In a surprising but welcome move, Time Magazine has included “the Chinese worker” in its final list of nominees for Person of the Year 2009. Hopefully, the nomination will spur the international community to look more closely, not only at the contribution China’s workers have made but also at the problems they face on a day to day basis.

The explosion at an illegal firecracker factory in Guangxi two weeks ago that left two primary school children dead and 11 others badly injured has provoked not only anger and sympathy for the victims but a wide-ranging discussion in the Chinese blogosphere about the problems of left-behind children and the inequities of the household registration system.

Have Chongqing’s prosecutors been watching too many episodes of The Sopranos? I ask merely because the latest installment in the Chongqing crime boss trials that have gripped the nation over the last few weeks has all the hallmarks of HBO’s award-winning drama series - corrupt politicians, crooked businessmen and vicious gangsters conspiring to organize strikes and monopolize the market.

On the same day that Zhang Haichao was awarded 615,000 yuan in compensation for pneumoconiosis contracted while working at an abrasive materials factory in Henan, another migrant worker suffering from the same disease was being given the runaround by hospital and government authorities in Sichuan. Xiao Huazhong, an elderly retired miner from Qu county in Sichuan, suffers from stage three pneumoconiosis and has been seeking compensation from his former employer for several years, so far all to no avail. His former employer, Liao Xing’an, is a local coal baron and one of the most powerful men in Qu county.

The award last week of 615,000 yuan in damages to China’s best-known pneumoconiosis victim, Zhang Haichao, is very welcome news but it should not suggest that work-related illness sufferers in China are getting a better deal – far from it.

Zhang Haichao became something of a celebrity in China after voluntarily undergoing open-chest surgery in a bid to show without doubt that he was suffering from the fatal lung disease pneumoconiosis. The case should have provided the impetus for a radical shake-up, or at least a rethinking, of the country’s work-related illness diagnosis system, but so far all local health officials in Henan have done is give a slap on the wrist to those deemed responsible for the original misdiagnosis, and, incredibly, publicly criticize the hospital that operated on Zhang for making an unlawful diagnosis.

It is well known that China’s construction sites are dangerous places; workers are all too often crushed by falling building materials and scaffolding, maimed by faulty machinery or fall to their deaths from heights. Indeed, just last month, eight workers died after a load collapsed at a construction site in Jiangsu. But on a recent trip to Beijing, I was alerted to a new danger, one that I had not even considered before – underground water.

A migrant worker at a textile factory in Zhejiang has been ordered by family planning officials to travel the 1,600 kilometres back home in order to prove that she is not pregnant, the China Daily reported today.

China Labor News Translations has acquired and translated into English a copy of the much publicized collective labour agreement negotiated by Walmart and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) last year. Apart from the fact that the contract exists at all, there is little in the document for Walmart employees in China to celebrate. There are no provisions for the resolution of individual and collective disputes and the basic terms of the agreement related to work hours, vacation time, welfare insurance, workplace health and safety are locked in for five years.

In recent press interviews about the global economic crisis and its impact on social stability in China, I’ve said that the majority of migrant workers who suffered pay cuts or even lost their jobs were not angry at the boss but rather accepted that their loss was the result of global economic forces beyond their control. I added that this could all change however if bosses started to use the economic crisis as a pretext to lay-off workers without due compensation or cheat them out of their wages. Now, according to one blogger, Pang Zhujun, this appears to be happening.