McDonald's hikes China pay after controversy

[TexasLawyer]

Source: (Reuters)

McDonald's hikes China pay after controversy

Updated: 2007-08-08 08:34

U.S. fast food giant McDonald's Corp., facing accusations that it has been breaching China's minimum wage laws, said on Tuesday it would give its Chinese employees their first across-the-board pay rise.

From next month, McDonald's will increase workers' pay to levels 12 to 56 percent above local minimum wages, McDonald's China spokesman George Gu said. He declined to be more specific about the rises but said that currently, some workers were paid "in line" with minimum levels.

McDonald's became embroiled in a public controversy in April, when Chinese newspapers reported it was paying some part-timers far below local minimums -- for example, 4 yuan (52 cents) an hour in the big southern city of Guangzhou, or just over half the city's minimum.

The All-China Federation of Trade Unions called on McDonald's to adjust its pay and let its workers unionize.

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Read more: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-08/08/content_5449393.htm

[Zhade]

1. Just a reminder: progressive groups here and in China managed to unionize EVERY WAL-MART IN CHINA.

Meanwhile, here? Not one.

"The US is the greatest country evar!!!11!!!" my ASS.

[Javaman]

2. Although china's walmarts are unionized, the unions there are nothing like

the ones we have here. just about every company in china is "unionized" to maintain the image of it being communist the workers paradise. Dig deeper into china's unions and you will see it's just a dog and pony show for the world. Just as it was in the soviet union.

[David__77]

4. Not exactly.

First, employment is not nearly as "unionized" as it was in the Soviet Union. Second, the Chinese unions face a very different situation in which they are operating in private, foreign, and foreign-domestic joint venture environments. In the Soviet Union, unions could say that since "the people" owned all the enterprises, there could be no adversarial relationships between workers and management, while in China no such thing can be said in most cases because of the ownership nature. The unions in China has not fully developed in terms of using the tools of strike and so forth, but I see room for this to develop.

Interestingly, under Mao there was a constitutional right to strike, which was indeed used many times especially during the cultural revolution, though there certainly were repressions. Deng Xiaoping had it removed from the constitution after he ascended to power. "Leftists" in China have mainly tried to block privatization, which I think they should. But now that it has occurred, they should focus on labor law reform to ensure that workers can protect their interests.

[treestar]

3. This is good

The higher their wage demands, the more we can compete with them, with our (relatively) already high wage demands.