China's Workers Under Assault

Exploitation and Abuse in a Globalizing Economy

Anita Chan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781315502113
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

This important book contains case studies with substantive analysis of Chinese workers in a variety of settings: state enterprises, urban collectives, township and village enterprises, domestic private enterprises, and foreign funded enterprises. The cases include urban workers migrant workers from the countryside, and workers who are sent to work outside of China. The analytical framework for these case studies lays out why labor rights violations have been occurring in China and highlights the contex in which these violations operate and the extent to which these selected cases are not isolated incidents. Moreover, the dilemma of Chinese workers is put into international perspective: the context of the international labor market, the setting of competitive minimum wages in Asia, and the concern for Chinese workers' rights taken up by the International Labor Organization (ILO). This book debunks the conventional wisdom that Chinese workers are thriving because the Chinese economy is booming. Indeed the wage structures of these enterprises of different ownership types contribute to widening income disparities in China. The book uncovers what exactly overseas Chinese entrepreneurship (Taiwan and Hong Kong), means at the factory level. And it calls for a new approach to scrutinizing the phenomena of the so-called Chinese economic miracle and it's repercussions on other economies and labor markets.

Abbreviations

ACFTU	All-China Federation of Trade Unions
ACWF	All-China Women’s Federation
AFL-CIO	American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
CCP	Chinese Communist Party
CNMI	Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands
FLA	Fair Labor Association
HRWA	Human Rights Watch/Asia
ICFTU	International Conference of Free Trade Unions
ILO	International Labor Organization
ITF	International Transport Workers Federation
NGO	Non-Governmental Organization
OSH	Occupational Safety and Health
PNTR	Permanent normal trade relations
PRC	People’s Republic of China
PSB	Public Security Bureau
SEZ	Special Economic Zone
UN	United Nations
UDHR	Universal Declaration of Human Rights
WTO	World Trade Organization

 

U.S.$/Yuan Exchange Rate, 1990–1999
Year	1U.S.$/Yuan
1990	4.7838
1991	5.3227
1992	5.5149
1993	5.7619
1994	8.6187
1995	8.3507
1996	8.3142
1997	8.2898
1998	8.2791
1999	8.2798

Map 1: Location of Cases in China

Map 2: Location of Cases in Guangdong Province

CHINA’S WORKERS

UNDER ASSAULT

Chapter 4

Violations of Occupational Safety and Health

Management’s violations of occupational safety and health (OSH) regulations sometimes have more serious effects on workers than the abuses discussed in previous chapters. The effects of toxic fumes, for instance, can diminish body weight and cause general ill health or even death, though sometimes the damage goes unnoticed since the severest symptoms of some of these ailments take months or years to develop. Maiming by machines, on the other hand, is instantaneously visible. In the Shenzhen region alone, 90 percent of some 12,000 hospital-certified industrial injuries in 1998 involved maiming.¹ Two of the cases in this chapter concern extraordinary instances of unnecessarily noxious and dangerous working conditions, caused by employers ignoring elementary safety precautions in the rush to profit.

A third case involves a fire in a toy factory that had built workshops, storage, and dormitories in one building, and had blocked exits and barred windows—all violations of workplace fire safety regulations. The fire claimed eighty-seven lives and aroused unprecedented public outrage in China. Th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Asia and the Pacific
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Map 1. Location of Cases in China
• Map 2. Location of Cases in Guangdong Province
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Forced Labor and Violations of Shop-Floor Labor Standards
• 3 Corporal Punishment and Physical Assaults
• 4 Violations of Occupational Safety and Health
• 5 Violations of the Right to Work
• 6 Violations of the Right to Organize and of Collective Action
• 7 Indentured Labor Abroad
• 8 Workers' Resistance
• 9 In Pursuit of Labor Rights
• Selected Bibliography
• Index