Sun Wook Chung, ILR MS/PhD student has received the China Travel Grant and Lam Family Award for South China Research to conduct his research on Variety of responses of foreign firms to the Chinese trade union’s unionization campaign this summer in China.

He will be traveling to Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Suzhou, and Guangzhou, China. Sun Wook’s academic advisor is Prof. Sarosh Kuruvilla.

Sun Wook on his research plans: My plan to do fieldwork in China this summer stems from the need to understand how foreign firms are responding to a newly launched aggressive campaign by the ACFTU (All China Federation of Trade Unions) to unionize all factories. As seen in the recent Wal-Mart unionization, ACFTU has stepped up its unionization demand for foreign firms doing business in China. While prior work has focused on both union avoidance and union cooptation strategies of employers, this new campaign by the ACFTU (dictated by the Chinese Communist Party) makes those simplistic employer responses inadequate. The goal of my research is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the more nuanced responses by employers to the ACFTU’s pressures. I therefore plan to interview employees, union leaders, other union activists, and human resource managers of several foreign firms (European, American, Japanese, and Korean firms). In addition I will also interview local stakeholder groups (e.g. members of activist NGOs) and district officials. 

- Ana Stojanovic, MILR '09