China: 48,000 Adidas, Nike, Timberland strikers need your solidarity

April 23, 2014 – Labor Notes – The strike at the Yue Yuen shoe factory in Dongguan, China, keeps growing. Now 48,000 workers have joined and local groups are calling for international solidarity.

Labour activists at the site, in touch directly with the workers, are asking supporters to target Adidas and Nike and demand they negotiate directly with the workers.

Yue Yuen, owned by Pou Chen Group, is the largest athletic shoe manufacturer in the world.

Workers began striking April 5 after finding out that the work contracts they had been signing with the company were fake, and that the company had been significantly underpaying their social insurance for nearly 20 years.

Some workers are preparing to retire and have been robbed of the social insurance funds they are legally entitled to. The total amount workers are owed in back pay from the underpayment has not been calculated—but at the very least it is in the millions.

Faced with the company’s stubbornness and piecemeal offers, more and more workers have joined the strike—and it ballooned to include a solidarity strike by workers employed by the same company in neighboring Jiangxi province.

Heightened surveillance

Despite heavy surveillance and cops stationed all around, workers remain in the industrial park. Communication continues through new and dispersed QQ (social media chat) groups, and in areas where workers naturally assemble: by the river, clocking in and out and at rest areas inside the plant.

Many of the worker activists and some reps have been arrested. It is unclear who has and hasn’t been released. Zhang Zhiru and Lin Dong, both with the ChunFeng (“spring wind”) worker centre, are among those whose whereabouts are unknown. They were instrumental in providing guidance and advice to workers about collective bargaining and formulating demands.

There are no formal worker representatives currently. The All-China Federation of Trade Unions has set up a working group and is doing an investigation in the factory, but the results are not expected to be made public.

Meanwhile, local groups are doing their best to communicate with workers and identify leaders—all very challenging with the heightened surveillance.

So far workers have rejected all management’s proposals: a minimal wage increase, a housing allowance and a new social insurance payment scheme.

Solidarity requested

Hong Kong groups closest to the action believe that, if the workers hold out, they can win by going after the source of power and money: the brands.

The groups are asking international supporters for two things:

• Pressure on Adidas and Nike. Letters from trade unions targeting these brands would be very helpful. Supporters also plan to leaflet customers outside Adidas stores in Taipei, Melbourne, London and several U.S. cities this week. Click here to locate a store near you and download leaflets. Here’s info for an April 24 action in New York City.
• Solidarity messages encouraging workers to keep on with the strike. Consumers should take pictures with signs saying they support Yue Yuen workers. The best way to post solidarity messages and photos is to post them to your own Facebook page and using the hashtag #ChinaSolidarity. This will allow Hong Kong supporters to find them and forward them to workers’ social media groups. If you’re not on Facebook, email them to teresac710@gmail.com.

The goal is direct negotiations between the workers and the companies and brands, with some Hong Kong worker centre representatives sitting in as observers.

An open letter from nine labor groups declares, “Adidas, Nike, Timberland, you created this problem, now fix it!”

[Teresa Cheng is a field organizer for the International Union League for Brand Responsibility. She just returned to the US after spending a year and a half studying Mandarin at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong, and has been in close touch with the groups in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan who are working on the Yue Yuen case.]