[Broadcast on 5 June 2004]

In the 1960s to 1970s, when the government promoted industrialization in China, it was common practice for the large-scale SOEs to employ men to work in the main factories and mines while their wives worked in the SOEs’ subsidiaries. These women workers were called “dependent workers”. However, starting from 1980s, in order to accommodate young graduate workers and job seekers, the government began to often trade off the rights of the dependent workers - women who have worked for the SOEs’ subsidiaries and service companies for decades – by setting up new service companies, employing new workers and laying off the original dependant workers.

CLB has conducted a series of interviews with a dependent worker from Tongchuan Mining Bureau of Shaanxi, who talks about the situation of these women workers’ situation, often in their 50s upwards, who are now without any pensions or medical care, and discusses what they could expect from the government.

Dependent Worker:

The primary statistics show that we have 2,051 people [dependent workers from the Tongchuan Mining Bureau].

Han Dongfang [Han]:

2,051 people?

Dependent Worker:

Yes, from the whole district with 13 work units.

Han:

Are they all women workers?

Dependent Worker:

Yes. There are not many men working with us. We are basically women workers, aged between 50 to 80.

Han:

And what is going on?

Dependent Worker:

It is a long story. In the 1960s, we followed the call of the party, there was a slogan at that time “everybody has two hands, one should not be lazy and stay at home, and one shouldn’t eat without contributing to the factory”. Thus we set up our dependents’ services group, starting with cleaning the workers’ uniforms.

Han:

Did you found that spontaneously?

Dependent Worker:

It was founded spontaneously, but later the mining bureau sent leaders over to have it organized.

Han:

Did any mining bureau officials organize it at the very beginning?

Dependent Worker:

No. It was done by the cleaners of the mining bureau, starting with uniform cleaning.

Han:

Why did you start such an organization?

Dependent Worker:

We didn’t have anything to do at home; we had too much spare time, so we set this up. Also it improved our income, you know we did care about a few cents. That is why we organized, to gather up coal gangue [mineral deposits found in coal which cannot easily be used as fuel] and help loading the lorries - two people could carry a big basket of coal gangue onto a lorry. Later when we were better organized and had leaders, we went up to the mountains to reclaim the surrounding wasteland. The income was very low but gradually we made more, from nothing to something.

Han:

What was the size of your organization when the mining bureau first got involved?

Dependent Worker:

Since we started… we served from ten to some 30 years, from time to time, we had newcomers and those who had joined early would leave earlier than those joined late. In the 1970s, the party encouraged us to adopt the “May 7th Directive” [NOTE 1]. By then we were quite organized in cultivating the mountainous areas. At that time, our slogan was “support the subsidiaries by agriculture” [NOTE 2].

Han:

Support subsidiaries by agriculture?

Dependent Worker:

Right! “Support the subsidiaries by agriculture, enrich the agriculture by industry” as the full picture of development. Why was it “support the agriculture by subsidiaries’? It was because at that time, running subsidiaries [subsidiary companies or projects] was more profitable than farming itself. Farming was in its initial process and it made a deficit. At that time, cultivating new land brought no income.

Han:

To whom did you send the harvest to?

Dependent Worker:

The harvest belonged to the services company, the foodstuff, the vegetables and the chickens, as we later ran a poultry farm, all belonged to it. It was the services company that did all the distribution and management.

Han:

Was it collectively run at that time?

Dependent Worker:

Right. It always was collectively run. It was a time when some [of us] worked in factories, some in farms and we earned different wages. During the peak seasons for farming, which are summer and autumn, workers in the agricultural section worked from early morning to midnight daily. The maximum wages we could get in those days were one Yuan 38 cents.

Han:

Wages for a day?

Worker:

Yes. We could earn at most one Yuan 38 Cents. Yet, we had high morale at that time, workers in every industry were motivated.

Han:

How old are you now?

Dependent Worker:

I am 62 years old now.

Han:

When did you start working?

Dependent Worker:

I started in 1968.

Han:

You started in 1968?

Dependent Worker:

Yeah! In 1968, I started working in a brick factory.

Han:

Were you at your 20s then?

Dependent Worker:

Yes.

Han:

What was your first job?

Dependent Worker:

My task was to bring bricks from the kiln and load them onto trucks.

Han:

Was it heavy physical labour?

Dependent Worker:

Yes, rather heavy. At that time, each worker was assigned with a work quota. More than 1,000 bricks. I had to load 1,500 onto the trucks and it took three days or so… I can’t recall how long it took anymore, but it was hard work.

Han:

How long did you work there?

Dependent Worker:

I worked in that factory for two to three years.

Han:

How much did you earn daily?

Dependent Worker:

I remember the highest possible wages were one Yuan 54 cents per day.

Han:

What did you make at most?

Dependent Worker:

I could make one Yuan 54 cents at most, so about 40 Yuan per month.

Han:

Did you have Sundays or Saturdays off?

Dependent Worker:

No, basically not. The wages were counted by days of work, if you went to work 30 days that month, then they paid you wages for 30 days, and wages of 31 days’ work if you worked 31 days that month.

Han:

Was it like that in 1968?

Dependent Worker:

Yes, it was so in 1968.

Han:

Where did you go after you had worked there for two to three years?

Dependent Worker:

After that, the organization [mining bureau] assigned me to a farm.

Han:

I’m sorry?

Dependent Worker:

A farm.

Han:

A farm?

Dependent Worker:

It was to reclaim the wasteland.

Han:

How long did you work there then?

Dependent Worker:

For about six to seven years.

Han:

What kind of work did you do?

