China

Pensioners demand better payments
On 22 October around 5,000 workers demonstrated to demand increased pensions. The workers who had retired from a large state-owned textiles factory in Bengbu city, Anhui province receive only 400-500 Rmb ($50-60) per month but are suffering from a seven year high inflation rate of 5.2 percent.

Reportedly thousands of sympathisers joined the protest that was prompted by rumours that premier Wen Jiabao was attending a local market-opening ceremony and would hear the pensioners’ grievances. Instead, many were detained for handing out leaflets containing details of their complaints.

World Socialist Web Site, 1 November 2004

Unprecedented strike at textile mill
Almost 7,000 workers, mostly women, went on strike on 14 September at the privatised Huarun Xianyang textile factory (formerly the Tianwang Textile Factory in Xianyang city) in Shaanxi province.

The women were protesting against proposals by its new Hong Kong-based majority share-holder, China Resources, to introduce six-month probations, informalise the workers under short-term employment contracts, lower wages, and get rid of the seniority system. They also wanted to elect their own union representatives, instead of having union officials appointed by the government’s ‘pocket’ union, the All China Federation of Trade Unions.

China Resources (Holdings) Co Ltd listed in Hong Kong, New York, and London agreed to eliminate the probationary period and allow longer job contracts, but rejected other demands including one for compensation to which the workers are legally entitled when a company is privatised.

The workers returned to work after almost seven weeks’ stoppage, setting a precedent under the Chinese Communist Party regime’s 25 year-long ‘economic reforms’.

Labour protests have been increasing over recent years. The government resolves most of them by agreeing to some demands, then detaining labour organisers. In the case of Huarun Xianyang, after rounding up about 200 pickets police detained more than 20 workers during the industrial action and issued ‘wanted notices’ for three others.

“Government newspapers have been calling for several months now for foreign enterprises in China ... to respect the workers’ legal right to establish trade union branches, and now the Xianyang authorities have detained more than 20 workers for trying to do precisely this,” said Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin (CLB) director Han Dongfang.

Forbes, 1 November 2004; CLB bulletin; AFP, 2 November 2004

Mining fire: 65 perish
A fire at a privately-owned iron ore mine in Shahe city, Hebei province killed 65; three workers are ‘missing’. The fire broke out on 20 November; 46 miners trapped by the fire were rescued.

Although it is illegal for workers aged under 18 to work in mines, some of the miners are as young as 14 like Zhou Changping from Shaanxi province. Zhou collapsed after smelling gas 10 hours into his shift, but regained consciousness in hospital. Interviewed by the Hebei Workers’ Daily he said he intended to return as soon as possible to work in the mine which he was confident would reopen soon. The newspaper said that at least two dozen underage miners worked in the mine.

BBC, 22 November 2004

Mine death toll 148
A gas explosion tore through the Daping coal mine near Xinmi in Henan province on 22 November. The original estimate of the number of deaths in the blast was 62 with a further 86 ‘missing’; the toll was revised to 148 dead. This incident was the worst in China’s coal mines since 162 people died in a mining incident in Guizhou province in 2000.

Mine managers were blamed for the tragedy. Official news agency, Xinhua, said the tragedy was avoidable “if no dereliction of duty had occurred”.

BBC, 22 November; South China Morning Post, 2 December 2004

Wal-Mart workers can organise
After years of anti-union policy Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retail chain store, has admitted the right for workers to unionise in China. This news was announced shortly after Canada’s Saskatchewan Appeal Court instructed Wal-Mart to disclose details of its union busting strategies in November after the company refused to comply with the order from a labour court in May 2004, while the Chinese authorities had threatened to blacklist the firm in recent months if unions were not set up in China’s stores.

The All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), to which all China’s unions must legally federate, has been pushing for foreign investors to allow union organising, however it is still not clear why Wal-Mart has had a change of heart on this issue that trade analysts say could have repercussions in Wal-Mart stores (not the factory suppliers though) worldwide. But after decades of (government sweetheart) the ACFTU’s failure to deliver improved conditions for workers, will Wal-Mart’s decision really make any difference in China?

Wal-Mart runs 39 stores in China employing around 20,000 workers.

United Food and Commercial Workers Union and Asian Wall Street Journal, 24 November 2004

Workers detain factory owner
Workers took their Hong Kong factory owners hostage demanding back wages totalling Rmb200,000 ($24,150) on 12 November. They refused to release the owner Zeng and his wife of Hong Kong-based company Sum Fu Yuen electronics factory, in Gongming town, Shenzhen, south China, suspecting that they had planned to close the factory and leave the workers unpaid.

Non-payment of wages is illegal in China, but the authorities say over Rmb100 million is owed to migrants where millions of workers are employed in Shenzhen’s factories.

Ming Pao and Nanfang Dushi Bao, 14-15 November 2004

Mine: 166 dead
After a blast at the state-run Chenjiashan coal mine, Tongchuan, Shaanxi province on 28 November officials declared the toll as 25 miners dead, 141 ‘missing’. The final toll, 166 deaths, was announced days later. 45 miners were injured, most poisoned by carbon monoxide. This number of deaths in a single mining incident is China’s worst record in 10 years officials said.
Miners had refused to go down the mine because of an ongoing fire in the mine just four days before the explosion but were told to work or be punished.

Song Chao used to work in a Shandong mine. He said he earned “[U]p to 3,000 a month, It’s a really high income for rural areas so we don’t take safety too seriously”.

An explosion in the Chenjiashan mine three years ago killed 38 miners.

South China Morning Post, 30 November 2004