Trade Union In The New Employment Forms:Mission,Strategy And Paths

The emergence of new employment forms in the current digital economy era is triggering a new round of construction of the working class.China is the world’s second largest digital economy and its type tends to be “labor-friendly”.The structure of the Chinese labor group is being broken by the digital economy.New employment forms(new informal employment under the digital economy)have spawned new employment groups.This new area has naturally become a battleground between the state and society.Different from the aftermath of labor organization in the process of industrialization,the International Labor Organization and the trade unions of various countries including China began to pay attention to the reform of labor and employment in the digital economy earlier,but the specific action strategies are very different.Unlike other countries’ hesitations about organizing or joining labor unions in new forms of employment,China’s labor unions have initiated additional construction activities earlier.Trade unions originated from industrial modernization.The market-oriented transformation of China’s economic system provided soil for the theoretical advancement of the "state-society" paradigm.The analytic framework and research tools of a large number of research results were mostly developed based on the value,behavior,and motivation of trade unions as the main body.And the experience did not get sufficient scholarly attention.On the basis of rethinking the limitations of the "state-society" paradigm,this research returns to the main body of the trade union itself.From the two dimensions of "mission-strategy",it investigates the logic of actions of Chinese trade unions in the context of the booming digital economy,and analyzes the behavior of Chinese trade unions as well as the potential path toward achieving their values.Controversy over the value of the trade union makes it both a mission of collective interest and a mission of public interest,and at the same time bears the dual expectations of the state and trade union members.Under this pressure,the Chinese trade unions have expanded their functions when pursuing their own missions: the mission of collective interests makes them choose a large number of new employment forms with strong development as the target group of members;the mission of public interests makes them move towards the construction of grassroots organizations.The integration of labor on order to participate in the country’s public affairs matches with the “Bridge and Tie between the Party and the Masses of Workers”.This dissertation concludes that the mission of the union under the new employment situation has not deviated,and the superposition of the union’s organizational function has become a structural variable that affects the union’s action strategy.Facing the impacts and challenges brought by new employment forms,in order to achieve the goal of "building up",the Chinese trade unions adjusted and improved the traditional compulsory construction addition strategy in combination with the mission and functions of the trade union organization.Through the investigation of the construction of trade unions in Shanghai’s new employment forms,the dissertation identified four different types of action strategies: First,for new employment forms that are closer to traditional employment patterns,local trade unions adopt learning strategies and focus on existing organizations.This is followed by reforming the system to process and innovating the practical experience of organizing migrant workers to join trade unions;second,for the de-employer and more flexible platform labor groups,try to use negotiation strategies to dialogue with platform capital to expand the action space for industry trade union construction;The third is to adopt a compromise strategy in areas where the need for the establishment of associations is relatively strong and the resource endowment is not good,so that the organization system is subservient to the reality of public life,and joint labor unions are established in the form of identity construction;The bundling relationship of industry associations explores the law of union action from industry associations to organizational homogeneity.This shows the differences in the strategies of Chinese trade unions when responding to various demands.China’s labor field has formed a "center-periphery" hierarchical control strategy based on group differentiation.Based on this assumption,this dissertation focuses on the employment characteristics of new forms of employment,and examines the capacity of local trade union organizations to act in the process of trade union expansion.The thesis found that the organization and mobilization ability of trade unions showed a decreasing regularity from the center to the periphery.In the process of promoting the establishment of new employment forms,the local trade unions,based on the relationship between the new employment forms and the "center-periphery",as evidenced from this dissertation,which implemented these paths have reached the expected goals,and the addition of trade unions under the new employment forms follows a gradual logic.This dissertation also argues that the compulsory authority of the trade union system,the power intermediary mechanism of trade associations,and the incentive mechanism of trade union resources are effective paths for large-scale expansion of trade unions in the future.Announcement of the establishment of an organization is not the same as “building up.” The effectiveness of the construction of new employment forms of trade unions should be judged from the extent to which the legal functions of the Chinese trade unions and the function of national construction are realized.The construction of trade unions in new forms of employment should learn from the two organizational models of community and consortium,break through the inertia of top-down construction,and promote the innovation of trade union construction models.