Platform-union negotiation in China: Unified framework and corporate strategies

Abstract

As global progress on platform labor regulation remains uneven, this study offers empirical evidence of China's platform-union negotiation practice, whereby China has established baseline platform labor regulations aligned with national guidelines through peaceful negotiation processes. Drawing on a case study approach, this study identifies a framework of “quintipartite participation and triple negotiations” to explain the complex dynamics and substantive outcomes of such negotiations. Within the same institutional framework, the two case companies adopted distinct negotiation patterns: a reputation-oriented reactive negotiation pattern and an efficiency-oriented proactive negotiation pattern, which reflects platform companies’ context-specific strategic choices. While China's platform-union negotiation model facilitates national systemic development, it raises questions about how to balance the inherently bottom-up, worker-participatory nature of collective negotiation and China's top-down, state-led governance regime. It is imperative for China to advance the collective negotiation mechanism by enhancing procedural justice and connecting it with outcome legitimacy.