Didi and JD.com let their workers unionize

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By Michelle Toh, CNN Business

Two of China’s top tech companies are forming unions for their workers as the industry comes under intense political pressure to rethink the way it treats its workers.

The Chinese carpooling company Didi (HAVE I GOT) announced in an internal forum last month that it had created a union for its workers, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person said the group is affiliated with the China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), a government supported organization under which all unions in mainland China must be registered.

This week, JD.com also formed a union for employees, the e-commerce company said in a Chinese statement. social media posting Wednesday. The union, which held its first meeting on Monday, intends to promote the “unified protection of [workers’] rights and interests, and the collective relief of challenges, ”according to the company.

The move comes as China continues its history regulatory repression on the tech sector, and as pressure mounts on employers to relax an infamous Work culture “996”.

Just days ago, the country’s highest court condemned at length the 9am to 9pm six-day-a-week labor practice known as “996” and commonly associated with the tech industry.

In a joint statement with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security last Thursday, the Supreme People’s Court noted that “extreme overtime in some industries has received wide attention.”

Workers deserve rights to “rest and vacation,” he added.

Didi and JD aren’t the only companies that allow their workers to unionize. Chinese food delivery giant Meituan also has several local unions, including one for workers in Shanghai.

The three companies say they have recently taken steps to better protect their workers. In April, for example, Didi noted he set up a new committee “to protect the rights and interests of VTC drivers and stabilize [their] use.”

Shu Sun, CEO of the Chinese rideshare company Didi, heads the committee, reporting to Didi co-founder and chairman Will Wei Cheng.

Spotlight on working conditions

Beijing took the pressure on business to another level this week.

On Thursday, the Chinese Ministry of Transport noted that he had ordered 11 companies, including Didi and Meituan, to warn them against hiring unlicensed drivers and to remind them of the need to provide them with reasonable wages and enough time to rest.

Recently there has been an uproar over how food and e-commerce delivery people are being treated in China – above all as business in these areas has exploded throughout the coronavirus pandemic, noted Aidan Chau, a researcher at the Hong Kong-based group China Labor Bulletin.

It was not immediately clear whether the drivers were included in the new unions of Didi and JD. Neither company responded to a request for comment. Meituan and Didi did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ministry’s latest warning.

Chau said he believed the creation of the new unions was likely linked to recent actions by Chinese regulators.

“The company has been talking about these very intense work paces for a long time, about working practices in the new technological sector and also about the new platform economy,” he told CNN Business.

“There are more and more demonstrations and small-scale strikes in these areas. Union is therefore in fact a means for the [Chinese Communist] The party is trying to alleviate the problems.

Earlier this year, another Chinese e-commerce company, Pinduoduo, faces strong criticism after the sudden death of two of its employees during the holiday season.

First, a worker in her twenties collapsed in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region, as she walked home with colleagues in December. The company has confirmed his death, but has not disclosed the cause.

Then, another worker died in January after jumping from his apartment in Changsha, a city in southern Hunan Province. Pinduoduo said at the time that the man requested time off earlier, without giving a reason.

Both cases have drawn attention to the issue of overwork in China and raised questions about how the corporate culture is expected to change.

Until recently, workers generally gathered in more informal ways, such as in groups on Chinese social media like WeChat or QQ to discuss working conditions, according to Chau.

But “it is very difficult for workers to establish an organization with a clear structure,” he added, noting that unions often needed significant resources, such as potential funding and volunteers.

– Laura He, Nectar Gan, and CNN staff contributed to this article.

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