China Labour E-Bulletin Issue No. 18 (2004-08-03)
03 August 2004In this Issue:
1. WORKERS' ACTION
- Thousands of Unfairly Retrenched Workers from Military Factory in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, Demand Their Jobs Back
2. HEALTH AND SAFETY
- Foremost Electrical Battery Producing Company in Hong Kong Exposes its Mainland Workers to Cadmium Poisoning
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WORKERS' ACTION
Thousands of Unfairly Retrenched Workers from Military Factory in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, Demand Their Jobs Back
Since late July 2004, police in Beijing have forcibly returned to Baotou, Inner Mongolia, around 80 laid-off workers from one of China’s largest military-industrial complexes, the Inner Mongolia North Heavy Industries Group Corp. Ltd. (NORHEINCO), who had been collectively petitioning the central government about their urgent livelihood and employment problems. The mass petitioning effort was the latest and most high-profile stage of a protracted public campaign which more than 2,000 retrenched and laid-off former workers from the NORHEINCO factory have been waging since early May of this year in Baotou, where the factory is located. A total of around 7,000 workers have lost their jobs at the factory, which was formerly known as the No.2 Machinery Plant of Inner Mongolia, in recent years.
The protesting workers claim that from 1997 onwards they were intimidated and tricked into accepting “voluntary” redundancy packages that left them grossly under-compensated for their long years of service. The irregular way in which the redundancy agreements were forced upon the workers left them in a legal limbo whereby they are unable either to claim their unemployment benefits or to maintain their retirement pension entitlements. At present, most of the retrenched workers cannot obtain even the government’s “minimum living allowance”, leaving them and their families virtually destitute. The Baotou workers are making two principal demands: to be reinstated in their original jobs at NORHEINCO as soon as possible; and in the meantime, to be given the redundancy benefits that the company promised them but has so far failed to deliver.
Since the first week in May, the retrenched NORHEINCO workers have been gathering every day outside the factory’s main gates, in rotating shifts of about 500 workers at a time, to call for immediate action by the factory’s managers to address their demands. The company’s initial response was to send plainclothes officers from the factory’s public security department to carry out surveillance, video-taping and intimidation of the protesting workers, and soon after the start of the protests at least twelve workers were hauled in for questioning by the police. (One of the detained workers was later hospitalized after suffering a heart attack in police custody.) All twelve were eventually released after signing “confession letters”, but the detentions had the effect of scaring many workers away from joining the factory gate protest for a period of several days.
Ratcheting Up the Pressure
Frustrated at their lack of progress, the protesting workers then sent groups of delegates to petition both the Baotou municipal government and also the regional government authorities in the Inner Mongolian capital, Hohhot. On both occasions, government officials refused to take any action and instead simply referred the dispute back to the NORHEINCO management for resolution, thus leaving the workers no better off than before. On the morning of 7 July, after being taunted by the factory’s police for “not taking a complaint to Beijing”, about 60 workers decided to dispatch a new delegation to seek help from the central government. Although several dozen workers volunteered to take part, they decided to limit the delegation to only four members, in order to avoid any potential government retaliation on the grounds of “unlawful petitioning activities.” After arriving in Beijing the next morning, the workers’ representatives visited the Letters and Complaints offices (xin-fang ban) of both the State Council and the China North Industries Group Corporation (the parent company of NORHEINCO). Officials asked them to be patient and gave a vague pledge that the government would investigate, but after more than a week of subsequent official inaction and procrastination, on 18 July the workers’ representatives returned to Baotou empty-handed.
The protesting workers then decided to adopt a more high-profile approach, and on 21 July they sent a further group of 30 workers’ delegates to Beijing to petition the central government. The next day, another 30 workers headed for Beijing to join them, followed by a further 10 workers on the subsequent day. On 25 July, one of the petitioners’ leaders returned to Baotou to inform his fellow-workers that still no progress had been made in getting the government to act on their demands. The next morning, around 30 more former NORHEINCO workers tried to board a train to Beijing, but a large number of police were there to stop them and only about ten workers managed to slip through the police cordon and board the train. In the confrontation at the railway station, the petitioners’ leader who had recently returned to Baotou was detained by the police, along with one other worker; both were released within 24 hours.
As of 2 August, the mass picketing action by former NORHEINCO workers was continuing daily outside the factory gates. At the end of July, however, several dozen workers’ representatives who had remained in Beijing to continue petitioning the central government were forcibly taken back to Baotou by a squad of police officers from Baotou and Beijing .
