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After a long, hot spring of industrial unrest, the Chinese government is trying to bring to a close the last in a series of labour disputes involving some of the world’s most powerful multinational companies.
经历了一个劳资纠纷如火如荼的漫长春天之后，中国政府正试图了结一系列劳资纠纷的最后一起。这些纠纷涉及一些全球最强大的跨国企业。
On June 12, neighbourhood committee cadres visited the homes of 69 Walmart employees who remain locked in an arbitration case with their former employer in Changde, a small city in Hunan province.
6月12日，湖南常德的居委会干部走访了69名前沃尔玛(Walmart)员工的家，他们与前雇主的仲裁案仍在僵持。
The neighbourhood officials, who enforce Chinese Communist party diktats at street level, carried pictures of the workers and conveyed a simple message to them and their families: don’t interfere in Walmart’s removal of goods from the store, which closed in March, and accept the retailer’s enhanced settlement offer of Rmb3,000 ($480) each for “legal fees” incurred during the three-month dispute.
这些居委会干部携带着员工的照片，向他们及其家人传达了一条简单的信息：不要阻挠沃尔玛将货品从门店搬离（该门店已于今年3月关闭），并接受沃尔玛提高了赔偿金额的和解方案，即赔偿每人3000元人民币（合480美元），以补偿为期3个月的劳资纠纷所产生的“诉讼费用”。居委会干部负责在街道基层执行中国共产党的指令。
Over recent months, industrial disputes at employers such as IBM and Yue Yuen Industrial, one of the world’s largest shoe manufacturers, have been resolved. Other workers charged with disturbing public order have been released, in contrast to the harsh treatment of human and legal rights activists, such as Pu Zhiqiang.
最近几个月，IBM和全球最大制鞋企业之一裕元工业(Yue Yuen Industrial)等企业的劳资纠纷已得到解决。其他被控扰乱公共秩序的员工已获释，这与浦志强等人权和法律权利活动人士受到的严厉处置形成反差。
Chinese officials say they support neither side in the Walmart dispute in Changde and insist that the retailer’s former workers, who are demanding greater compensation, are free to fight for their rights through legal channels. But as evidenced by the neighbourhood committees’ interventions last week, the government is keen to end the unrest.
中国官员表示，他们不支持沃尔玛常德门店劳资纠纷的任何一方，并坚称，要求获得更多赔偿的沃尔玛前员工可以通过法律渠道维权。但居委会上周的干预表明，政府希望了结这些纠纷。
The Yue Yuen Industrial strike, over alleged underpayment of social security benefits, involved tens of thousands of workers, illustrating the potential power of China’s fragmented but rapidly evolving labour movement.
裕元工业的罢工事件涉及数万名员工，他们指控该公司没有为员工足额缴纳社保。这起事件显示出中国零散但正迅速壮大的工人运动的潜在威力。
The country’s only officially sanctioned union, the normally reticent All China Federation of Trade Unions, has traditionally urged workers to seek compromise in disputes with management, even if its members are unhappy with the outcome. The Changde dispute has attracted global attention, largely because of the unusually pugnacious approach taken by the store’s ACFTU branch.
中国唯一得到官方批准的工会——中华全国总工会(All China Federation of Trade Unions)，通常不会做出什么大动作。该组织一直敦促员工在与管理层的纠纷中寻求妥协，即便工会会员对妥协结果感到不满意。常德事件引起了全球关注，这主要是因为沃尔玛工会采取了不同寻常的积极抗争策略。
“With the economy slowing and workers more conscious of their legal rights, labour disputes will become even more common,” says Pang Kun, a labour rights lawyer not involved in the Walmart case. “But the internal political climate and the government’s emphasis on ‘stability maintenance’ means that worker protests are likely to be suppressed as soon as they arise.”
“随着经济放缓以及员工维护自身合法权益的意识增强，劳资纠纷将变得更为普遍，”并未参与此次沃尔玛纠纷的劳动者维权律师庞琨表示，“但国内政治气候以及政府对‘维稳’的重视意味着，劳动者抗议一旦冒头，就很可能会被压下去。”
The Changde case came to a head at an arbitration hearing on May 27 when the head of the outlet’s union, Huang Xingguo, squared off against Walmart’s lawyers from King & Wood Mallesons, an elite Chinese law firm. The retailer had offered workers one month’s pay for every year served, plus another month’s salary. About 60 of the store’s original 130 employees have accepted the offer.
常德纠纷在5月27日的一场仲裁听证会上达到高潮，当时沃尔玛常德店工会主席黄兴国，与代表沃尔玛的中国本土精锐律师事务所金杜律师事务所(King & Wood Mallesons)的律师当庭交锋。沃尔玛此前的赔偿方案是“N+1”，N为在沃尔玛工作了多少个年头，补偿“N+1”个月工资。在该门店最初的130名员工中，有大约60人接受了这一补偿方案。
Most of the workers at the hearing were women who came dressed in their red Walmart shirts. “Walmart says it values its employees,” Zhou Jun, one of the employees, said as she waited for the session to begin. “But as soon as they don’t need you, they just discard you.”
参加那次听证会的沃尔玛前员工大多为女性，她们到场时都身穿沃尔玛的红色衬衣。“沃尔玛说它重视员工，”员工周君（音译）在等待开庭时表示，“但一旦他们不需要你了，他们就会把你抛弃。”
Ms Zhou and her colleagues formed a kind of Greek chorus through the three-hour hearing, which was attended by the Financial Times. They murmured or chuckled appreciatively when they felt that Mr Huang, aided by two lawyers, had scored rhetorical points in their debate with Walmart’s legal team, and sometimes hissed at their opponents’ arguments.
在长达3个小时的听证会，周君与她的同事们就像一个希腊合唱团（Greek chorus，希腊戏剧中由十几人至50人组成的合唱团，负责合唱或合念旁白——译者注）。英国《金融时报》也参加了听证会。每当他们觉得，在两位律师的帮助下，黄兴国在与沃尔玛律师团队的辩论中得分时，他们就会低声赞同或轻笑，有时他们还会在对方陈述时发出嘘声。
Walmart insists that it strictly adhered to its legal obligations in closing about 20 underperforming outlets – part of a restructuring in which it intends to open another 110 stores and hire 19,000 more workers.
沃尔玛坚持认为，自己在关闭约20家业绩不佳的门店时严格履行了法律义务。关闭这些门店是沃尔玛重组计划的一部分，该计划还包括再开110家门店并聘用1.9万名新员工。
