Lost in translation and trapped in political dynamics: A Congolese union delegation in a Chinese company

This presentation deals with union presence in a Chinese mining company in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Although the company exists since 2007, it took ten years before the management met with a prerequisite stipulated in the Congolese national Labor Law and installed a union delegation. In doing so, however, it did not respect the appropriate procedure – since the delegation was appointed by the management, and not voted by the workers – leading to a union delegation which the workforce does not back. Not unexpectedly, the company’s workers rejected the collective agreement that their union representatives had negotiated. The ensuing social unrest culminated in a three-day strike pulled off by the workers. Exploring cause and effect of this wildcat strike, this presentation offers an insight into the way the differing cultural backgrounds of the Chinese and Congolese, officers and workers alike, lead to considerable noise during communication, not hindered by dubious software translations. And in this ongoing miscommunication, the union delegation’s power seemed completely dwarfed.
The political context of this social malaise in the mining company, is crucial as well. With elections coming up, different levels of governance had conflicting goals in mind. As such, the urban and provincial authorities were stuck between the disgruntled local workers (their voters) who claimed improved labor conditions, and their superiors at national level who were all too hesitant to ruffle the feathers of the Chinese investors, given that the latter’s infrastructural works polished their image