An Overview of NORHEINCO
The NORHEINCO factory (under its original name as No.2 Machinery Plant of Inner Mongolia) was first established as one of 156 major development projects included in China’s First-Five-Year-Plan (1953-1957), and for several decades it fell under the direct administration of the Central Government. Its parent company is currently the China North Industries Group Corporation (NORINCO GROUP, also known as CNGC), which is the largest weapons manufacturing and marketing corporation in China. The NORHEINCO facility is extremely large: spread over an area of 297.7 sq. km. in Baotou Municipality, it consists of seven branch companies, 31 subsidiaries and one publicly listed entity [Note 1]. As a key production base for China’s national defense industry, it runs and operates its own schools, hospitals and research institutes, and even maintains its own Public Security Department.
In September 2002, the official New China News Agency (Xinhua) issued the following up-beat report on the situation at NORHEINCO:
“In 1998, the Inner Mongolia No.2 Machinery Plant was plunged into economic difficulties and was unable to pay its workers any wages for eight consecutive months; however, not one of the factory’s 30,000 workers went off to petition the government about this. Instead, the workers put forward their thoughts and ideas on how to resolve the factory’s problems. After a change of leadership at the enterprise and its subsequent restructuring as the Inner Mongolia North Heavy Industries Group Corp., the entire company at all levels has been acting in a spirit of total unity and creativity. This in turn has produced a major developmental breakthrough for the company, with a series of new products being developed, new markets opened up, and a much-improved management structure. The company has now gone from being a loss-making enterprise to a profit-making one, and the workers’ monthly salary has increased by an average of 300 yuan.” [Note 2]
In recent interviews with China Labour Bulletin, however, numerous laid-off and retrenched workers from the factory have painted a much less rosy and harmonious picture than the one presented above. Starting from early 1997, they report, mounting wage arrears soon became the factory workers’ main everyday worry, and by late 1998, most of them were owed up to 15 months of wages. Over roughly the same period, the company forced about 7,000 workers to leave the factory, ostensibly under various forms of retrenchment.
Mass Sackings in the Guise of “Retrenchments”
The main “retrenchment” policy applied by the company to these 7,000 workers was an official offer to redesignate them as “workers suspended from duty without pay” (tingxin liuzhi). According to Document No.346, issued to the workers in 1998, each worker who opted for this new status would be offered replacement posts over the coming three years, and if he or she chose to reject two such alternative job offers without good cause, then the company could cancel its labour contract with them (i.e. they would be dismissed.) During this three-year period, workers would be entitled to receive a very small living allowance from the company, but if they were found to have taken on any other form of employment in the meantime, even a temporary or part-time job – or even if they traveled to another city to look for a job – then both their right to be given alternative job offers and also the small monthly allowance paid to them by the factory would be cancelled.
Significantly, none of the workers appear to have been offered formal “laid-off worker” (xia gang) status – a status that would have entitled them to a substantially wider and more attractive range of benefits (not least: registration with the local re-employment bureau, plus a guaranteed monthly income at a level higher than the local minimum living allowance.) Having no other option, therefore, most of the 7,000 workers finally “chose” to be reassigned to the new category of “suspended from duty without pay.” According to the workers, however, what then happened is that starting from 1998, instead of offering workers the promised alternative positions, the factory management began formally terminating their labour contracts on the false grounds that the workers had been “absent from work without permission.” Moreover, the managers are said to have fraudulently completed, in the workers’ own names, “application forms for termination of the labour contract”. Many workers only learned of the existence of these forged documents several months after the final termination of their contracts with the factory. Over the past seven years, the workers have written numerous letters to the factory leadership, providing documentary evidence that they violated no rules or agreements and therefore should not have been dismissed from their jobs. Around 50 workers have lodged lawsuits in the local court to challenge their dismissals, but none have succeeded either in getting their jobs back or in securing a court ruling that the company acted unlawfully.
In 1999, NORHEINCO management announced a second and more formal type of retrenchment program. According to a Document No.347 issued to the workforce at that time, workers with less than ten years’ service in the factory who opted for retrenchment would be awarded compensation of 6,000 Yuan; those with between 11 and 20 years of service would receive 8,000 Yuan in compensation; and those with more than 20 years of service would receive 12,000 Yuan. According to workers interviewed by China Labour Bulletin, the factory management threatened that if workers didn’t sign up for the retrenchment package on offer, they would be fired outright and receive no service compensation at all. Out of a sense of fear and helplessness, many of the workers opted to sign this agreement.
Once they had done so, however, the company informed them that since they had “volunteered” for retrenchment (rather than being made involuntarily redundant), the company rule was that they would be given 2,000 Yuan less than the amounts originally specified. Adding insult to injury, moreover, the company is refusing either to continue paying into the retrenched workers’ retirement pension fund, on the grounds that they are no longer its employees, or to issue them with the formal “unemployment certificates” that they need in order to qualify for unemployment benefit. Finally, the workers have applied to the Baotou Social Security Bureau to receive the government-stipulated “minimum living allowance” of 156 Yuan per month – but they have been informed that only a small number of them (those who have permanently lost the ability to work, and who have neither a telephone nor a television at home) will be eligible to receive this allowance through their local Neighbourhood Committees.
