Moralistic Imperative: “Paradoxical” if not “Hypocritical”

One characteristic of the codes implementation is that by nature it is fraught with paradoxes and contradictions, resulting in an inescapable ambivalence of codes practices in the workplaces. One production line leader at China Galaxy said, “Who cares about labor rights? Do they [transnational corporations] really care about our working conditions? In times of rushed production outputs, we still have to violate the code.” Another company manager in Dongguan frankly explained to us: “We are forced to apply the labor codes by XX company, but we can judge from our intuition that when production and codes clash, which side we can cling to. Once I phoned their production department and asked: ‘Do you still want your products in time?’ The monitor then left our company alone.”

The moral face of capital further proved illusory when we interviewed production workers. While the managers of China Miracle and China Galaxy claimed that every worker had been provided with a written copy of the European corporation’s code when they signed or renewed their contract, all but two of the interviewed workers informed us that they had not received a copy. When we asked whether the code was read out to them in their morning meetings or other settings, most of them responded with uncertainty. Only a few of the workers had some knowledge or understanding of the code provisions. One worker even mistook the code as China Miracle’s own regulations. She asked me:

Do you mean company regulations? Yes, we have very strict regulations, and if we make mistake, we will be fined. Quality control is very high in this company.

To prepare for TNC monitors’ inspection, the management of the two companies repetitively “trained” the workers in how to respond to the monitors questions if asked, especially in terms of working hours, rest days and wages. A uniform answer provided by the workers in the exact same wording, certainly raised doubts about the truthfulness of the answers:

We work eight hours each day. No compulsory overtime work. We have Sunday off. We got 1.5 times pay for evening work, double for weekends and triple for public holidays.

Our suspicions were confirmed when we visited the workers’ dormitories at night where the workers were relatively free to express themselves: “You know we are afraid of losing production orders. We also don’t want to give wrong answers and get into trouble.” The workers were indoctrinated with the idea that if they gave the wrong answers, they would damage the profitability of the company and thus in the long run their own jobs and wages.¹⁷ .

Supervisory staff on the other hand saw the code of practice as a hypocritical act by the TNCs to assuage the “inner sins” of rich western countries. A production manager of China Miracle said:

The foreigners put us in a trap. One the one hand, they talk about human rights, but one the other hand, they also want good and cheap products. They are actually quite hypocritical, you know.

She stressed the point that when production orders were under time pressure, she had no choice but to give up “labor rights”, resulting in excessive overtime work in violation of the code. Severe global competition for low-cost products and just-in-time production structurally goes against code implementation, and results in a “paradoxical” if not “hypocritical” role for company code practices.

Nevertheless, the working conditions of enterprises with code practices are better than those without such codes in the same region. At China Miracle and China Galaxy, we witnessed no cases of bonded labor as all workers we interviewed were willing to work there. All workers were provided with a contract to sign at the end of a probation period, although it was not a standard labor contract drafted by the local Labor Bureau. The contract was much simpler and listed fewer clauses than required by the European corporations’ code.¹⁸ Neither company kept the identity cards of workers, which other enterprises in China often do to prevent workers from quitting. Disciplinary penalties were replaced by a system of rewards and compensation. Standard working hours were ten hours each day, from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm with a two hour break for meals. Workers often had a rest day on Sunday unless pressing production orders required overtime work. Having one day off in seven is a core provision of the European corporation’s code.¹⁹

Another important provision of the code, often the most contested terrain, concerns excessive overtime work. The code states that “The factory shall not require, on a regularly scheduled basis, a work week in excess of 48 hours without overtime work and 60 hours with overtime.” This provision is obviously incompatible with the Chinese Labor Law which stipulates that normal working hours are 40 hours a week and about 9 hours of overtime. Most of the TNCs are aware that their code provisions on working hours are illegal and exceed the Chinese Labor Law. Few of them, however, have revised their codes, or stated clearly that the national standard would apply. The workers of China Galaxy and China Miracle had to work as long as ten hours each day, six days a week. Even when the two TNCs’ codes were adopted (and these codes claimed to uphold the standard of local laws) we did not observe genuine differences with regard to working hours.

The controversy over working hours often provided justification for the TNCs and their representatives to argue that it was the Chinese workers who wanted overtime work and pay. For this reason we paid particular attention to this issue and repeatedly asked the workers to express their views. Most mentioned that if they did not work overtime, the basic salary would be too low to support their daily living expenses. A 19-year-old female worker at China Miracle said:

With overtime work in the evenings and weekends, we could earn about six to seven hundred yuan (US$75-90) each month. Without overtime work, we could only earn three to four hundred yuan (US$50). That is not even enough to cover my expenses in the city.

Another said:

Yes, you may say we prefer long working hours. We travel a long distance to order to work. If we can’t feed ourselves, what’s the use of having a holiday on Sunday?

The wages of production workers at China Miracle and China Galaxy were still a bit higher than at many other companies in the same regions. The production workers could earn about RMB 600-700 each month in low season, and RMB 700-900 in high season, a bit higher than other companies in the same region.²⁰ Inability to meet the legal minimum wage, however, was noticeable when overtime hours were deducted and wages were calculated on the basis of working an eight-hour day.²¹ Overtime work on weekdays including Saturday was counted at normal piece rate, though Sundays and public holidays were paid double, which was still not a common practice in China. However, in violation of the Chinese labor law no pay would be given for annual leave or statutory holidays in either of the two enterprises. The workers left for ten days during Chinese New Year of 2002 and were without any pay. When we questioned this practice, the personnel officer of China Galaxy said that it was not realistic to ask them to comply with the Chinese Labor Law.