Labour Movement

On a midnight of early June 2009, 10 construction workers left a construction site near the China Agriculture University in Beijing with their luggage. The 9 men and 1 woman came from rural villages in Henan province in the Central China or Guizhou province in the Southwest China. In China, they are known as ‘nongmin gong’ (peasant-workers). According to the national census in 2000, the number of peasant workers in the country reaches 120 million. In 2004, a research report from the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), the official trade union centre, estimated that 40 million, or one-third of the peasant-workers were working in the construction industry (ACFTU, 2004).

Nearly three years ago GLS undertook an informal listening project to hear what was on the minds of labor leaders, labor rights advocates, and NGO staff from around the world as they grappled with the challenges of globalization.