When the boss refuses to listen to workers’ grievances, those workers often have no option but to go on strike. But whether or not this tactic works sometimes depends on workers’ media advocacy skills.
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Migrant workers are a lot happier working in relatively smaller cities away from China’s traditional factory to the world, the Pearl River delta, according to a new study conducted by the People’s University of China (中国人民大学).
The Shenzhen government has withdrawn regulations issued 1 May that would have effectively criminalized migrant worker protests demanding the payment of wage arrears during the run-up to and duration of the World University Games.
The Beijing authorities will on 1 January increase the city’s minimum wage for a second time in six months. The monthly minimum wage will go up by 200 yuan to 1,160 yuan, making it the highest in the country. In total, the Beijing Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Department announced six new measures, all of which will go into effect on 1 January, to strengthen its social welfare safety net as price rises begin to hurt the city’s most vulnerable.
Two new strikes have halted production at Japanese-owned automotive components and assembly plants in Guangzhou. Workers at NHK-UNI Spring (Guangzhou) went on strike Tuesday, after workers at Denso (Guangzhou Nansha), which supplies fuel injection equipment to Honda and Toyota, walked off the job on Monday demanding higher pay and better benefits.
Following the lead of Jiangsu, which announced a 12 percent increase in the minimum wage this month, several other municipalities have indicated they too will raise the minimum wage this year. The cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Guangzhou and Dongguan have all separately indicated that the time is now right for an increase in the minimum wage, frozen by central government order on 17 November 2008.
Ten years after the adoption of the International Labour Organization’s Convention on the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour on 12 May 1999, there is little evidence that the Chinese government, which ratified the convention in 2002, is making a determined effort to tackle the problem.
The massive landslide at an iron ore mine in rural Chongqing on 5 June 2009, which may have killed more than 70 people, has once again highlighted the dangers China’s mines pose, not just to miners but to nearby communities and the environment as well.
Table of Contents
Part one: Those left behind
Part two: Under the same blue sky? Rural migrant children in urban China
Exclusion from the healthcare system
Table of Contents
Part one: Those left behind
Separated for years on end
Insecurity, anxiety and fear
Accidents and injuries
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