The Failure Of The Collective Action

The reform and opening up started in the 1980s caused an important influence on the workers from various classes of the society, esp. on the most extensive group of workers. The disadvantage of original enterprise system is reformed with some inevitable existing problems. In the old industrial based Liaoning province, when the workers'resources and position are damaged while they have no channels to express, they started to fight, driven by common interest which was damaged due to the over-simple settlement during the enterprises reform process. The paper is a study on a case happened in the old industrial based Liaoning province, where the retired workers had a collective petitioning for their own salaries.This paper tells a petitioning action held by some workers retired from factory A for asking their first class salary back, analyzing how collective action happens and develops in a group without any definite stable organization, how to use strategy in a collective action, how the internal interest differentiation influences on a collective action and why it comes to fail finally.The paper is divided into five chapters. The forewords mainly introduce background of study cases and the outline of related referential documents. The first chapter analyzes system background of the collective action, which is happened in the old industrial based Liaoning province due to workers benefit damage caused by institution enterprises reform. The second and third chapters analyze how the collective action happens and develops as well as two different ways for settlement of local government. The workers are first aware of not being paid, then they decide to have collective petitioning action with relevant regulation references and special position of blindness during the action process;they also come to municipal government for "feedback" after several rounds of back and forth between the municipal and provincial authorities. After adopting "soft" way of settlement without any effect, the municipal government authority even mandates to arrest the blind representative in the third petitioning action of workers, which indeed scares the workers and cause the failure of this collective action. The fourth and fifth chapters analyze why this action is failed, it is also the dual impact from both the action party and municipal authority. The final conclusion is the collective petitioning action held by the retired workers, who are considered being spent their senior years happily in traditional concept, for getting their own rights back, is finally failed due to the collision with municipal authority, who adopts the "soft" way first then "hard" way later during petitioning process.