Occupational Safety and Health in Asia

 

These lines from the poem ‘The Song of the Shirt’, written more than 150 years ago by Thomas Hood, describe the pitiable working condition of garment workers in 19th century England. Ironically and tragically, for millions of workers in 21st century Asia—whether working in coal mines in China, grinding stones in India, sewing garments in Bangladesh, working in toy factories in Thailand or electronics factories in Taiwan—conditions are no different. Flesh and blood are still cheap, more than one and a half centuries since these words were written.

 

Taiwan’s industries have always been highly fragmented – an estimated 80 per cent of Taiwan’s workforce is found in small firms employing fewer than 20 people.1 Labour unions are either craft unions (which are employer controlled) or enterprise-based and it is extremely difficult for employees to establish enterprise unions in small workplaces. Even in large workplaces, employers have opposed efforts by employees to establish enterprise unions and this negatively affects the capacity of the union movement to pressure the state to make extensive reforms to Taiwan’s industrial relations laws as well as occupational health and safety legislation.

 

The Philippines is rich in mineral deposits. The Philippines is estimated to have the fifth largest reserves of gold and copper in the world.2 The Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has estimated gold reserves to be at 967,180,197 MT3 and copper reserves to be at 5,301,507,657 MT (2002). According to the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) in 2005, the Philippines has a total of USD 840 billion worth of mineral wealth just waiting to be exploited.

 

The relationship between sustainable economic and social development in general and safety law and organisation in the world’s coal industries in particular is of crucial importance for worker protection. The coal industries in the developed countries have already been through various stages of technological development and they have solved many, but not all hazards. China’s coal mining industry has to face all the major hazards that exist elsewhere: gas and dust explosions often causing fires; floods and inrushes of water when miners break into old workings; falls of ground, machinery accidents.

 

Bangladesh is one of the countries in Asia which has been actively involved in commercial ship-breaking for more than two decades. The ship graveyard at Shitakundha, Chittagong is the only ‘iron mine’ of the land. Bangladesh purchases on average 180-250 old ships a year for scrapping. At present, the number of active ship-breaking yards is 30 and around 30,000 workers are directly and around 50,000 indirectly employed in those yards.

 

Vadodara, also known by its former name of Baroda, is a city located in Gujarat state in western India, with a population of 1.5 million. Baroda had been the capital of the princely state of Baroda, which was ruled by the progressive ruler Sayajirao Gaekwad. During his time (1863-1939), Sayajirao Gaekwad not only established educational institutions but also encouraged entrepreneurs to invest in new businesses. Textile mills, dyeing and printing shops, engineering shops, pharmaceutical factories and glass factories were established more than 70 years ago. In the mid-1960s oil was found in Gujarat, paving the way for the development of a chemical industry, and in the late 1960s the central government established an oil refinery. Later the central government established a large petrochemical complex while the state government established fertilizer factories and caustic chlorine factories in Vadodara. In the 1970s small- and medium-scale chemical factories developed in the Nandesari industrial area to produce downstream products in the private sector.

 

Japan is the latest country among industrialized countries to cease using asbestos. It was a quarter of a century behind Northern European countries and 10-15 years later than other western countries. Considering the relative lateness of Japan’s full-fledged industrial use of asbestos and the long incubation periods of asbestos-related diseases, it is no wonder that there is a time lag of epidemics of asbestos-related diseases between Japan and those countries.

 

Massive foreign direct investment (FDI) and a strong labour supply has earned China the name of ‘the world’s factory’. However, under the glittering façade of the economic miracle lies another side to the story. Guangdong province, known as a ‘job paradise’ for migrant workers, has attracted millions of workers from China’s poor regions after the inauguration of the Open Door Policy in 1979. The development of a market economy resulted in massive and rapid inflow of foreign direct investment and manufacturing investments mainly coming from nearby North Asian countries such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea. The investments are concentrated in the ‘3L’ sector—the labour-intensive, low-skilled and low-end sector. While the flow of foreign capital accelerates the speed of economic growth and accumulation of local capital, however, occupational health and safety conditions have not kept pace with the nation’s breakneck industrialization.

 

---

Asian Labour Update

ISSN 1815-9389

Issue No. 61-62

October 2006- March 2007

c Asia Monitor Resource Centre

 

Editorial and Layout

Doris Lee

 

Editorial team

Sanjiv Pandita, Omana George, Muriel Yeung, Apo Leong, 

 

GUEST WRITERS IN THIS ISSUE

 

Suki Chung is Program Officer at Labour Action China, a Hong Kong-based labour rights NGO focusing on southern China.

 

Sugio Furuya is Secretary General of the Japan Occupational Safety and Health Resource Center (JOSHRC) and also of the Ban Asbestos Network Japan (BANJAN).

 

Jagdish Patel is Executive Director of the Peoples Training and Resource Centre (PTRC).

 

A.R. Chowdhury Repon is the General Secretary of Bangladesh Occupational Safety, Health and Environment Foundation (OSHE) and the International Secretary of Bangladesh Free Trade Union Congress (BFTUC). 

 

Dave Eickert is an energy and mine safety consultant based in New Zealand. He was formerly head of research at the National Union of Mineworkers, UK and Brussels Officer for the British Trades Union Congress. He trained as an ergonomist in a production engineering department.

 

Noel Parato Colina is the Executive Director of IOHSAD, based in the Philippines. Before he became part of IOHSAD, he was the Research Department Head of the Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research, Inc. (EILER Inc.)

 

Robert Tierney teaches industrial relations at Charles Sturt University in Australia. His research interests include guest workers in Taiwan and occupational health and safety problems in the greater China region. He has been active in the trade union movement in Australia for almost 30 years.