Despite the contemptuous and unlawful treatment they have received from the company management, and despite the dismal failure of the legal system to uphold their rights thus far, the NORHEINCO workers’ morale remains high and they are determined to continue their public protest until their basic demands have been met. They are now actively exploring the possibility of bringing a collective lawsuit against the company on the grounds of mass wrongful dismissal and in pursuit of substantial collective compensation.
Notes
Note 1: Retrieved from the company’s official webpage http://www.cngc.com.cn/units/detail.asp?id=10
Note 2:Retrieved from http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2002-09/19/content_566924.htm, on 19 September 2002.
http://www.clb.org.hk/en/node/3730
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HEALTH AND SAFETY
Foremost Electrical Battery Producing Company in Hong Kong Exposes its Mainland Workers to Cadmium Poisoning
On 23 July, a group of 33 Hong Kong labour rights organizations launched a protest at the Hong Kong head office of GP Batteries International Ltd., the foremost producer of electrical batteries in Asia, apart from Japan. The protestors staged a theatrical sketch showing how GP’s two factories in Huizhou, China, had poisoned their female workers with the toxic mineral cadmium, leading to the birth of abnormal babies.
Under public pressure, Zhuang Shaoliang, a board member of GP Batteries, came out to receive an open letter cosigned by the Hong Kong labour rights groups. The letter presented the following list of demands [for the original Chinese version, please see: http://globalmon.uhome.net/gpcell_040723.html]:
1) GP Batteries must send all its employees to undergo hospital medical checkups, and must pay for all medical expenses incurred in treating both the workers and any of their children who have been poisoned due to their parents’ work at the GP factories.
2) GP must stop interfering in the workers’ receipt of immediate medical treatment and certificates of diagnosis; it must also provide any workers found to have been poisoned by cadmium with full and adequate compensation.
3) GP must not retaliate or seek vengeance on the workers who have publicized this case.
4) GP must improve the working and safety conditions at their factories in accordance with the Law of the PRC on Work Safety and the Law on the Prevention and Cure of Occupational Diseases of the PRC [Note 1]. It must respect and observe the workers’ rights to elect their own Occupational Health and Safety Committees to monitor and ensure safe working condition at the company’s factories.
5) GP must obey the PRC Labour Law by ending excessive working hours, and any overtime work must comply with the legal stipulations on payment of overtime; furthermore, no wage reductions are to be imposed once GP has reduced the overall working hours at its factories.
6) GP must undertake to inform its previous employees of the possible health hazards they incurred while working for GP, and it must pay for their medical checkups and treatment if they are diagnosed as suffering from any cadmium poisoning-related illness.
7) GP must ensure that henceforth all its products and production facilities meet international safety standards. In addition, it must publicize the facts of the recent poisoning incident at its factory and submit to full public monitoring and scrutiny.
Background
GP Batteries International Ltd. operates two factories in Huizhou – the GP Chaoba Factory and the GP Xianjin Factory – with a total workforce of around 2,000 workers. In late 2003 many workers fell sick, and one of them, Li Jizhong, visited the Occupational Diseases Centre of Guangzhou, where he was diagnosed as having “an excessive level of cadmium in blood”. Highly alarmed by Li’s health situation and, in many cases, feeling sick themselves, the workers demanded an immediate explanation from the company. Management then called in a medical “expert”, who informed the workers that they had nothing to worry about; provided they “drank plenty of water,” he said, the workers would “be fine”.
The workers then asked to be given full medical check-ups, but GP arranged for only 540 of them – mostly new employees – to be medically examined at the Huizhou Center for the Prevention of Diseases. Of these 540 workers, only 121 were found to have “excessive levels of cadmium in blood”; those who had served at the factory longer were declared to be “normal” and none was diagnosed as suffering from actual cadmium poisoning. Moreover, the factory failed to arrange medical check-ups for most of the 1,500 workers who had served at the factory for more years.
Mistrustful of the company-arranged medical check-ups, some of the GP workers then visited other hospitals to undergo independent medical examinations. The results obtained were very different from the previous “official version”: the amount of cadmium in the workers’ blood was found to be at least four times higher than the levels ascertained by the Huizhou Center for the Prevention of Diseases. When confronted by the workers with these alarming new medical findings, the Huizhou Center proceeded to claim, implausibly enough, that its medical analysis equipment had been “out of order” on the day in question.
