingjiang, Dazhou, Zhongshan, Maoming) also held protest demonstrations. As of April 30, the provinces in which crane operators staged demonstrators, held banners, called slogans with their demands, and shared photos or footage online, include: Hunan, Hubei, Henan, Hebei, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Hainan, Fujian, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Sichuan, Guizhou, Guangdong, Guangxi, Shanxi, Shandong, Shaanxi — 19 provinces, with protests in between 27 and 30 cities. Participants ranged from dozens to hundreds in each event. This is the first instance of such a large-scale, nationwide, collective action by industrial workers in China for over decades. On May 1, however, China’s crane operators did not formally go on strike possibly because some places had already agreed to their demands or that some local governments warned they would strictly prohibit any such strike.





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