Monthly News Review, December 2002
The official website of the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety Supervision (SACMSS) provides a list of major coal mine accidents in 2002, titled Taking stock of extremely serious accidents in 2002.
They are merely counting the fatalities and the disasters but we should not forget that these statistics tell the horrible fate of Chinas workers. These miners were once living workers powering Chinas economic engine. Taking stock of their deaths is a repulsive term and further demonstrates the travesty of denying the miners the ability to organise themselves against the appalling working conditions that create these abhorrent statistics.
Despite the 20.4% decline in the coal mine fatality rate to 4.86 deaths per million ton reported by the State Administration of Work Safety in 2002, the number of miners killed has actually increased in the last year; falling from 5,798 in 2000 to 5,395 in 2001 but up again to 5,791 in 2002. Moreover, there are still long-standing disturbing patterns:
1. Coal mines are the major killer in serious industrial accidents (Table 1);2. Serious coal mine accidents have increased while a drop is reported for other industries (Table 1);
3. Safety record in township and village coal mines, still flourishing despite their notorious safety standards, are the worst with the highest fatality rate, and more miners in these small scale and often illegal mines have been killed over the year (Table 2)
With cover-ups and under-reporting, official statistics have to be read with caution the numbers are likely to be largely underestimated. The critical concern, though, is the root of the work safety problem.
The new Work Safety Law, passed in June last year, has now come into force. In CLBs monthly review last July, we have pointed out that the law does not offer anything new when compared to previous laws and regulations. The problem of enforcement is central to the coal mine carnage in the worlds biggest coal producer. At the root of the problem are local corruption and fiscal benefits to the local governments, which exploit the persistent rural poverty that pushes migrant workers to risk their lives in the dangerous pits.
After the fatal blast at the state-owned Jixi Coal Mine in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang that killed 115 miners last June, local safety officials made a direct remark to the Peoples Daily on July 19, 2002: [W]hat can we do if a mine refuses to implement a notice to cease production following a safety inspection? We cant force them.
The government cannot do anything. The official trade union has failed the workers. Whats left?
Remove the legal monopoly of workers organisations and let the miners do the job! After all, the new Work Safety Law does provide for a certain degree of workers participation in safety protection.
Last November, in our presentation to a Hong Kong roundtable conference on health and safety in Chinas workplaces, CLB put forward a proposal to set up workers committees democratically elected by the miners based on the legal provisions under the Work Safety Law. (See Proposals to Improve Occupational Health and Safety in China)
Anything short of this basic form of workers organisations will turn any piece of work safety legislation into a paper tiger. As we put it in the proposal,
No matter from which angle we examine the issue of health and safety at work, there is one inescapable common denominator: namely that the status of workers themselves remains passive. As such workers are reduced to the level of a passive target audience. They are targets of OSH propaganda; targets of inspection and monitoring; targets to be restricted by various laws and regulations; and, inevitably, easy targets for OSH tragedies.
Setting up elected structures like the workers committees is to place the right to actively monitor health and safety in Chinas coal mines into the hands of the miners themselves.
This is for one reason alone:
It is the miners themselves who are best placed to understand the importance of OSH. For them it is not simply a matter of reports and conferences. The issue is of paramount importance to their families and a matter of life and death to themselves."
China Labour Bulletin
2003-01-21
Table 1: Statistics on Coal Mine Accidents in China, 2002
(percentage in brackets refers to comparison with the corresponding period
in previous year)
| Industrial Accidents | Coal Mine Accidents | ||
No. of Accidents | No. of Deaths | No. of Accidents | No. of Deaths | |
Serious (for the period of jan-nov 29) | 564 (-1.1%) | 2334 (-6.4%) | 286 (-10.1%) | 1252 (-16.8%) |
Very serious (for the period of jan-dec 29) | 124 (-9.5%) | 2274 (-10.1%) | 54 (+12.5%) | 1126 (+13.2%) |
Extremely serious (for the period of jan-dec 29) | 11 (-31.3%) | 592 (-16.2%) | 8 (0%) | 387 (+3.75%) |
(Source: 'An Overview of Work Safety Situation in China, 2002', State
Administration of Work Safety online, accessed 5/1/2003) (back)
Table 2: Fatalities in Different Types of Coal Mines in China, January-November 2002
(percentage in brackets refers to comparison with the corresponding period
in previous year)
Major State-owned | Local State-owned | Township & Village | |
Fatality rate (number of deaths per million ton) | 1.33 (-13.9%) | 3.82 (-18.1%) | 12.73 (-42.4%) |
Number of accidents (in different categories) | |||
Less than 3 deaths | 451 (n.a.) | 549 (n.a.) | 2090 (n.a.) |
Serious (3 deaths or more) | 26 (-33.3%) | 31 (-16.2%) | 229 (-5.4%) |
Very Serious (10 deaths or more) | 7 (+250%) | 5 (-16.7%) | 32 (+10.3%) |
Extremely Serious (30 deaths or more) | 1 (-7.8%) | 2 (-33.3%) | 4 (+100%) |
Total | 485 (-7.8%) | 587 (+8.7%) | 2355 (+9%) |
Number of deaths (in different categories) | |||
Less than 3 deaths | 490 (n.a.) | 604 (n.a.) | 2378 (n.a.) |
Serious | 130 (-28.6%) | 124 (-38.3%) | 998 (-11.1%) |
Very Serious | 118 (+237.1%) | 96 (18.5%) | 496 (+8.3%) |
Extremely Serious | 124 (-11.4%) | 74 (-31.5%) | 159 (+27.2%) |
Total | 862 (-2.7%) | 898 (-3.4%) | 4031 (+4.4%) |
(Source: 'An analysis of Accidents in China, January-November 2002',
State Administration of Work Safety online, accessed 5/1/2003) (back)