Illnesses through work
It is almost certain that 600,000, the official number of workers suffering work-related illnesses in China is understated. Government officials said a further 20,000 become sick due to work each year.

Given China’s refusal to allow workers the international right to form independent trade unions, this situation is likely to continue, as the state does not have the resources to monitor the situation of China’s half billion workers.
Many people work in illegal businesses, especially coal mining, which the authorities are incapable of controlling. Pneumoconiosis is one of the biggest recognised diseases that attacks workers with minute particles that lodge in lung tissue and cause respiratory problems over the years.

Many workers who gradually fall sick over years in other unhealthy working environments, like textiles and clothing, do not realise their illness is actually caused by work, and the official union, the ACFTU, is doing little to combat the problem.

However the government is taking steps to survey the situation. In Liaoning and Shanxi provinces a six-month study is under way to try to assess the number of workers suffering from pneumoconiosis and the number of workers who are disabled in ‘accidents’ at work, though because the survey will only be undertaken in official workplaces, the real figures will never be known.

Official statistics claim that 2,644 miners died in the first half of 2004.

South China Morning Post, 21 July 2004

Unemployment rising
The government claims to have already created 5.9 million jobs of the nine million it hopes to create, but analysts say the government is unlikely to reach its ‘target’ by the end of 2004 because of attempts to cool the overheating economy.

Officially unemployment has steadily risen from 3.1 percent in 2000 to 4.3 percent in 2004. Already this year, 8.4 million workers lost jobs, with two million more expected by the end of the year.

But government statistics ignore the annual 10 million school leavers, nor do they include rural unemployed - about 20 percent of the 800 million rural population.

Analysts abroad believe government unemployment statistics are underestimated; the World Bank believes the unemployment rate is actually 10 percent, but the US think tank Rand puts the rate at 23 percent.

Labour shortage in Pearl River Delta
Despite the rise in unemployment in general across the country, the Pearl River Delta, which hosts much of China’s export factories, has a shortfall of two million workers workers according to an official report. Worst affected sectors are toys, shoes, clothing, plastics, and low-cost electronic products.

Until around April 2004 southern Guangdong’s abundance of labour has allowed employers to hire and fire at will and dictate working conditions. For the time being at least his situation is changing as workers seek better jobs.
A manager at the Changan Bole Job Referral Agency, Liu Shuping, outlined the depth of the problem saying, “About 100 factories are asking us to provide between 30,000 to 40,000 workers, but we are only able to provide 20 to 30 every day.”

In an unusually frank statement, an official report by the national Ministry of Labour and Social Security released in early September suggests that the situation has been brought about by the rapacious employers themselves, deducing that pitiful wages and sweatshop factories were the reason that workers are being lured away by better factory conditions elsewhere. The report suggests that some factories are refusing orders.

At the same time, there was at least one case of the authorities refusing to allow a new factory to be built.
While migrant labour wages in other areas (unspecified in the report) have increased substantially, monthly wages in the Pearl River Delta rose by only US$7.50 since 1992.

On the farms, increased grain prices is not only deterring would be migrants from seeking factory work, but also attracting migrant factory workers to work on the land again.

General working conditions and pay are almost certain to rise in the Delta region as a result of lost production due to the labour shortage.

Police block protestors’ route to Beijing
More than 400 redundant miners from Heilongjiang province were heading to protest the detention of 23 workmates in Beijing. But on 18 July, hundreds of police in Hebei province stopped the convoy carrying the 400 and made them drive back home.

The 23 detainees had threatened to commit suicide one week previously to shake the Beijing authorities who had ignored them until that moment of drama. They were mandated by hundreds of workmates who were dismissed between 1996 and 1998 without adequate severance payments to protest the dismissals and payments. They were locked up in the Fengtai district detention centre, though officials there denied this.

Henang city mining bureau officers, who sacked the miners, are suspected of creaming off 75 percent of the US$10,000 severance pay allocated for the miners.

The capital is brimming with thousands of workers protesting abuse by local officials, redundancies, non-payment of pensions, wages, and severance pay. In June Radio Free Asia reported that 2,760 people across China had been confirmed as detained for petitioning the authorities.

Around 3,000 miners dismissed by Henang City Mining Bureau blocked the railway line between Jixi and Harbin on 7-8 July protesting the vanished funds supposed to be set aside as severance pay.

Protest is on the increase
On almost any day hundreds of protestors wait outside Beijing’s courts and government buildings waiting for government response to their petitions for unpaid back pay and pensions, and protests against local government corruption.

In early August the capital’s authorities forced about 70 workers to return to Baotou in Inner Mongolia. These workers, representing about 2,000 redundant workers from the Inner Mongolia North Heavy Industries Group, had been in Beijing to protest against mass redundancies and insulting severance pay.

This military industrial complex in Baotou has been gradually sacking workers since 1997; many of the workers say they were coerced into signing poor redundancy agreements. Sacked workers began protesting in Baotou in May, sending delegations to put their case to officials in Hohot, Inner Mongolia’s capital. Because the officials refused to act, workers decided to take their case to the national capital to protest.

Many workers wishing to protest in the capital are apprehended by police in their home provinces and beaten up to stop them travelling to petition the authorities in Beijing.

World Socialist Web Site, 7 August 2004