Having lost all trust and confidence in the GP management, the workers informed the news media about the situation in late June. They first contacted the media in Guangzhou but received no feedback, and their story was finally publicized by a Hong Kong newspaper, Oriental Daily News, on 3 July. On 5 July, an item appeared on GP’s official webpage, stating: “The workers at Huizhou GP Factory have all been given proper training and instruction on the characteristics of Cadmium”. It added: “In all aspects of safety, workers’ health, environment and sewerage, the GP factory conforms with international standards”. However, the workers themselves report that they are required to work 12 hours a day at the factory, with only one day’s holiday per month [Note 2]. They say that when they joined the factory, they received no form of training or warning about the potential medical dangers, and they were given only paper face masks and cotton gloves instead of the full set of necessary safety equipment. Women workers, including ones who were pregnant, were reportedly assigned to work in cadmium processing workshops.
After the story of the workers’ plight appeared in the news media, the company reportedly adopted a series of heavy-handed retaliatory measures against them. Workers undergoing medical evaluation and treatment were forcibly taken back to the factory and held in isolation to prevent them from speaking to journalists. The company also reportedly ordered medical staff to deny the media any further access to the hospitalized workers. One female worker, after leaving behind a letter saying how afraid she felt, escaped from the hospital and is now nowhere to be found.
When CLB tried to contact the Huizhou Federation of Trade Unions; we learned that its president is in fact the supervisor of the GP factory’s personnel department. Trade union officials at both county and district levels in Huizhou, far from actively supporting the GP workers in their fight for a safe working environment, have stated merely that “workers should cooperate with employers to ensure safety”. To date, the company has rejected all the workers’ demands for due and proper compensation.
What is Cadmium?
The workers who were found with high levels of the toxin had direct contact with the powder form of cadmium oxide. They were responsible for pouring tens of kilograms of the chemicals into the packaging machine to make rechargeable batteries.
Exposure to high levels of cadmium fumes or dust through inhalation causes intense irritation to human respiratory tissue. Particle size appears to be a more important determinant of toxicity than chemical form. However, most acute intoxications are caused by inhalation of cadmium fumes at concentrations that do not provide sufficient warning symptoms of irritation, so affected workers often leave the contaminated workplace without full knowledge that their health has been damaged. Chronic exposure to cadmium, by inhalation or through ingestion, results in kidney damage, lung malfunction, bone disease (osteomalacia and osteoporosis) and pains in the joints. These various symptoms may continue to worsen even after exposure to cadmium has ceased. Female workers having multiple risk factors, such as multiparity [associated with unstable fetal position, postpartum haemorrhage and abruptio placentae] and poor nutrition [Note 3], are often among the worst affected.
Notes
Note 1:Revised on 1 May 2002, Law on the Prevention and Cure of Occupational Diseases stipulates the responsibilities of enterprises with regard to safe working conditions, industrial accident insurance, the measures adopted to prevent occupational diseases, and the level of information they should provide to workers.
Article 4: … the employing unit shall establish working conditions that conform to national standards and requirements concerning occupational health and shall adopt measures that guarantee the occupational health of workers.
Article 6: The employing unit shall take out industrial accident insurance in accordance with the law on industrial insurance.
Article 20: The employing unit shall adopt effective measures to prevent and guard against occupational diseases and provide equipment to individual workers that guard against such diseases.
Article 30: On drawing up a labour contract with a worker, the employing unit shall actively inform the worker of all potential occupational illnesses that may result from processes used and their harmful results. The employing unit shall also include in the labour contract all measures and treatment against occupational diseases and shall not conceal dangers or cheat the workers. … [W]here the employer has violated the previous two clauses; the worker has the right to refuse to work in an area where there are occupational hazards. The employing unit shall not terminate or cancel the labour contract in these circumstances. … Workers shall study and fully grasp the appropriate information on occupational safety and respect the relevant laws, regulations, rules and operating procedures. They shall use correctly and maintain occupational health installations and individual protective equipment. Workers … shall also promptly report accidents or hidden dangers relating to occupational hazards.
Note 2 :Huizhou GP factories have violated the Labour Law (revised in 1994), as articles shown below:
Article 36: The State shall practise a working hour system under which labourers shall work for no more than eight hours a day and no more than 44 hours a week on the average.
Article 38: The employing unit shall guarantee that its staff and workers have at least one day off in a week.
Article 41: The employing unit may extend working hours due to the requirements of its production or business after consultation with the trade union and labourers, but the extended working hour for a day shall generally not exceed one hour; if such extension is called for due to special reasons, the extended hours shall not exceed three hours a day under the condition that the health of labourers is guaranteed. However, the total extension in a month shall not exceed thirty six hours.
