中国工会与劳资关系调节职能——基于1853篇工会实践报道的研究

What Do Unions in China Actually Do? A Study Based on 1853 Reports of Chinese Union Practices

本文利用定向爬虫工具采集了中华全国总工会网站上共计1853篇工会动态报道,运用扎根理论方法对中国工会的实践内容进行概念化编码,并结合量化描述对比方法,完整呈现出工会实践的职能现状。本文识别了维护行为、关怀行为、提升行为、参与行为、建设行为等中国工会实践的具体维度,并厘清了这些概念的内涵和边界。研究发现:(1)与国外工会相比,中国工会的工作更多元化,特别是主动承担了一定的社会责任,如参加社会建设、帮助员工1中的弱势群体、提升员工的综合素质和工作积极性等;(2)中国工会实践中的维权行为和参与行为过少,统一设计、逐级沿袭的官僚组织特征仍然明显,各省份之间工会实践的分布情况存在差异,反映了中国工会在各个地区的转型发展呈现不均衡性,但整体上是一个渐进的发展过程;(3)中国工会,特别是基层工会的独立性虽然亟需增强,但中国工会并不像人们质疑的那样无所作为,其多元化的工作模式更容易形成良性循环局面,从而在劳资关系管理实践中发挥积极作用。

As trade unions and studies of industrial relations continue to decline in many industrialized countries, China still pushes ahead its construction of harmonious labor relations, in which union reform is one of the most remarkable actions. Despite the fact that Chinese trade unions play an increasingly significant role in the process of building harmonious labor relations, there are disagreements among researchers in regard to Chinese trade unions＇ specific functions. In this study, 1853 work reports from the website of the All China Federation of Trade Unions have been collected with the help of a directional crawler tool. Despite the fact that these reports were collected from a single source, they came from the internal systems of the All China Federation of Trade Unions with rich and detailed content to be studied. The paper then conceptualized these reports using the coding method from the grounded theory, and quantitatively described the whole current situation of Chinese trade unions＇ practices from perspectives of the functions, the hierarchy and the regions. In the qualitative analysis stage, the actions of safeguarding, caring, promoting, participating and constructing in the practices of Chinese trade unions were identified, in addition, the connotations of and boundaries among these concepts were clarified. As is shown in the results, Chinese unions did a more diversified work compared to their foreign counterparts who put nearly all the emphasis on fighting for the union members＇ interests. Yet in Chi- na, trade unions took actions not only for the sake of all the employees, regardless of whether they were union members or not, but also for the interest demand of the government, the society and the employers. The study then put forward several findings as followed： 1 ） On the basis of the first finding, we discovered that Chinese unions put much emphasis on the part of social responsibilities. They undertook these work actively and voluntarily, such as taking part in social construction, helping the vulnerable groups of employees, and promoting the employees＇ comprehensive quality and work enthusiasm. This characteristic of undertaking responsibilities for the whole society and even the employers, which are included as part of the society, distinguished Chinese trade unions from their foreign counterparts, providing an im- portant and unignorable entering point for studying Chinese trade unions. 2） A large majority of critics for Chinese trade unions is about the lack of enough power to represent and pro- tect employees＇ interests and rights. In this study, we did find that Chinese trade unions did not take enough ac- tions of safeguarding and participating. Additionally, there were obvious characteristics of bureaucracy, such as the unified design from the top which would be followed down level by level, and differences of trade union practices existed among provinces in China, which reconfirmed the gap between the bureaucratic unified design from the top and the complicated industrial relations reality in grass-roots work. 3 ） Opportunities and challenges exist together in the current situation of Chinese trade unions. They have u- nique strength over their foreign counterparts as well as obvious weakness. Drawn from this study, the independence of Chinese trade unions, especially those at the grass-roots level, need to be strengthened urgently, nevertheless, they should not be questioned as attempting and accomplishing nothing since their diversified work model helped to form a situation of virtuous circle so that they could play a positive role in China＇s industrial relations practices.