Organizer and Chair: Elizabeth Koll, Case Western Reserve University
Discussants: Victor Nee, Cornell University; Thomas G. Rawski, University of Pittsburgh
Domestic migration and the formation of labor markets in present-day China have become the focus of attention in various academic disciplines. Issues such as labor relations, contract labor in migrant communities, labor markets and their interaction with local authorities and local communities challenge our understanding of contract labor in China in its economic, historical and social dimensions. This interdisciplinary panel combines the interpretation of an economist, sociologist and historian, who explore the phenomenon of contract labor from its beginning in the late 19th century to the present day. The papers seek answers to the following questions: How has the present contract labor system in regard to hiring practices, wages and supervision changed in comparison with the Republican period? How does the contract labor foreman fit into the triangle between employer, management and employees in the 1990s? Which new role does the government now attribute to contract labor and its agents? Have labor markets benefited from the recent re-introduction of contract labor? What are the social costs?
All three papers are based on recent field research in China and present the work of one Ph.D. candidate and two young scholars at the very beginning of their careers. The group, two Europeans with academic background in the U.S. and one American, met during research activities in China. The group is convinced that all papers will greatly benefit from the discussants’ contributions, a sociologist and an economic historian, and their invigorating comments on a topic that definitely requires interdisciplinary perspectives.
Contract Labor in pre-1949 China: The Changing Role of the gongtou in the Textile Industry
Elisabeth Koll, Case Western Reserve University
Contract labor and its most visible agent, the gongtou (foreman), played an important role in the creation of an industrial workforce in China in the early 20th century. While recent scholarship has focused on the political and social organization of workers during the Republican period, this paper particularly focuses on the managerial role of the gongtou in China’s textile industry between 1895 and 1949.
Based on company records from Shanghai and other local archives in Jiangsu province, oral history projects and interviews with former workers, the career paths and hiring practices of the gongtou will be discussed. It will be argued that the gongtou’s role changed from independent labor supplier to member of the enterprise’s lower management in control of discipline and industrial output on the shopfloor. From the 1920s on, the gongtou in large, urban-based textile mills also became involved in negotiations with emerging political organizations and secret societies on behalf of the factory management, thus enhancing his social status within the enterprise. The gongtou’s bargaining power in urban-based mills was substantially stronger than in rural-based mills. In fact, by the 1930s large cotton mills in Wuxi and Shanghai introduced social and managerial reforms in order to curb the power of the gongtou and the contract labor system. By the late 1930s, the increasing institutionalization of labor relations and managerial processes in textile enterprises led to the weakening of the gongtou’s managerial and hierarchical position on the shopfloor.
The Baogongtou: A Productive or Destructive Element in Today’s Chinese Labor Markets?
Leila Fernandez Stembridge, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid
With the recent increase in social and occupational mobility, migration from the poor rural areas toward the rapidly expanding coastal urban areas has led to the re-emergence of the baogongtou (or labor contract foreman) in Chinese labor markets. The baogongtou have become an important source of information for rural migrant workers in search of work through job allocation, as well as for local authorities, since foremen are often part of an organized migration labor system. In addition, the baogongtou are now indirectly turning into a policy target for local authorities, as training programs are being set up for appointing elite workers (mingongtou) who presumably play an intermediary role between rural migrant workers, employers and local people in destination areas.
Based on recent field research in Shanghai, Beijing, and Ji’nan, this paper explores the question whether in the 1990s the baogongtou have become part of a structured and organized migration and thus contribute to a decrease in social instability caused by migration tides, or whether they rather represent an obstacle to the real integration of migrant workers, by creating further social discrimination and the inevitable development of a "migrant underclass." Arguing from an economic and social perspective, the paper discusses to what extent the labor contract system created between baogongtou and employees is part of an excessively organized and hierarchical environment.
Chinese Urban Labor Markets in the 1990s: How Much Do Labor Contracts Matter?
Rebecca Matthews, University of Iowa
One necessary condition for the emergence of a labor market is that actors must be freely able to enter into and exit employment relationships. In an effort to grant such freedom and to establish labor markets, the Chinese government gradually began to require short-term labor contracts in urban work units starting in the 1980s.
This paper investigates the relationship between the labor contract system and the emergence of urban labor markets. Observations are based on field interviews in Shanghai and Guangzhou, and on quantitative analysis of a survey conducted in those two cities in 1994. It will be argued that mainly legal changes largely unrelated to the labor contract system as such became the key to facilitating voluntary mobility among employees and to promoting the emergence of labor markets. Enterprise reforms of the 1980s, incrementally pressured public sector firms to cut costs and produce profits, making it desirable for them to cut labor costs in whatever way possible. By the early 1990s, firms were much less inclined to prevent employees from leaving voluntarily for outside job opportunities. This development intensified by the mid-1990s when urban employees had acquired strong, informal rights to quit their jobs regardless of whether or not their labor contracts were expiring. It will be shown that the weakening of labor contracts has benefited the workforce mobility in present-day China.