A middle-aged pharmacist at a hospital in central China has been awarded 118,000 yuan in compensation after being savagely beaten by the hospital’s director. Chen Yanqun suffered severe physical and psychological injuries when she was beaten around the head and body by Zheng Weibin, the director of Longtou Hospital in Chenggu county, Shaanxi, on 24 October 2008.

On 30 July 2008, 21 workers at an automotive company in Xiangfan, Hunan province, applied for arbitration at their local Labour Dispute Arbitration Committee, claiming wages in arrears, unpaid overtime and non-payment of social security contributions.

Labour related lawsuits nearly doubled last year, reflecting the sharp increase in factory closures and wage defaults, workers increased awareness of their rights and their willingness to seek redress for rights violations through the judicial system. Shen Deyong, vice-president of the Supreme People’s Court, told a Beijing press conference on 3 March that the number of labor-related lawsuits filed in 2008 jumped by 95 percent compared with 2007, the largest increase for all types of lawsuit.

Joining the company
Well-educated workers are not exempt from labour rights violations. In 2004, Fu arrived from a city in northern China to take up a job at the Shenzhen Chuanhua Company as a senior engineer in the research and developmemt   department.

Workers seeking back pay from negligent employers have been attacked by thugs, detained by police and threatened not to talk to the foreign media. On 15 January 2008, Wang Chao a migrant worker from Sichuan had an arm chopped off by hired thugs from the construction company in Nanjing when he attempted to obtain the wages owed him. And on 30 January, more than 20 workers laid-off from a construction company in Sichuan were detained by police after they marched on the municipal government to demand their wages.
 

About 600 former workers from the Tieshu Textile Factory in Suizhou City, Hubei Province are seeking payment of large sums of back wages owing to them since the factory was declared bankrupt in early 2004. The workers had publicly campaigned for over a year, holding numerous mass public protests in Suizhou City, but when all their efforts proved in vain they finally took the drastic step of blocking the main railway line for several hours. The protest action was forcibly dispersed by the police and six of the workers were arrested and charged with criminal offences.

Migrant workers, for a long time the most marginalized and discriminated group in the Chinese workforce, are now using the legal system to fight back and some are winning notable victories in the courts