BEIJING, Aug 31 (Reuters) - The Chinese government will give its state-run unions more power to negotiate pay claims and seek to ensure union leaders are not just installed by their firms as proxies of management, state media said on Tuesday.
A burst of strikes in China hit Japanese companies and their suppliers in recent months, bringing into focus low pay and the often difficult conditions many Chinese workers toil under.
Beijing tempered its usual wariness of social unrest and did not crack down harshly on much of the recent industrial action, most of which seems to have been directed at foreign companies.
China has been lifting minimum-wage levels across the country as it tries to boost domestic consumption to make it a driver of economic growth, and ease a reliance on exports.
Now the government wants its official unions -- which all come under the control of the ruling Communist Party -- to have more say in dealing with pay raises and not to be so closely connected to companies, the official China Daily said.
"Democratic election is a key standard to measure the effectiveness of a trade union," it quoted Guo Wencai of the umbrella All China Federation of Trade Unions as saying.
The report said many union leaders are appointed and even paid by the same companies whose workers they are supposed to represent.
The government "hopes to end the practice of companies appointing union leaders or assigning someone from their human resources department to act as union leader, because it hampers a trade union's independence and its ability to protect workers' rights", the newspaper paraphrased Guo as saying.
For a factbox on the labour unrest see: [ID:nTOE668030])
A Japanese official said after talks with Chinese counterparts over the weekend that China believed it was understandable for its workers to demand higher wages after foregoing pay increases during the worst of the economic crisis. [ID:nTOE67R00X]
Beijing also wants unions to be responsible for collective negotiations of wages.
The newspaper quoted Wang Yupu, deputy head of the All China Federation of Trades Unions, as saying that in two years time "all trade unions nationwide would carry out collective negotiations on wages".
Training would be provided to ensure union members receive the best deal out of such negotiations, Wang added.
With about 80 percent of companies in China either privately run or foreign owned, "trade unions must protect the interests of migrant workers", the official said.
The strikers mostly belonged to China's 150 million strong migrant labour workforce, which flows from villages to cities and industrial regions to look for work.
Chinese unions rarely support strikes or confrontations with employers. Many private companies do not have unions, or if they do they are controlled by management. Some union officials have been pressing for more vocal representation of workers.
However, China has shown no sign of allowing unions to form that are independent of government control, and has come down hard in the past on attempts to set them up. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Ken Wills)