Mon, Oct 01, 2007 page8

• Movement loses its grassroots connection

  • By Ho Ming-sho 何明修
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  The Mid-Autumn Festival holiday was a period of sorrow and mourning for Taiwan's labor movement as Tseng Mao-hsing (曾茂興) -- the last survivor of the nation's independent labor movement from the 1980s -- passed away.

  Taiwan's labor movement was born in the era of street demonstrations that followed the lifting of martial law and based on the concept of legal resistance. On one hand, laborers were seeking rights for holidays and overtime pay that had long been stipulated in the Labor Standards Act (勞基法). On the other hand, the grassroots labor unions freed themselves from the party-state and began to organize class mobilization. At that time, a series of strikes raised worker awareness. The newly born labor movement was awe-inspiring as no one knew what workers really wanted and where they were going to lead Taiwan after 40 years of oppression.

  In the 1990s, the labor movement gradually became part of the system and fewer radical strikes occurred. "Push" and "pull" factors both influenced this transition of the labor movement. Labor activists were pushed into taking a milder approach after the state apparatus eliminated the radical labor movement, which led to the failures of strikes launched by the Miaoli Bus Co and the Far Eastern Chemical Fiber Plant. Then a series of government attempts to amend legislation and restrict labor rights pulled the labor movement's focus to the legislative agenda.

  To a certain extent the labor movement was effective within the system. Within a dozen years, it successfully pressured the government to extend the Labor Standards Act to include the service industry and limited the labor insurance burden on workers to a reasonable proportion. The movement also saw the legalization of trade union confederations, the implementation of democracy in state-run businesses and the passage of the Gender Equality in Employment Act (兩性平等法).

  However, the established labor movement was also a tamed labor movement. It mobilized fewer members at the grassroots level and their participation served more as a bargaining chip in government talks. The movement adopted strategies that brought political influence.

  While its influence has grown, the movement has also become distanced from the majority of workers. With more channels in the system, union officials have gained more career opportunities. They serve as directors and representatives of various groups, members of local labor autonomous councils, members of committees and as legislators-at-large nominated by political parties. It is not hard to see how labor union officials have become distanced from the grassroots level.

  More importantly, the established labor movement only lays special emphasis on the rights of state-run business employees and neglects non-government employes, the unemployed, foreign laborers and other groups that are even more disadvantaged.

  One conspicuous phenomenon is that more and more of the middle-aged unemployed no longer have anyone speaking for them. They are not protected by labor unions and the labor movement doesn't care too much about their situation. As other labor movement officials began to enter the corridors of government, Tseng was the only one left guarding the radition of street demonstration and preserving traditional grassroots resistance.

  Restoring the spirit of the 1980s grassroots resistance will be a challenge that labor movement leaders accustomed to operating within the system must deal with.

  Ho Ming-sho is an assistant professor of sociology at Nanhua University.

  Translated by Ted Yang
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