Wuhan has almost 40,000 restaurants, 84 percent of which are classified as medium and small sized enterprises.

“In the end it took only 50 days for the two sides to reach an agreement, but the preparations for the negotiations took two years,” Zhou Guohua, head of the local trade union, said. Before engaging in talks, Zhou Guohua and Liu Qixin conducted investigations into 100 restaurants and collected 600 questionnaires from employers and employees. This February, the two sides each chose nine representatives and publicized their resumes in local newspapers and on the Internet.

Zhou Guohua was selected as the chief negotiator for the employee side. He attended hundreds of meetings in three rounds of negotiations. To help him get the upper hand in negotiations, he took a month-long training course on negotiation skills last October.

But the first meeting, in early March, ended without agreement. The gap between the two sides was too large. Representatives of the two sides argued heatedly. When the draft contract was publicized in local newspapers to solicit public opinion, hotlines were paralyzed by angry calls.

But despite the difficulties, the two sides finally reached an agreement in April. According to Zhang Jianguo, a senior official of the ACFTU, the agreement will help lay the foundations for collective bargaining on salaries nationwide. “In the past, salary standards were determined by the government. Now, trade unions have to take the lead in negotiating pay increases on behalf of employees,” Liu Qixin said. “The success of the negotiations indicates that trades unions will be able to make more gains in the future.”

Liu said the union is to launch a six-month follow-up campaign to check that the terms of the contract are being enforced. Those found to be breaching the contract will be ordered to take corrective action.