Beyond tokenism: The institutional conversion of party-controlled labour unions in Taiwan's state-owned enterprises (1951-86)
Journal
China Quarterly
Journal Issue
212
Pages
1019-1039
Date Issued
2012
Author(s)
Abstract
This article challenges the accepted view that during the period of martial law Taiwan's labour unions were a useless token. Focusing on the petroleum and sugar industries, I analyse the incremental process of how party-state control over the labour unions was converted by the workers themselves in Taiwan's national enterprises. In the early 1950s, the KMT's policy of unionizing enterprises was a complementary strategy to reinforce its slow and unsuccessful party-state penetration. With the unions' prominent role in welfare provision, workers were encouraged to develop a sense of stakeholdership. Over the years, labour unions legitimatized the interests of worker members and thus gave rise to an explosion of claim-making activities-what I call petty bargaining. By the mid-1980s, labour unions, although still dominated by the KMT, were no longer a Leninist transmission belt, but rather functioned as a de facto complaint centre-an often overlooked precondition for the rise of post-1987 independent labour unionism. © 2012 The China Quarterly.
Subjects
institutional conversion; KMT; labour activism; labour union; Leninism; party-state; Taiwan
SDGs
Other Subjects
historical perspective; oil industry; social history; stakeholder; state owned enterprise; trade union; welfare provision; Taiwan
Type
journal article