Note 3 :Retrieved from http://ceramic-materials.com/cermat/education/268.html
http://www.clb.org.hk/en/node/3736
1. WORKERS' ACTION
- Thousands of Unfairly Retrenched Workers from Military Factory in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, Demand Their Jobs Back
2. HEALTH AND SAFETY
- Foremost Electrical Battery Producing Company in Hong Kong Exposes its Mainland Workers to Cadmium Poisoning
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WORKERS' ACTION
Thousands of Unfairly Retrenched Workers from Military Factory in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, Demand Their Jobs Back
Since late July 2004, police in Beijing have forcibly returned to Baotou, Inner Mongolia, around 80 laid-off workers from one of China’s largest military-industrial complexes, the Inner Mongolia North Heavy Industries Group Corp. Ltd. (NORHEINCO), who had been collectively petitioning the central government about their urgent livelihood and employment problems. The mass petitioning effort was the latest and most high-profile stage of a protracted public campaign which more than 2,000 retrenched and laid-off former workers from the NORHEINCO factory have been waging since early May of this year in Baotou, where the factory is located. A total of around 7,000 workers have lost their jobs at the factory, which was formerly known as the No.2 Machinery Plant of Inner Mongolia, in recent years.
The protesting workers claim that from 1997 onwards they were intimidated and tricked into accepting “voluntary” redundancy packages that left them grossly under-compensated for their long years of service. The irregular way in which the redundancy agreements were forced upon the workers left them in a legal limbo whereby they are unable either to claim their unemployment benefits or to maintain their retirement pension entitlements. At present, most of the retrenched workers cannot obtain even the government’s “minimum living allowance”, leaving them and their families virtually destitute. The Baotou workers are making two principal demands: to be reinstated in their original jobs at NORHEINCO as soon as possible; and in the meantime, to be given the redundancy benefits that the company promised them but has so far failed to deliver.
Since the first week in May, the retrenched NORHEINCO workers have been gathering every day outside the factory’s main gates, in rotating shifts of about 500 workers at a time, to call for immediate action by the factory’s managers to address their demands. The company’s initial response was to send plainclothes officers from the factory’s public security department to carry out surveillance, video-taping and intimidation of the protesting workers, and soon after the start of the protests at least twelve workers were hauled in for questioning by the police. (One of the detained workers was later hospitalized after suffering a heart attack in police custody.) All twelve were eventually released after signing “confession letters”, but the detentions had the effect of scaring many workers away from joining the factory gate protest for a period of several days.
Ratcheting Up the Pressure
Frustrated at their lack of progress, the protesting workers then sent groups of delegates to petition both the Baotou municipal government and also the regional government authorities in the Inner Mongolian capital, Hohhot. On both occasions, government officials refused to take any action and instead simply referred the dispute back to the NORHEINCO management for resolution, thus leaving the workers no better off than before. On the morning of 7 July, after being taunted by the factory’s police for “not taking a complaint to Beijing”, about 60 workers decided to dispatch a new delegation to seek help from the central government. Although several dozen workers volunteered to take part, they decided to limit the delegation to only four members, in order to avoid any potential government retaliation on the grounds of “unlawful petitioning activities.” After arriving in Beijing the next morning, the workers’ representatives visited the Letters and Complaints offices (xin-fang ban) of both the State Council and the China North Industries Group Corporation (the parent company of NORHEINCO). Officials asked them to be patient and gave a vague pledge that the government would investigate, but after more than a week of subsequent official inaction and procrastination, on 18 July the workers’ representatives returned to Baotou empty-handed.
The protesting workers then decided to adopt a more high-profile approach, and on 21 July they sent a further group of 30 workers’ delegates to Beijing to petition the central government. The next day, another 30 workers headed for Beijing to join them, followed by a further 10 workers on the subsequent day. On 25 July, one of the petitioners’ leaders returned to Baotou to inform his fellow-workers that still no progress had been made in getting the government to act on their demands. The next morning, around 30 more former NORHEINCO workers tried to board a train to Beijing, but a large number of police were there to stop them and only about ten workers managed to slip through the police cordon and board the train. In the confrontation at the railway station, the petitioners’ leader who had recently returned to Baotou was detained by the police, along with one other worker; both were released within 24 hours.
As of 2 August, the mass picketing action by former NORHEINCO workers was continuing daily outside the factory gates. At the end of July, however, several dozen workers’ representatives who had remained in Beijing to continue petitioning the central government were forcibly taken back to Baotou by a squad of police officers from Baotou and Beijing .
