By Zhang Kai* MILLIONS of Chinese workers face the sack as a result of the government's privatisation programme.
Government propaganda has been calling for 'cracking the three irons' (iron armchairs, iron wages, iron bowis); but this slogan is rarely referred to because of the mass resentment it has caused.
Iron bowls refers to the 'iron rice bowl', the legendary job security of workers.
The target of iron armchairs is supposediy the secure positions and privileges of communist cadres in enterprises. What was proposed was the election managers by workers. But instead of bringing workers' self-management, the campaign was restricted only to shuffling lower and medium-ranking managers; higher managers have not been touched.
Attack
The cracking of iron bowls and iron wages is an attack on workers' rights in general. Acute competition has been incited among workers - who are promoted or demoted according to their labour intensity, skills, performance and responsibility.
A few highly skilled workers get promotion and better wages; most workers get lower wages, and hundreds of thousands have been sacked.
In enterprises where the reforms have been conducted about 20 per cent of the workers have been dismissed.
Ruthless
In early 1992 a ruthless slogan was adopted of the 'iron first, iron heart and iron wrist •to. push through reforms. An example of how the reforms work is Zhuzhou City, Hunan Province. Sixty enterprises here could not attain the set target of efficiency, and wages of workers were cut, some up to 20 per cent of their original values.
The China News Agency reported: 'this act caused serious consequences across the province'.
Deng applauds (above) as Capitalist roaders' queue for the recently opened Stock Exchange In April the State Council granted the right to state enterprises to decide their own wage rates; a measure designed to break up the standardisation of wages in the state sector. In Shanghai, according to the ournal Ming Pao about one million people are in the job without work, as a result of the reforms - which can only be a transitory period before unemployment. This is in a city with five million workers, four million in the state sector.
According to the China Daily, quoting the Bureau on Economy and Trade, over 1.4 million Shanxi.
In Jianjiang City, Liaoning province, Wang Fuqing, a worker at an oil refinery stabbed a factory manager to death, and was later sentenced to death, suspended for two years. The case caused local uproar, with more beatings of leading factory cadres and attacks on their houses.
But it was in Shanghai, the largest industrial city, that the reaction was strongest. There were strikes, sit-ins, protests and disruption of production. As a result, the slogan of cracking the three irons was dropped, and the reform process was slowed down.
In February the government