Dependent Worker:

Agricultural work was much more complicated. At first each of us brought a hoe and paired up with another worker to carry a big basket. The mountainous land was very bad for farming, nobody had ever planted anything there before. We cultivated the place and in the first year, the harvest was more than 10,000 Jin (One Jin = 500 Grams).

Han:

You mean the harvest from the newly cultivated land?

Dependent Worker:

Yes! We first cultivated it and then started planting.

Han:

Did plants grow on that kind of land?

Dependent Worker:

That land belonged to the agricultural cooperative, they [mining bureau] had to ask for their permission to let us work there. Of course, they only gave us bad land. How could we expect that they would give us fertile farmland?

Han:

That means you were planting on infertile land?

Dependent Worker:

Exactly. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been called “cultivate the abandoned land”.

Han:

Was the harvest getting better?

Dependent Worker:

Not really. Do you know why? It was a place lacking in natural resources.

Han:

You know no water?

Dependent Worker:

Right, no water [rain]. Irrigation was difficult for a place surrounded by mountains.

Han:

How much did you earn there monthly?

Dependent Worker:

It was one Yuan 38 cents.

Han:

Daily?

Dependent Worker:

Yes. One Yuan 38 cents per day.

Han:

Did you have any day off?

Dependent Worker:

No.

Han:

Didn’t you think that it was worthless in the economic sense to cultivate that infertile land while there was no irrigation to help?

Dependent Worker:

Worthless economically… well we were inspired by the party’ s call, it was a time the whole nation was following the “May 7th Directive”. Didn’t I tell you about that “support the agriculture by subsidiaries”? The subsidiaries were said to be quite profit-making, each day it could make four to five Yuan and the worker could earn more than one Yuan.

Han:

What was the most profit-making subsidiary?

Dependent Worker:

The profit-making subsidiaries…for example the stone factory.

Han:

Stone factory?

Dependent Worker:

Right, stone factory.

Han:

You mean [its production] was for road construction?

Dependent Worker:

Yes, exactly.

Han:

What else?

Dependent Worker:

Also brick factories and coal gangue.

Han:

I’m sorry? Brick factories and what?

Dependent Worker:

Coal gangue. A kind of coal stones from the coal pit, the stones contain sulfur and after burning the coal gangue, we could sell the stones to the cement factories as their raw materials.

Han:

So for making cement?

Dependent Worker:

Right, for making cement.

Han:

And its name is coal gangue?

Dependent Worker:

Yes.

Han:

Were these profitable industries?

Dependent Worker:

Oh yes, they were the most profitable ones, especially the coal gangue.

Han:

I see, and in those days, were you covered by medical insurance?

Dependent Worker:

No, that one Yuan or so was all we could earn.

Han:

And what did your husband do at that time?

Dependent Worker:

He worked in the machinery unit.

Han:

Machinery?

Dependent Worker:

The machinery work unit.

Han:

Not in the pit?

Dependent Worker:

No, he was injured once and therefore he couldn’t work in the pit anymore. The machinery unit was on the surface.

Han:

How many dependent workers were wives of miners?

Dependent Worker:

Only a few of their men could work on the land surface.

Han:

That means most of them were…

Dependent Workers:

Most of us were wives of miners in the pits. We had to work and also take good care of our families. You know working in the pits was a tough work, a shift lasted for 12 hours or even longer. They couldn’t tell how long the working hours would be.

Han:

Couldn’t they?

Dependent Worker:

No, because there might be overtime work.

Han:

That means if they had to work overtime, then they couldn’t tell how long the shift would be?

Dependent Worker:

Yes. For example, if it is a morning shift, you had to be at the mine at 7 a.m. and by 8 a.m., you would go into the pit. In theory, you could leave at 2 p.m. but in practice, 4 p.m. if it was a smooth day of work. If something happened, you might have to return to the pit and fix that and it was uncommon to leave the pit at 6 or 7 p.m. When you got home, it would be 7 or 8 p.m.

Han:

That means they worked more than ten hours a day?

Dependent Worker:

Yes. Mining is the worst occupation I could think of.

Han:

How about the working hours of the dependent workers?

Dependent Worker:

When I worked for the farm, I had to be there at 8 a.m.

Han:

8 a.m.?

Dependent Worker:

Right, 8 a.m.

Han:

How about noontime?

Dependent Worker:

We didn’t go home at noon.

Han:

So you kept working till afternoon?

Dependent Worker:

We brought some bread and vegetables with us when we set off to work. We worked till 5 to 6 p.m. when it wasn’t the busy season. Our homes were five or six Li (one Li = 500 meters) from the workplace, some lived more than 10 Li from the workplace. When we arrived home, we had to prepare dinners, take care of our babies. Most of us were mothers.

Next Saturday, CLB will broadcast the Part Two of this interview.

NOTES

Note 1: “The ‘May 7th Directive’ refers to a letter Mao Zedong wrote to Lin Biao on May 7, 1966, after he had examined the ‘Report on Further Developing Agricultural Production and Side-Occupations in the Armed Forces’ submitted by the General Logistics Department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Among other things, the letter stated that the army should be made a great school in which the troops should study politics and military affairs, raise their educational level, and also engage in agricultural production and side-occupations and run some medium-sized or small factories to make certain products for their own needs or for exchange with the state against equal values.” Extracts from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/dengxp/vol2/note/B0070.html.

Note 2: According to a search in www.google.com, the more popular slogan should be “Support agriculture by subsidiaries” instead of the other way round, and also in the interviewee’s later elaboration, it should be “Support agriculture by subsidiaries”.