An Overview of NORHEINCO
The NORHEINCO factory (under its original name as No.2 Machinery Plant of Inner Mongolia) was first established as one of 156 major development projects included in China’s First-Five-Year-Plan (1953-1957), and for several decades it fell under the direct administration of the Central Government. Its parent company is currently the China North Industries Group Corporation (NORINCO GROUP, also known as CNGC), which is the largest weapons manufacturing and marketing corporation in China. The NORHEINCO facility is extremely large: spread over an area of 297.7 sq. km. in Baotou Municipality, it consists of seven branch companies, 31 subsidiaries and one publicly listed entity [Note 1]. As a key production base for China’s national defense industry, it runs and operates its own schools, hospitals and research institutes, and even maintains its own Public Security Department.
In September 2002, the official New China News Agency (Xinhua) issued the following up-beat report on the situation at NORHEINCO:
“In 1998, the Inner Mongolia No.2 Machinery Plant was plunged into economic difficulties and was unable to pay its workers any wages for eight consecutive months; however, not one of the factory’s 30,000 workers went off to petition the government about this. Instead, the workers put forward their thoughts and ideas on how to resolve the factory’s problems. After a change of leadership at the enterprise and its subsequent restructuring as the Inner Mongolia North Heavy Industries Group Corp., the entire company at all levels has been acting in a spirit of total unity and creativity. This in turn has produced a major developmental breakthrough for the company, with a series of new products being developed, new markets opened up, and a much-improved management structure. The company has now gone from being a loss-making enterprise to a profit-making one, and the workers’ monthly salary has increased by an average of 300 yuan.” [Note 2]
In recent interviews with China Labour Bulletin, however, numerous laid-off and retrenched workers from the factory have painted a much less rosy and harmonious picture than the one presented above. Starting from early 1997, they report, mounting wage arrears soon became the factory workers’ main everyday worry, and by late 1998, most of them were owed up to 15 months of wages. Over roughly the same period, the company forced about 7,000 workers to leave the factory, ostensibly under various forms of retrenchment.
Mass Sackings in the Guise of “Retrenchments”
The main “retrenchment” policy applied by the company to these 7,000 workers was an official offer to redesignate them as “workers suspended from duty without pay” (tingxin liuzhi). According to Document No.346, issued to the workers in 1998, each worker who opted for this new status would be offered replacement posts over the coming three years, and if he or she chose to reject two such alternative job offers without good cause, then the company could cancel its labour contract with them (i.e. they would be dismissed.) During this three-year period, workers would be entitled to receive a very small living allowance from the company, but if they were found to have taken on any other form of employment in the meantime, even a temporary or part-time job – or even if they traveled to another city to look for a job – then both their right to be given alternative job offers and also the small monthly allowance paid to them by the factory would be cancelled.
Significantly, none of the workers appear to have been offered formal “laid-off worker” (xia gang) status – a status that would have entitled them to a substantially wider and more attractive range of benefits (not least: registration with the local re-employment bureau, plus a guaranteed monthly income at a level higher than the local minimum living allowance.) Having no other option, therefore, most of the 7,000 workers finally “chose” to be reassigned to the new category of “suspended from duty without pay.” According to the workers, however, what then happened is that starting from 1998, instead of offering workers the promised alternative positions, the factory management began formally terminating their labour contracts on the false grounds that the workers had been “absent from work without permission.” Moreover, the managers are said to have fraudulently completed, in the workers’ own names, “application forms for termination of the labour contract”. Many workers only learned of the existence of these forged documents several months after the final termination of their contracts with the factory. Over the past seven years, the workers have written numerous letters to the factory leadership, providing documentary evidence that they violated no rules or agreements and therefore should not have been dismissed from their jobs. Around 50 workers have lodged lawsuits in the local court to challenge their dismissals, but none have succeeded either in getting their jobs back or in securing a court ruling that the company acted unlawfully.
In 1999, NORHEINCO management announced a second and more formal type of retrenchment program. According to a Document No.347 issued to the workforce at that time, workers with less than ten years’ service in the factory who opted for retrenchment would be awarded compensation of 6,000 Yuan; those with between 11 and 20 years of service would receive 8,000 Yuan in compensation; and those with more than 20 years of service would receive 12,000 Yuan. According to workers interviewed by China Labour Bulletin, the factory management threatened that if workers didn’t sign up for the retrenchment package on offer, they would be fired outright and receive no service compensation at all. Out of a sense of fear and helplessness, many of the workers opted to sign this agreement.
Once they had done so, however, the company informed them that since they had “volunteered” for retrenchment (rather than being made involuntarily redundant), the company rule was that they would be given 2,000 Yuan less than the amounts originally specified. Adding insult to injury, moreover, the company is refusing either to continue paying into the retrenched workers’ retirement pension fund, on the grounds that they are no longer its employees, or to issue them with the formal “unemployment certificates” that they need in order to qualify for unemployment benefit. Finally, the workers have applied to the Baotou Social Security Bureau to receive the government-stipulated “minimum living allowance” of 156 Yuan per month – but they have been informed that only a small number of them (those who have permanently lost the ability to work, and who have neither a telephone nor a television at home) will be eligible to receive this allowance through their local Neighbourhood Committees.
