Changsha sanitation workers demand formal employment contracts from the local government

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26 November, 2014

A group of 400 sanitation workers in Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan, are pushing the local government to come to the bargaining table and respond in good faith to their demands for formal employment contracts.

The sanitation workers had staged a series of strikes in early November in protest at moves by the local government to hire them on labour service agreements (劳务关系) rather than formal employment contracts (劳动关系), a move that would deny the workers numerous benefits and protection under labour law. In essence, the workers would no longer be employees but simply service providers.

In order to press their demands further, on 20 November, the predominately middle-aged workers elected 15 bargaining representatives and signed a letter asking the environmental sanitation department of the Yuelu district government for talks on labour contracts, paid annual leave,  overtime, social insurance contributions, high-temperature subsidies etc. The letter was also sent to the local government’s labour inspectorate and the municipal trade union federation.

Changsha sanitation workers strategy meeting

Officials from the environmental sanitation department did meet with the workers’ representatives on 25 November but little progress was made, according to the workers and their advisors.

The Changsha dispute is the just latest in a series of protests by sanitation workers in cities across China, primarily over low pay, wage arrears, employment contracts and social insurance. In the last six months, there have been at least ten strikes and protests by sanitation workers in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, Zhejiang, Sichuan and Hebei.

The highlight of this new phase of worker activism was the successful campaign in September bysanitation workers at Guangzhou’s University Town to get severance pay from their old employer and sign improved contracts with their new employer.

Remembering the Chinese labourers behind the trenches in World War One

Geoff's blog

Remembering the Chinese labourers behind the trenches in World War One

26 November, 2014

China never sent troops to fight in Europe during the First World War. However, an estimated 135,000 young rural labourers were sent halfway around the world to work in French munitions factories, dig trenches, lay railway lines and remove dead bodies and unexploded ordnance from the battlefields. Thousands died and thousands more returned to China traumatized and deeply scared by what they had seen.

A new book by Mark O’Neill, published by Penguin to mark the one hundredth anniversary of World War One, outlines the remarkable and vital contribution made by these workers to the British and French war effort and describes how they were forgotten about as soon as they were no longer needed.

The Chinese Labour Corps: The Forgotten Chinese Labourers of the First World War describes how the workers were basically pawns of the new republican government in Beijing who hoped that the offer of labour would help reduce or even cancel out the reparations imposed on China in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion and, in the event of an allied victory, allow China to reclaim territory in Shandong that had been annexed by Germany. This political gamble of course failed miserably and China was completely ignored in the post-war Versailles settlement.

Britain and France initially refused China’s offer in order to protect domestic labour but, as the death toll began to mount in 1916, both countries realised they needed all the help they could get. Even then, they put severe restrictions on the Chinese labourers’ conditions of employment and those working for the British even had to wear a metal bracelet stamped with their name and serial number.

They were transported like cargo, sealed up in ships and trains for up to five months before arriving in France. And once in place they were assigned the dirtiest, most dangerous jobs. This inevitably led to conflict. Between 1916 and 18, there were 25 strikes by Chinese workers at factories in France, usually the result of “poor working conditions, non-payment of wages, being assigned work that was not in their contracts and maltreatment, physical or verbal, by their overseers.”

The Chinese Labour Corps transporting supplies

Following the war, many Chinese labourers were kept on in France to help in reconstruction and the vital task of clearing hundreds of tons of ordnance, a job that just about everyone else refused to do.

Although, they were on limited term contracts, a few Chinese workers managed to stay on in France by finding other jobs or by marrying local women. There was of course a huge shortage of young Frenchmen at the time and as one woman remarked of her fiancé:

Unlike many French men, he does not drink and has never beaten me up. If I found a French man he might be an alcoholic, spend all our money on wine and beat me up frequently. If I do not marry Mr Yang, I will have no chance to marry at all.

The majority of workers however returned to their old lives in rural China. Many had saved a substantial amount of money during their time in France but that money quickly disappeared when it was divided among their extended families. Those who were injured were not properly compensated and often died in poverty because they could no longer work.

Very few people in China today are aware of the contribution made by these young men a century ago but at least in France there is now some belated recognition of their service. In 2008, a monument to the “Chinese workers and fighters who died for France in the Great War” was unveiled in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, today’s China Town. A campaign is now underway in Britain for a similar monument to be erected in London.

Mark O’Neill has written another book in the same Penguin series entitled From the Tsar’s Railway to the Red Army: The Experience of Chinese Labourers in Russia during the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution.

‘De-Americanized’ world needed after US government shutdown: Beijing

While US politicians grapple with how to reopen their shuttered government and avoid a potentially disastrous default on their debt, the world should consider ‘de-Americanizing’, a commentary by Xinhua news agency said yesterday.

“As US politicians of both political parties [fail to find a] viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world,” the commentary said.

In a lengthy polemic against US hegemony since World War II, it added: “Such alarming days when the destinies of others are in the hands of a hypocritical nation have to be terminated.”

“A new world order should be put in place, according to which all nations, big or small, poor or rich, can have their key interests respected and protected on an equal footing,” it said.

Negotiations over how to end the budgetary impasse have shifted to the US Senate after House Representatives failed to strike a deal with US Barack President Obama on extending borrowing authority ahead of the deadline on Thursday.

Beijing has in recent days issued warnings as well as appeals for a deal, all the while emphasizing the inseparable economic ties that bind the world’s two biggest economies.

“The cyclical stagnation in Washington for a viable bipartisan solution over a federal budget and an approval for raising the debt ceiling has again left many nations’ tremendous [US] dollar assets in jeopardy and the international community highly agonized,” the commentary said.

China is the biggest foreign holder of US Treasury bonds, worth a total of US$1.28 trillion, according to US government data.

“Instead of honoring its duties as a responsible leading power, a self-serving Washington has abused its superpower status and introduced even more chaos into the world by shifting financial risks overseas,” but equally stoked “regional tensions amid territorial disputes, and fighting unwarranted wars under the cover of outright lies” the commentary said.

It added that emerging economies should have a greater say in major international financial institutions the World Bank and the IMF, and proposed a “new international reserve currency that is to be created to replace the dominant US dollar.”

China has only slightly more weight than Italy at the IMF, which has been headed by a European since its creation in 1944.

A governance reform has been in the works for three years, but its implementation has been blocked by the effective veto of the US.

Fire at food processing plant in Shandong kills at least 18 workers

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18 November, 2014

Just three months after a massive explosion at automotive components factory in Kunshan killed at least 75 workers and injured 185 others, a fire at a food processing plant in Shandong has killed 18 workers and injured another 13.

The fire broke out on Sunday evening, 16 November, at Longyuan Food Co. Ltd.'s carrot packaging workshop in Shouguang, near Weifang, one of China’s main food processing centres.

The People’s Daily quoted a local restaurant owner as saying: “It was a big fire and many workers fled.” There were 140 people in the building at the time, four of whom remain unaccounted for.

The factory owners have been detained by police as the investigation into the cause of the fire continues, according to official media.

Photo: weibo.com/CCTV News

Immediately following the Kunshan disaster, a group of labour activists and academics issued an open letter demanding that workers play a much more active role in supervising and ensuring workplace safety.

They pointed out that in nearly all workplace accidents in China both management and local government officials had failed to protect workers and as such it was now time to learn from other countries where workers play a prominent role in workplace safety committees along with management and local government officials.

The Shouguang disaster is the second major fire in the food processing industry in China in the last 18 months. A fire at a poultry processing plant in the north-eastern province of Jilin in June last year killed 121 people. The blaze was blamed on poor management, lack of government oversight, no worker training in fire safety, and locked exits.