Left-wing demonstrators yesterday rallied in Taipei in support of Chinese labor protests, calling for the Chinese government to allow the establishment of independent labor unions.
About 10 protesters from the Committee for a Workers’ International and the Nan Shan Life Insurance Co union braved rain showers to gather outside the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall’s Liberty Square, calling for capitalists to be made to “foot the bill” for massive layoffs expected in China’s state-owned enterprises.
“We feel that Taiwanese left-wing organizations should do more to support the struggle of the Chinese workers’ movement,” committee member Vincent Hsu (許偉育) said, adding that there had been a rise in labor activism as a result of China’s economic crisis, which he said was slated to lead to the layoffs of up to 1.8 million workers from state-owned corporations in the coal mining and steel industries.
“The Chinese Communist Party [CCP] is doing everything in its power to suppress the workers’ movement and their struggle to get wages that are owed to them,” he said, citing the suppression of miners’ protests in China’s Heilongjiang Province.
While thousands of workers from China’s state-owned Longmay Mining Group are to be paid back wages after taking to the streets early this month, this was only a “partial victory,” because leaders and organizers were still detained, he said, adding that the protests were only the “tip of the iceberg” of growing labor discontent, citing struggles by steel workers in China’s Jilin Province and miners in Shanxi Province.
He called for the establishment of independent unions apart from the CCP-controlled All-China Federation of Trade Unions, which he called a tool for the suppression of workers’ movements.
A Hong-Kong-based protester surnamed Lam (龍) said solidarity and support for Chinese workers’ movements were important, because they could ultimately lead to the overthrow of the CCP if they become politicized.
“If there is no international support for suppressed Chinese workers and no solidarity to join them in their struggle against the CCP and capitalists, the CCP and capitalists will have more and more power to suppress workers in Hong Kong and Taiwan,” he said, blasting the CPP for spending more than 1 trillion yuan (US$154.5 billion) to prop up its stock market while refusing to pay benefits and wages owed to workers.
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