As China’s Pearl River Delta region moves toward higher-skilled manufacturing, a network of former migrant workers is organizing, educating and empowering the area’s workforce.
Launched March 2, 2011
Migrant workers have driven China's economic miracle. This is most evident in the Pearl River Delta, the world's factory floor. In the major cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou, there are gleaming malls, brand new metros and top-notch infrastructure – ports, highways and electrical grids.
As China has risen, though, so has the price of labor. And as China's most productive region transforms from low-skill manufacturing to more value-added products, the expectations of migrant workers have also changed. Once happy to escape rural poverty, they are now demanding rights workers in democracies take for granted: overtime, safe working conditions and collective bargaining. In Guangdong province, new legislation has even raised wages to $100 a week for some garment workers.
The wage increase has been won in large part by a movement led by a few former migrant workers turned amateur lawyers. They've formed a loose coalition and meet monthly throughout China. These leaders organize workers and settle labor disputes while making sure that their advocacy doesn't meet the legal definition for a union. In China, all official unions are government controlled. So these advocates must work within the constraints of Chinese labor law while furtively seeking funding from foreign NGOs (which is also frowned upon) to stay alive. These leaders have become adept at working within the system. One activist, for example, who is setting up a holistic workers center that aids with housing, education and advocacy, has even enlisted local government under the banner of building a "harmonious society."
These advocates also face legal challenges from the entrenched lobbies of factory owners from Hong Kong, Taiwan and, increasingly, the Mainland, who are seeing their margins evaporate as the price of labor in the region continues to climb. This project examines the Pearl River Delta's labor movement, and the challenges that workers, labor leaders and bosses face as the region moves up the value chain.
Grantee
Adam Matthews was born in South Africa during apartheid. He grew up in a Toronto suburb, where he became conversational in Jamaican patois, rolled with underachievers and learned the wonders of Hong...
Grantee
Jocelyn Baun is a freelance photographer. She relocated to New Delhi from New York in 2010. In NYC, she trained under the English fashion photographer David Sims as his full-time digital tech for...
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Zhang Zhiru, one of China's "barefoot lawyers," works to protect migrant workers from abuses by unscrupulous factory bosses.
This unit has been designed for grades 9-12. The recommended timeframe is 4-6 weeks.
The reality of factory conditions and labor rights in China is closer to Mike Daisey's fiction than you think.
China's Pearl River Delta is the country's industrial capital, home to factories that produce everything from shoes to iPads. Maintaining this powerhouse status carries a distinct human cost.
"Black factories" provide often unsafe employment to China's thousands of migrant workers. Since these factories don't actually exist on paper, it's almost impossible to hold them accountable.
Millions of Chinese flock to factories in the Pearl River Delta in the hopes of finding work. However, their work conditions often lack safety standards, and can lead to injuries.
In China, new organizations are trying to push ideas of corporate social responsibility and ethical supply chains to replace a mindset that values productivity above all.
Apple laptops, Nokia phones, Motorola HDTV boxes, iPods, and iPhones are among common items churned out by this Taiwanese electronics giant's oppressed labor force.
In the Pearl River Delta, members of China’s growing labor movement adapts its tactics to avoid government suspicion.
"Black factories" provide often unsafe employment to China's thousands of migrant workers. Since these factories don't actually exist on paper, it's almost impossible to hold them accountable.
Zhang Zhiru, one of China's "barefoot lawyers," works to protect migrant workers from abuses by unscrupulous factory bosses.
China's Pearl River Delta is the country's industrial capital, home to factories that produce everything from shoes to iPads. Maintaining this powerhouse status carries a distinct human cost.
In China, new organizations are trying to push ideas of corporate social responsibility and ethical supply chains to replace a mindset that values productivity above all.
Apple laptops, Nokia phones, Motorola HDTV boxes, iPods, and iPhones are among common items churned out by this Taiwanese electronics giant's oppressed labor force.
In the Pearl River Delta, members of China’s growing labor movement adapts its tactics to avoid government suspicion.
China's Pearl River Delta is the country's industrial capital, home to factories that produce everything from shoes to iPads. Maintaining this powerhouse status carries a distinct human cost.
Millions of Chinese flock to factories in the Pearl River Delta in the hopes of finding work. However, their work conditions often lack safety standards, and can lead to injuries.