MING-SHO HO2018-09-102018-09-102012http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84873882368&partnerID=MN8TOARShttp://scholars.lib.ntu.edu.tw/handle/123456789/372026This 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.institutional conversion; KMT; labour activism; labour union; Leninism; party-state; Taiwan[SDGs]SDG8historical perspective; oil industry; social history; stakeholder; state owned enterprise; trade union; welfare provision; Taiwanjournal article10.1017/S0305741012001257