One of China's largest steel companies, Panzhihua Iron & Steel Group Company in southwest China 's Sichuan province, has decided to let its trade union members directly elect their chairman, replacing the nomination procedure.

East China's Shanghai Telecom trade unions in four substations and 1,200 grass roots trade unions in central China's Shannxi province also announced they would conduct direct chairman elections recently.

"Direct election of trade union leaders in companies indicates another significant move in China's grass roots level democratic constructions," said sociologist Lu Xueyi with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, citing the country's democratic mass election of village leaders implemented earlier in rural areas.

"This proves that China's grass roots democracy is practiced from rural areas to urban areas," he said.

Differing from the past elections of trade union chairmen, the organization's top leaders who used to be nominated by the trade union committee, the direct election of chairmen refers to elections directly conducted in grass roots trade unions' member conferences or member representatives' conferences

"The original chairman election measure is being washed out. In China's many provinces and municipalities including Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Shandong, the direct election of grass roots trade union chairmen is becoming popular. Thousands of China's grass roots trade unions have chosen their "own leaders" through direct election, according to information published in the All-China Federation of Trade Unions' (ACFTU) official website.

Public opinion thinks that the directly election of chairmen by the mass membership could better express employee's eligible rights, adjusting the grass roots trade unions' embarrassing status of lacking of employee's trust.

In the 1970s and 1980s, when China had implemented a planned economy, the government had arranged all of the workers' welfare and salaries, leaving little work for trade unions.

Trade unions were depicted as dispensable departments that delivered film tickets or organized outdoor events or other trivial matters. People used to regard trade union chairmen as managerial personnel, instead of a spokesman for themselves.

With the implementation of a market economy in recent years, state companies, private companies and joint ventures have experienced more complicated relationships between employers and employees.

How to better protect employee's rights has become a great challenge to today's trade unions. Direct elections create the role of trade union chairmen as a representative of employees, said Chen Shengyong, a professor with South China's Zhejiang University.

In a survey he conducted in Yuhang District of Zhejiang's capital Hangzhou, about half of the 900 local trade unions realized direct election of chairmen. The survey shows that 95 percent of trade union members are satisfied or almost satisfied with the chairmen elected by themselves.

"Direct election set a key orientation for grass roots trade unions in China. It has fully revealed the democratic management concept," said Guang Huai, the counselor at law for the ACFTU.

"The ACFTU is collecting experiences from local trade unions' direct elections to introduce regulations on specific issues such as the election procedures and ranges," he said

Source: Xinhua