News Briefs

It’s teachers left behind in modern China

Jan 31, 2008 10:12 AM

Low wages, few legal protections, government-dominated unions and dangerous working conditions are facts of life not only for Chinese industrial workers but for the nation’s classroom teachers, too. In unveiling two new reports on conditions for Chinese workers, labor-rights advocate Han Dongfang described labor abuses both in state-owned industries and in the private sector, which produces high-end brand name goods for export to the U.S. and Europe. He noted how teachers, particularly in rural areas, work for little pay, have few resources and receive no real union representation.

Han, 44, who directs the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin and regularly conducts radio interviews with workers and peasants in China, introduced “A Cry for Justice: The Voices of Chinese Workers,” published by the Albert Shanker Institute, and “Speaking Out: The Workers’ Movement Inside China,” issued by Han’s organization at a recent press conference in Washington, D.C.

He said that while China’s government did engage in a major push in recent years to expand access to education to rural and other underserved populations, while improving curriculum for an estimated 230 million K-12 students, teachers in many parts of China remained vastly underpaid. They responded in some areas with public protests, strikes and attempts to organize teachers’ unions.

While he acknowledged that government has established job protections for workers in various professions, including teaching, he said enforcement was poor. Despite the state’s claimed allegiance to socialist principles, Han said it was free-market forces unimpeded by the government that contributed to the instability, as workers moved from state-controlled jobs to those with fewer government protections and a dismantled social-welfare safety net.

“A Cry for Justice” is available online at www.shankerinstitute.org/ACryforJusticeFinal.pdf.

Education Week, Jan. 23