Despite the contemptuous and unlawful treatment they have received from the company management, and despite the dismal failure of the legal system to uphold their rights thus far, the NORHEINCO workers’ morale remains high and they are determined to continue their public protest until their basic demands have been met. They are now actively exploring the possibility of bringing a collective lawsuit against the company on the grounds of mass wrongful dismissal and in pursuit of substantial collective compensation.
Notes
Note 1: Retrieved from the company’s official webpage http://www.cngc.com.cn/units/detail.asp?id=10
Note 2:Retrieved from http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2002-09/19/content_566924.htm, on 19 September 2002.
http://www.clb.org.hk/en/node/3730
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HEALTH AND SAFETY
Foremost Electrical Battery Producing Company in Hong Kong Exposes its Mainland Workers to Cadmium Poisoning
On 23 July, a group of 33 Hong Kong labour rights organizations launched a protest at the Hong Kong head office of GP Batteries International Ltd., the foremost producer of electrical batteries in Asia, apart from Japan. The protestors staged a theatrical sketch showing how GP’s two factories in Huizhou, China, had poisoned their female workers with the toxic mineral cadmium, leading to the birth of abnormal babies.
Under public pressure, Zhuang Shaoliang, a board member of GP Batteries, came out to receive an open letter cosigned by the Hong Kong labour rights groups. The letter presented the following list of demands [for the original Chinese version, please see: http://globalmon.uhome.net/gpcell_040723.html]:
1) GP Batteries must send all its employees to undergo hospital medical checkups, and must pay for all medical expenses incurred in treating both the workers and any of their children who have been poisoned due to their parents’ work at the GP factories.
2) GP must stop interfering in the workers’ receipt of immediate medical treatment and certificates of diagnosis; it must also provide any workers found to have been poisoned by cadmium with full and adequate compensation.
3) GP must not retaliate or seek vengeance on the workers who have publicized this case.
4) GP must improve the working and safety conditions at their factories in accordance with the Law of the PRC on Work Safety and the Law on the Prevention and Cure of Occupational Diseases of the PRC [Note 1]. It must respect and observe the workers’ rights to elect their own Occupational Health and Safety Committees to monitor and ensure safe working condition at the company’s factories.
5) GP must obey the PRC Labour Law by ending excessive working hours, and any overtime work must comply with the legal stipulations on payment of overtime; furthermore, no wage reductions are to be imposed once GP has reduced the overall working hours at its factories.
6) GP must undertake to inform its previous employees of the possible health hazards they incurred while working for GP, and it must pay for their medical checkups and treatment if they are diagnosed as suffering from any cadmium poisoning-related illness.
7) GP must ensure that henceforth all its products and production facilities meet international safety standards. In addition, it must publicize the facts of the recent poisoning incident at its factory and submit to full public monitoring and scrutiny.
Background
GP Batteries International Ltd. operates two factories in Huizhou – the GP Chaoba Factory and the GP Xianjin Factory – with a total workforce of around 2,000 workers. In late 2003 many workers fell sick, and one of them, Li Jizhong, visited the Occupational Diseases Centre of Guangzhou, where he was diagnosed as having “an excessive level of cadmium in blood”. Highly alarmed by Li’s health situation and, in many cases, feeling sick themselves, the workers demanded an immediate explanation from the company. Management then called in a medical “expert”, who informed the workers that they had nothing to worry about; provided they “drank plenty of water,” he said, the workers would “be fine”.
The workers then asked to be given full medical check-ups, but GP arranged for only 540 of them – mostly new employees – to be medically examined at the Huizhou Center for the Prevention of Diseases. Of these 540 workers, only 121 were found to have “excessive levels of cadmium in blood”; those who had served at the factory longer were declared to be “normal” and none was diagnosed as suffering from actual cadmium poisoning. Moreover, the factory failed to arrange medical check-ups for most of the 1,500 workers who had served at the factory for more years.
Mistrustful of the company-arranged medical check-ups, some of the GP workers then visited other hospitals to undergo independent medical examinations. The results obtained were very different from the previous “official version”: the amount of cadmium in the workers’ blood was found to be at least four times higher than the levels ascertained by the Huizhou Center for the Prevention of Diseases. When confronted by the workers with these alarming new medical findings, the Huizhou Center proceeded to claim, implausibly enough, that its medical analysis equipment had been “out of order” on the day in question.
