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The Gold Peak Case: OSH in Chinese EPZ

Lately, on the 14th of February, 2005,  a coalmine explosion killed more than 200 mine workers. It is but one of the cases of industrial accidents. According to the State Administration of Work Safety, the year 2003 had 136,000 victims of industrial accidents, and migrant workers accounted for over 80%; in the same year there are 500,000 victims of occupational diseases, and migrant workers accounted for more than a half. Again, many of them are women.

Had workers enjoyed the right to association and freedom of speech, and the right to get proper OSH training and necessary protection, the problem may not be that serious. Being denied such basic rights implies that they are being bound from hands to feet from protecting themselves even when they work in the unsafe working conditions. And when workers tried to voice out their grievances, they are being threatened with retaliation.

The poisoning case of the GP batteries is another outrages example of how women workers health being sacrificed by local officials and investors.

Gold Peak Industrial Group is a Hong Kong based TNC and its subsidiary GP Batteries has more than a dozen factories in China, with 2 located in Huizhou, Guangdong. The overwhelming majority of the workforce is women. The factory provides little protection for workers who have to process cadmium day in and day out, and pregnant women workers were ordered to work in these condition as well. At the end of 2003, after long time sickness, some workers went to hospital to get medical test and found that they have abnormally high level of cadmium in their body. Cadmium is a chemical used in producing batteries, and high-level cadmium in the body will cause cancer and serious bone pain. After much effort the workers finally made GP management agreed to send them for medical check-up in May 2004.  More than 2000 workers have been tested since then, among them 6 had been diagnosised as cadmium poisoning, 300 being categorized as under ‘medical observation’ because of high level of cadmium in their bodies.

However, the management was not responding to workers’ demand for effective medical care and compensation. After the local government refused to help the workers, the latter leaked their story to some Hong Kong media, and then the Hong Kong based Globalization Monitor took up the case, in July 26 it organized a protest against the GP with 33 grass-root organizations participating. Meantime, GP workers organized several strikes to get their voice heard. Under pressure, the GP announced a compensation package in early August, which is higher than what the law required, and then revised up the compensation again in February 2005 after pressure from the workers. The conclusion that could be drawn from this case is clear: both the GP and the local government simply turn a blind eyes to the plight of the workers. And if the workers do not fight for their right, they may not even get any compensation.

China’s products are cheap simply because wages are kept ridiculously low, work safety heavily compromised, and workers’ basic rights being denied. If we put into account the lives loss, the damaged health of workers, the burden of their family etc, these products are indeed very costly. If we also put into account jobs losses all over the world as a result of China’s cheap products, then it is obvious that maintaining the deplorable status quo of work safety and labor management is detrimental both to Chinese workers and working people all over the world.

The informalisation of work for women workers

The oversupply of labor force not only greatly depresses wages, but also forces those unemployed women to look for opportunity in the informal sector. Meanwhile, the Chinese government is also keen in developing this sector as it sees this as a way to absorb the large army of unemployed. Those unemployed former SOEs women workers and rural migrants workers fill the rank of informal sectors. In old industrial belt like the North East provinces, unemployed women workers have to work as hawkers or sex workers in order to stay alive. As for those rural migrant women workers who fail to get a job in the EPZ, they may end up doing babies sitting, hourly paid household workers etc.

According to the Research Institute of Labor and Social Protection Department, it is estimated that today there are 800 million workers in the informal sector, and many of them are women. One research released by the ACFTU points out that informal workers accounts for 48% of the total labor force, and among them rural migrant workers accounts for 54.6%. These informal workers enjoy little protection; only 28.9% had labor contracts with their employers. One third of them have monthly wages below 400 RMB, which is very low.

There are mainly three categories of informal work in China:

1. self-employed workers;
2. temporary workers and seasonal workers;
3. wage labor in small enterprises who enjoy no protection;

According to a report from the Industrial Development Research Institute, which is under the National Development and Reform Committee, women workers are being marginalized in the jobs market, and the informal sector may soon become the chief area of work for women workers. China’s accession to WTO will also accelerate the process, because it will result in much more serious competition in domestic market in general and the labor market in particular. Given that women are generally less educated than men, while at the same time they have more household responsibility than men, they will tended to be more marginalized in the competition with men in the search of jobs. When more women workers end up in the informal sectors, it follows that their wages tends to decline. No wonder that one recent study by the research institute of the National Women Association concludes that the wage differences between men and women is increasing, and it is chiefly women who get the bad paid jobs.

Now more women workers than before are beginning to aware of their basic rights and begin to fight for them. It is the responsibility of the international workers movement to support their course, materially and spiritually. Only with such support could Chinese workers be able to advance their emancipation from the oppressive yoke of both the despotic state and the TNCs.

(Note: This is an expanded version of an earlier article “Women workers in Chinese Sweatshops”.)

2005.2.23

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