More workers in multinational companies will be able to safeguard their legitimate rights and interests by September, a senior trade union official has said.

Workers have been able to form trade unions in less than 50 percent of the Fortune Global 500 firms doing business in China till now.

But by September that figure will go up to 80 percent, said Guo Wencai, director of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions' (ACFTU) department of grassroots organization and capacity building.

Workers in most such firms have not been able to form trade unions because of the uncooperative attitude of the employers, he said.

"The existing percentage is low if one considers that 73.4 percent of all foreign-funded firms have trade unions." To rectify that situation, the ACFTU launched a three-month national unionization campaign in June.

The ACFTU is directly responsible for supervising the formation of trade unions in 10 of the Fortune Global 500 firms, including Sony, Canon, FedEx, IBM, Trust-Mart and Wal-Mart's purchasing center.

More than 4,000 firms run by 245 of the Fortune Global 500 are doing business in China.

And workers do not need the approval of their employers to form trade unions there because the Trade Union Law, promulgated in 1992, gives them that right, he said.

"Multinationals must abide by the country's laws if they want to do business in China," Guo said, and warned that the labor authorities could blacklist or pull up firms for refusing to allow workers to form trade unions.

"Most of the multinationals have shown a positive attitude toward trade unions," he said. For instance, Tesco Lotus, Thailand's leading retailer, has conceded that the question is not whether a trade union should be allowed, rather it is how to make it function better.

Maersk Logistics of Denmark, too, supports their workers to form a trade union.

Some multinationals have changed their attitude after realizing that trade unions not only safeguard the rights and interests of workers, but also contribute to a company's development, Guo said.

It is a trade union's duty to negotiate and sign collective contracts with employers on behalf of the workers, he said.

On Tuesday, the trade union in a Wal-Mart outlet in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province, signed a collective contract with the management, the first of its kind in the retail giant's 100-odd stores in China.

After more than five hours' negotiation, Wal-Mart agreed to the trade union's proposal to raise employees' salaries by 8 percent in 2008-09.

Chen Weiguang, chairman of the trade union federation in Guangzhou, said that by September trade unions would have been formed in 90 percent of the multinationals doing business in the capital of Guangdong province.

"By the end of August, we will publicize the names of the firms refusing to allow workers to form trade unions," he said.

At the end of last year, China had 1.52 million grassroots trade unions with 193 million members.

(China Daily July 18, 2008)