A deadly conflict of interests

As China's deadly mine safety record goes, the death toll has been high and the reasons are gloomily familiar. Eighteen miners died on March 14 after being trapped underground following a gas explosion in Xinfu mine in Qitaihe, a city in the northeast province of Heilongjiang. The miners died due to a lack of basic ventilation and vital gas monitoring equipment down the mineshafts.

The tragedy was nothing new in a country where at least 6,000 miners have lost their lives in the past year. But what was extraordinary about the disaster was the degree of nepotism and corruption that lay behind it. And when the real truth emerged about the abuse of administrative power in Qitaihe, the incident made the Chinese government's recent promise to close down thousands of the country's collieries that fail to meet safety targets sound more hollow than ever.

The owner of Xinfu mine, Peng Guocai, was deputy director of the district Production Safety Supervision Bureau. The local safety inspector had just awarded his own operation a safety certificate: a conflict of interests with deadly consequences.

"The operational excavation area of the mine was like a rat hole," Wang Feng, director of the Heilongjiang Coal Production Safety Supervision Bureau, told reporters, after being sent to the scene to investigate. "They still used primitive coal excavation methods there."

But more evidence of misconduct emerged. Although the mine was listed by the Heilongjiang Qitaihe Coal Industry Clean Coal Group as being state-owned, it was actually controlled by Peng himself, flouting a rule that bans civil servants from running their own private businesses. 

On top of that, Peng Guicai, Peng Guocai's brother, was deputy manager of the company that ran the mine. Local people accused him of shielding his brother during numerous mine safety check-ups, according to press reports after the explosion. He is also alleged to have helped his brother register the mine as having a reserve of 170,000 tons of coal. In reality, it had 60,000. Under Chinese regulations, this would have required it to close.

The 18 deaths at the Xinfu mine show that until the government is serious about tackling the problem of intermingled business and political interests, its outraged edicts about safety standards and directives about mine closures are meaningless. The problem is not one of a lack of work-safety laws or regulations, but about a lack of political will to enforce them on the ground, says Han Dongfang, director of the China Labour Bulletin.

"Terms like "legal" and "illegal" when applied to a mining operation usually mean little more than whether or not the mine's owner has paid off the right authorities," he said.

In the case of Peng Guocai and the Xinfu mine, this conflict of interests has rarely been clearer.

But the deaths of the 18 miners are also the result of a Chinese system of coal production that carries inherent contradictions.

On the one hand the government sends round an ever-growing number of safety directives to mine operators exhorting them to put the safety interests of workers first. But on the other, it sets production targets so high that workers' safety is necessarily compromised.

Cai Chongguo, China Labour Bulletin's trade union education director, says that China's budgeted coal production is set at an unrealistic level and the coal price has been set far too high. "Increasing demand for coal and [its] rocketing price has given rise to illegal mining in small shafts, leaving more and more miners' lives in grave danger."

Add to the mix a culture of local corruption and conflicts of interests, and the result is explosive.

The only way to tackle the problem at the root, says Han Dongfang, is to allow miners themselves to monitor safety conditions underground, and he has urged the government to take three immediate steps that would drastically reduce the number of fatal mining accidents.

First, miners should be allowed to form ad-hoc health and safety committees, with members directly elected by the workforce, not appointed by mine bosses. These committees should have the power to order a work stoppage when they believe the conditions are too hazardous.

Second, bereaved families should receive far more money when a miner dies at work. At the moment, a miner's life can be valued as little as $1,000 in some parts of the country. If the courts were able to hand down orders for punitive damages against the mine bosses who expose their employees to danger, it could lead to more safety improvements than all the central government's recent "urgent directives" combined, says Han.

Finally, any mine owner or manager caught putting profit before people by wilfully ignoring national rules on health and safety, must be prosecuted fully.

"Only when mine owners in China are made to realize that miners' lives are no longer cheap and easily disposable assets, and when they themselves face prosecution and jail if their workers' lives are at risk, will they begin taking China's work-safety laws and regulations seriously," says Han.

