Following the lead of Zhang Haichao, who famously underwent open-chest surgery to prove he was suffering from pneumoconiosis, 13 migrant workers from Yunnan have applied to have the same operation to examine their lungs, according to the local Chinese media.

Han Dongfang talks to Dai Deshu, a 67-year-old former tailor from Chongqing about the long and painful struggle of thousands of elderly artisans and handicraft workers discarded during the process of economic reform.

CLB's new research report on the workers' movement was published on July 9 2009.

The Wall Street Journal's China Journal and Reuters both gave the report prominent coverage, see below. While the trade union website Labour Start made the report one of its top stories for the week.

In China, What Workers Want
10 July 2009

Han Dongfang talks to a workers’ representative trying to reclaim 24,500 yuan in wage arrears for his colleagues about the refusal of the boss to pay and the reluctance of the local labour bureau to get involved in this “small matter.”

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security announced on 8 May that the total number of cases accepted by China’s labour dispute arbitration committees last year increased by 98 percent compared with 2007 to stand at 693,000, and involved 1.2 million workers in total.

Table of Contents

Part one: Those left behind

Table of Contents

Part one: Those left behind

Part two: Under the same blue sky? Rural migrant children in urban China

The uneven economic development of rural and urban areas combined with a large pool of surplus labour has been the main driving force behind the world's largest internal migration of rural residents to the cities in China. Nearly half of its more than 130 million migrant workers are employed in the southern coastal province of Guangdong. And a major supplier of labour is the inland province of Henan, which exports more than 21 million migrants in all to other parts of China.

What does the ACFTU consider its role to be: Is it a defender of workers’ rights or a servant of the Chinese Communist Party and government? A new report from CLB explores the complex identity of China’s official trade union. Photo by SJ photography

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.