Talk of Rights: The Rise and Fall of Collective Bargaining in Southern China.

Abstract

This dissertation traces a politically contentious practice from its emergence in southern China in 2010, through its repression and appropriation by the state in 2015. In asking why social movements occur and why they do or don’t succeed, social-movement literature must contend with movement failure and how entrenched political structures can thwart efforts for reform. By studying the rise and fall of collective bargaining, which was introduced to workers by labor NGOs as a contentious political practice, and situating findings within a social-movement framework, this study bridges studies on regime resilience and social movements. Contentious collective bargaining found acceptance among workers due to ambiguous political opportunities that dovetailed with labor NGOs efforts to promote the practice. Similarly, collective bargaining’s demise was brought on through contradictions in the state-built organizational structures, rather than repressive forces alone. Indeed, local state actors did not immediately move to stamp out workers’ attempts to use collective bargaining. At one point, they even actively encouraged workers to use it to resolve their disputes. Eventually, they would appropriate the practice for themselves while quashing the activists and NGOs who had originally promoted it. But the state’s support of collective bargaining depended on the extent to which it could be used to minimize workers’ disruptive activity and maintain legal boundaries. While labor NGOs had hoped collective bargaining could be used to expand workers’ rights, contradictions within the state-built organizational infrastructure were able to neuter the practice and maintain structures of power.

The data for this study is primarily built from the analysis of six different labor disputes that unfolded from 2011 to 2014. The overarching analytic approach of this study follows McMichael’s (1990) incorporated comparison strategy, which emphasizes the relational aspect of different cases and allows a systemic whole to be constructed through comparison of related cases. The chapters here focus on presenting a narrative of these labor disputes in order to provide multiple snapshots of a different moments in collective bargaining’s life course, and construct a more holistic picture of its trajectory in China. While each chapter engages a distinct line of inquiry, the cases throughout these chapters are connected to each other across time and space.

This dissertation contributes to social-movement theories by detailing the institutional mechanisms that fortify regime resilience, allowing this literature to better understand movement failure. The rise and fall of collective bargaining shows how authoritarian political structures are complex, capable of learning, adapting, and retooling the threats that come their way; and how groups and organizations successfully—and unsuccessfully— navigate these fragile spaces to move the cycle of change and stasis in highly constrained political settings.