On May 11, less than two months after the Xinfu mine tragedy, another gas explosion in the city killed nine coal miners working underground.

15 September 2005

Can 100,000 safety supervisors end coal mine accidents?

In May, Beijing announced it was appointing 100,000 senior coal miners as safety supervisors in the latest attempt to end coal mine disasters in China. This unprecedented measure will be jointly implemented by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) and the State Administration of Work Safety by the end of the year. Zhang Chengfu, the director of Department of Occupational Safety and Health of the ACFTU explained the 100,000 safety supervisors will be designated as safety supervisors and  are expected to  monitor violations of coal mine safety regulations,  report hidden dangers, reflect coal miners' safety concerns and finally and most importantly, order the immediate evacuation of a mine if they believe miners'  lives are in danger. These supervisors will be selected from state-owned and privately-held coal mines, and they will be  licensed and receive a salary.

Appointing workers as occupational safety inspectors is by no means a new policy. In April 1985, the ACFTU issued three documents on the supervision of work safety. In December 2001, the ACFTU revised and reissued these three documents. In which they assert that either a labour inspection and supervision commission or an occupational safety and health monitoring unit should be set up by grass-roots trade unions in all enterprises. The members of these commissions or monitoring units should be workers who are knowledgeable about occupational health and safety issues.

On January 23, 2003, the ACFTU published the "Blue Paper on Chinese Trade Unions' Safeguarding of the Legitimate Rights and Interests of Workers and Staff Members (2002)", which said at that time there were 59,400 full  and part-time workers in  trade unions above the grassroots level across the country, and there were 652,100  workers in grassroots trade unions. The ACFTU and provincial level trade union federations (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government) had appointed 2,933 work safety supervisors, established 643,000 grassroots trade union committees for supervision over occupational health safety and there were 2.33 million inspectors of trade union teams in enterprises for occupational safety.

The Shanxi provincial government has announced in late August this year that miners who report to the unions any hidden dangers they uncovered in the coal mines would receive awards ranging from 300 to 3,000 Yuan ($US37 to US$370) if the reports were confirmed, according to Xinhua.

The report, citing a circular jointly issued by the Shanxi Provincial Federation of Trade Unions, the Provincial Work Safety Administration and the Provincial Coal Mine Safety Administration, said the identity of the "whistle-blowers" will be kept confidential to protect them. But the circular added that anyone who offered false information would be prosecuted.

Coal demand has soared in China in line with the rapidly expanding economy, while at the same time, coal mine accidents have occurred more frequently. The appointment of these 100,000 supervisors was done by the central government through the ACFTU system. Since the 1990s, economic reform in China has been focused on the reconstruction of state-owned enterprises and developing private ownership. The institution of a labour inspection and supervision commission or an occupational safety and health monitoring unit was established in the 1980s and was based on public or state ownership. However, this foundation has been seriously undermined with the development of private ownership. According to the State Administration of Work Safety, there were more than 23,500 small coal mines in operation between during 2002 to 2003, accounting for 90% of the total number of coal mines in China. Such small coal mines have become the root of coal mine disasters. Statistics show that 70% of coal mine accidents, including 80% of the major disasters, occurred in these coal mines each year.

The central government has been taking additional measures to stop coal mines accidents in recent years, but to no avail. Reviewing the failure of these measures, we have found that the principal problem is workers' rights have been ignored. For mine owners, the coal mines are only means to make a profit.

China Labour Bulletin has recently published a research report titled "Occupational Health and Safety in China: Labour Rights Lose Out to Government and Business (2003 – 2004)", in which we point out that during the process of ending coal mine accidents, there is an ongoing three-party gambling game among the central authority, local authorities and the owners of small coal mines. However, the coal miners' rights are ignored in this game and thus they play no role in stopping coal mine accidents.

When the government announced the plan to appoint 100,000 safety supervisors, we believed we were witnessing a new dawn and the end of coal mine disasters killing thousands of miners each year, because it seems that the central government and the official trade union have finally realized the important role workers can play in monitoring occupational health and safety.