Having lost all trust and confidence in the GP management, the workers informed the news media about the situation in late June. They first contacted the media in Guangzhou but received no feedback, and their story was finally publicized by a Hong Kong newspaper, Oriental Daily News, on 3 July. On 5 July, an item appeared on GP’s official webpage, stating: “The workers at Huizhou GP Factory have all been given proper training and instruction on the characteristics of Cadmium”. It added: “In all aspects of safety, workers’ health, environment and sewerage, the GP factory conforms with international standards”. However, the workers themselves report that they are required to work 12 hours a day at the factory, with only one day’s holiday per month [Note 2]. They say that when they joined the factory, they received no form of training or warning about the potential medical dangers, and they were given only paper face masks and cotton gloves instead of the full set of necessary safety equipment. Women workers, including ones who were pregnant, were reportedly assigned to work in cadmium processing workshops.
After the story of the workers’ plight appeared in the news media, the company reportedly adopted a series of heavy-handed retaliatory measures against them. Workers undergoing medical evaluation and treatment were forcibly taken back to the factory and held in isolation to prevent them from speaking to journalists. The company also reportedly ordered medical staff to deny the media any further access to the hospitalized workers. One female worker, after leaving behind a letter saying how afraid she felt, escaped from the hospital and is now nowhere to be found.
When CLB tried to contact the Huizhou Federation of Trade Unions; we learned that its president is in fact the supervisor of the GP factory’s personnel department. Trade union officials at both county and district levels in Huizhou, far from actively supporting the GP workers in their fight for a safe working environment, have stated merely that “workers should cooperate with employers to ensure safety”. To date, the company has rejected all the workers’ demands for due and proper compensation.
What is Cadmium?
The workers who were found with high levels of the toxin had direct contact with the powder form of cadmium oxide. They were responsible for pouring tens of kilograms of the chemicals into the packaging machine to make rechargeable batteries.
Exposure to high levels of cadmium fumes or dust through inhalation causes intense irritation to human respiratory tissue. Particle size appears to be a more important determinant of toxicity than chemical form. However, most acute intoxications are caused by inhalation of cadmium fumes at concentrations that do not provide sufficient warning symptoms of irritation, so affected workers often leave the contaminated workplace without full knowledge that their health has been damaged. Chronic exposure to cadmium, by inhalation or through ingestion, results in kidney damage, lung malfunction, bone disease (osteomalacia and osteoporosis) and pains in the joints. These various symptoms may continue to worsen even after exposure to cadmium has ceased. Female workers having multiple risk factors, such as multiparity [associated with unstable fetal position, postpartum haemorrhage and abruptio placentae] and poor nutrition [Note 3], are often among the worst affected.
Notes
Note 1:Revised on 1 May 2002, Law on the Prevention and Cure of Occupational Diseases stipulates the responsibilities of enterprises with regard to safe working conditions, industrial accident insurance, the measures adopted to prevent occupational diseases, and the level of information they should provide to workers.
Article 4: … the employing unit shall establish working conditions that conform to national standards and requirements concerning occupational health and shall adopt measures that guarantee the occupational health of workers.
Article 6: The employing unit shall take out industrial accident insurance in accordance with the law on industrial insurance.
Article 20: The employing unit shall adopt effective measures to prevent and guard against occupational diseases and provide equipment to individual workers that guard against such diseases.
Article 30: On drawing up a labour contract with a worker, the employing unit shall actively inform the worker of all potential occupational illnesses that may result from processes used and their harmful results. The employing unit shall also include in the labour contract all measures and treatment against occupational diseases and shall not conceal dangers or cheat the workers. … [W]here the employer has violated the previous two clauses; the worker has the right to refuse to work in an area where there are occupational hazards. The employing unit shall not terminate or cancel the labour contract in these circumstances. … Workers shall study and fully grasp the appropriate information on occupational safety and respect the relevant laws, regulations, rules and operating procedures. They shall use correctly and maintain occupational health installations and individual protective equipment. Workers … shall also promptly report accidents or hidden dangers relating to occupational hazards.
Note 2 :Huizhou GP factories have violated the Labour Law (revised in 1994), as articles shown below:
Article 36: The State shall practise a working hour system under which labourers shall work for no more than eight hours a day and no more than 44 hours a week on the average.
Article 38: The employing unit shall guarantee that its staff and workers have at least one day off in a week.
Article 41: The employing unit may extend working hours due to the requirements of its production or business after consultation with the trade union and labourers, but the extended working hour for a day shall generally not exceed one hour; if such extension is called for due to special reasons, the extended hours shall not exceed three hours a day under the condition that the health of labourers is guaranteed. However, the total extension in a month shall not exceed thirty six hours.
Note 3 :Retrieved from http://ceramic-materials.com/cermat/education/268.html
http://www.clb.org.hk/en/node/3736
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