Kapok | Toothless labor organizations

Eric Sautedé

I was recently reminded that in the years leading to the handover, the Portuguese administration had expressed the wish, almost on an annual basis, to move forward with the long-delayed passing of a trade union law in Macao. However, at the time, with the constraints of the transfer of sovereignty becoming more pressing, all projects or proposals of law had to be submitted “informally” for prior approval to the Xinhua News Agency, the one institution that served as Beijing’s unofficial representation prior to the establishment of the Liaison Office in 2000.

Few people remember that the Xinhua News Agency had itself replaced the Nam Kwong in 1987, and the latter is still a force to reckon with in present-day Macao, both economically and politically, as it employs, for example, the likes of legislator Mak Soi Kun, who, in the past few weeks, has been making his high-pitched voice heard in favor of installing CCTV cameras all over the streets while recommending teaching “national security” in schools.

Xinhua’s refusal to “grant” a trade union law to Macao is easily understandable. For a start, the move was considered as useless: in the People’s Republic of China, the All China Federation of Trade Unions was (and still is) a mass organization directly supervised by the Chinese Communist Party, thus the mere idea of an “independent” relay in society representing the workers’ interests did not strike a chord. Moreover, the Macao Federation of Trade Unions (FAOM) already existed — “sponsored” by the Chinese communists at the end of the 1950s — and it had faithfully served its purpose by ensuring stability for the good sake of the colonial administration and swiftly channeling the political guidance of Beijing. Finally, the initiative looked rather suspicious: after all, the colonizers had had ample time to pass such a piece of legislation, why the sudden rush? Why now and not then?

Could things change for the better after 1999? Looking back at 1992, that was the year when Fernando Chui Sai On got elected for the first time at the Legislative Assembly on a ticket representing… the Macao Federation of Trade Unions! The charity arms of business interests in the territory take good care of the most deprived members of society, so much so actually that it prohibits them from being genuinely represented.

Thus, although the right to form and join a union is enshrined in Article 27 of the Macao Basic Law and constitutes a significant component of at least three international covenants and conventions of which Macao is a signatory, there is no way the benevolent entrepreneurs who run the show will ever introduce such a law on their own, without a strong-enough push from the ones vying for it. Legislator José Pereira Coutinho knows it more than anyone else: he tried to introduce a trade union law on nine occasions and failed flatly every single time. And even when he got the support of the “yellow” FAOM — in this part of the world, we say “tofu union” — it was never enough to tilt the balance in the right direction.

Back in 2007, when we still had dozens of independent organizations taking to the streets and 5 or 6,000 demonstrators showing up on May 1, some saw the possibility for a very embryonic bona fide civil society to develop. That was the time when plain cloths policemen would shoot in the air to intimidate the crowd! The next year, the wealth-partaking scheme went into effect.

Fast forward to today: May 1 has become a total fraud! The FAOM organizes banquets with the government on the evening of April 30, and its main demand concerns a few extra bank holidays that fall on Sundays! The most vocal demonstrators defend their property rights, and trust more the Liaison Office than Mr Tam! Meanwhile, labour rights in Macao have remained the same since… the mid-1980s! Consumers of the world, Unite!