However, although the dawn has come for us, it does not imply we will have a sunny day. Likewise, the appointment of the 100,000 supervisors does not indicate that mine accidents will stop. While we appreciate that the government for the first time recognizes the important role miners can play in monitoring work safety, we remain skeptical on just how effective this new measure could be.

First, from the beginning of this century, due to the increasing price of coal, the coal mining has become a "sector with excessive earnings". In reporting coal mine accidents, the national media have frequented uncovered the close relationship between government administrators and businesses. It is widely known that local government officials, senior officials in the safety supervisory agencies or their relatives are in fact the owners or investors in these small mines. Colluding with local mafia-style organizations, the owners have made these coal mines their fiefdom. Sometimes, even official safety supervisors would be denied access to these mines. In this case, we doubt whether these newly appointed supervisors, who are only workers, would be able to perform their duties in a normal fashion.

Secondly, in some remote and poverty-striken areas in China, coal mines are the main source of income for local government. Ignoring coal mine safety and allowing illegal mining are two major causes of coal mine accidents. In this situation, the new work safety supervisors will have to deal with the resistance from coal mine owners, and the local governments. Therefore, we doubt if they have enough power to overcome these difficulties.

Finally, setting up trade unions and recruiting migrant workers to become trade union members are the two main hurdles remaining for the ACFTU to promote unionization in the private sector. Since 2002, the ACFTU has been devoted to establishing grass-roots trade unions in privately owned enterprises. It has extremely difficult for the ACFTU to get a breakthrough in promoting these activities in the small coal mines, which are like "fiefdoms". Although the newly appointed 100,000 work safety supervisor can be appointed by local trade unions, it is still difficult for these supervisors to gain support from workers' organizations within the coal mines, where there are no trade unions.

China Labour Bulletin believes the appointment of safety supervisors will indeed fill a gap in coal mine safety in China. However, the effectiveness of this new measure will depend on the central government's success at adjusting the entire coal mine safety system, including the integration of existing laws, policies and government organisations.

Sources: Xinhua News Agency (31 May 2005, 29 August 2005)

7 September

News Briefs:

1) Occupational health and safety problems climbing in the private sector

Preliminary figures on safety in the work place in 2004 reveal that there were 9,864 industrial accidents in privately-owned mines and factories in which 11,278 workers were killed, These figures represented 67% and 68% of all accidents and fatalities nation-wide and this is a significant increase over 2003 figures, Wang Dexue, deputy administrator of the State Administration of Work Safety, told the media in July 2005.

While the statistics were labeled "incomplete", they showed that 8,713 industrial accidents occurred the privately owned mines and factories in China in 2003, in which a total of 9,708 workers were killed. This accounted for 65% and 66% of the total number of work-related accidents and fatalities in the country.

Statistics from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention show that 83% of township enterprises present work environments with varying degrees of occupational hazards; about 34% of the workers in these enterprises are affected by harmful levels of dust and toxic substances. As a result, about 15.78% of workers in township enterprises develop or are suspected of developing various occupational illnesses. About 37.2% of the foreign-invested factories were shown to have hazardous conditions with 34.7% of workers employed in these plants in the danger of developing occupational illnesses.

Source: 21 July 2005, China Work Safety News

2) China intends to standardize compensation for industrial injuries

China is planning to standardize compensation paid to workers hurt or killed in industrial accidents, with the maximum payment set at the equivalent of 20 years of wages, the State Administration of Work Safety announced.

The government may introduce a clause in current laws stating  If the employer is found fully responsible for the industrial accident, the maximum compensation would be equivalent to the total wages of the injured/deceased worker for 20 years. The pay-out would be based on the enterprise's average wages for the previous year. In October 2004, Shanxi provincial government released a regulation stipulating that the compensation paid to the family of each deceased miner should not be less than 200,000 yuan. In the past, each bereaved family would only be given a compensation of 20,000 to 50,000 yuan.

Source: 18 Feb 2005, Information Times