Overcoming the collective action problems facing Chinese workers: lessons from four protests against Walmart

Chunyun Li and Mingwei Liu

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: In contrast to various structural accounts of collective inaction or short-lived contention of Chinese workers, the authors take an agency-centered approach to explain how the few sustained labor protests during closure bargaining develop against long odds. They suggest that workers’ capacity to resolve collective action problems is essential to understanding why a few contending workers are able to sustain protests whereas many others fail to do so. They argue that workplace representatives and external labor activists are crucial for helping Chinese workers resolve the collective action problems that prevent the formation of sustained labor protests. Their comparative analysis of four protests against Walmart store closures—including one unusually long, one relatively sustained, and two short-lived—shows how presence and strategic capacity of workplace representatives and external labor activists shape protest duration. The authors conclude by discussing lessons learned from these cases of closure bargaining for future development of labor contention in China.

Keywords: workplace representatives; collective bargaining; labor NGOs; sustain protest; strategic capacity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-06-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-cna, nep-lab and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 18, June, 2018. ISSN: 0019-7939

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