Labour Action China

Paper submission to ANROAV Conference 2010
 
10 October 2010
 

Content 
I. Organization Profile
II. Overview of the occupational safety and health situation in China 

• Pneumoconiosis is the top occupational killer in China
• Pattern of the occurrence of occupational disease in China: the “Three Transfers”
• Government pitfalls in the monitoring and handling of occupational aliments 
  • Poor occupational disease prevention, workplace inspection and surveillance
  • Non-standardized and irregular practices in occupational disease diagnosis,certification and compensation of the OSH administrative and law enforcing agencies
  • Contradictions in the adjudication of disputes over occupational disease cases

III. Latest Development of the Silicosis Campaign

• Important Achievement
• Significant victory
• Our Strategies

I. Organization Profile
 
Founded in Hong Kong in 2005, Labour Action China (LAC) has been playing an active role in supporting and strengthening the labour activism in China. LAC is engaged in direct organizing, campaigning and advocacy for the rights of migrant
workers and regulating the violations of the foreign investors, particularly the capital from Hong Kong and the overseas. As fellow Chinese across the border, we exercise our special position to empower Chinese workers through solidarity and concerted actions with them in their struggle for justice and dignity. 
 
In our participation in the workers’ movement, we are most concerned with migrant workers, the ‘mingong’, who are at the bottom of an inhumane structure of a gigantic scale, and who are seriously faced with un-enforced and un-enforceable labour laws, lethal occupational hazards, the loss of medical and pension provisions, the deprivation of civil rights because of the household registration system, and massive discrimination and violence against them. Given the absence of a powerful and independent trade union in China, migrant workers, who are the primary victims exposed to occupational health threats, have to rely on using the law and spontaneous wildcat actions to defend their interests and claim their legal compensation. Against this background, more and more workers and industrial injury victims resort to legal
struggles and self-organizing to push for rectification of labour rights violations in particular to workplace hazards and occupational aliments. 
 
Since 2004 LAC has been assisting workers who have contracted silicosis, an incurable occupational lung disease, to defend their legal rights and improve the safety and health conditions in the workplace in the gemstone processing industry in Guangdong Province in China. Our intervention in occupational disease in China as a way of engaging with the struggles of Chinese workers at the grassroots is on the basis of the real needs and requests for solidarity from a group of more than 80 silicosis workers. These migrant workers had contracted the disease after working from 1-10 years in the gemstone processing factories in Guangdong Province which had been largely invested by Hong Kong capital. Supporting the struggles initiated by the occupational disease victims, LAC uses the strategy of organizing, campaigning and advocacy to build solidarity with workers, regulate the labour practices of companies and monitor the OSH laws in China.

II. Overview of the occupational safety and health situation in China

Pneumoconiosis is the top occupational killer in China 

China is one of the most rapidly developing countries in the world. The current pattern of economic development has increased the number and frequency of occupational hazards and incidents. Occupational diseases exist in a wide range of industries and are rampant in middle and small scale enterprises. There are occupational hazards in traditional industries like coal mining and metallurgy as well as some newly emerging industries like automobile manufacturing and bioengineering. In China, the prevalence of occupational diseases and persistent exposure to occupational health hazards have posed serious threats to the vast migrant worker population. According to the Ministry of Health (MoH) report¹, over 200 million workers are directly exposed to occupational health risks in their workplace with 16 million companies associated with poisonous and hazardous operations and production in the country. The experts estimate that at least 25 million employees in China are exposed to dust, toxins and noise hazards in over 300 different industries. In particular, the number of employees contracting pneumoconiosis is increasing at a rapid rate of 10,000 annually. 

According to the official figures revealed in the MoH 2009 report, there were 18,128 new cases of occupational diseases recorded in the year, resulting in 748 deaths. The majority of these new cases (79.96%) were pneumoconiosis, with a total of 14,495 cases recorded. Among all the new cases of pneumoconiosis, the majority was coal workers’ pneumoconiosis (91.89%) and silicosis found in the coal mining industry (41.38%), metallurgical industry (9.33%) and alloy industry (6.99%). Compared with the 2005 figures of 9,173 new pneumoconiosis (including silicosis) cases, the number of incidence of the occupational disease has increased dreadfully by 98% in four years. In other words, pneumoconiosis is the top occupational killer in China. It is considered to be the most threatening occupational disease in the country in which millions of migrant workers are affected. 

However, it should be emphasized that the statistics and severity of the occupational disease is largely undermined by the mass number of undiagnosed cases among the migrant workers, particularly those who return to their place of origin after they are dismissed by their employers for their illness. In fact, officials of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and MoH admitted that these figures are only based on the number of diagnosed cases and that there is a big gap between the numbers of diagnosed cases and the numbers of actual cases in the reality.²

Following pneumoconiosis, occupational poisoning is the second major killer.According to the MoH, a number of 272 cases of acute occupational poisoning and 1,912 chronic occupational poisoning cases were recorded last year. The majority of the acute occupational poisoning cases was caused by carbon monoxide poisoning and was found mainly in small-and-medium sized companies (66.74%). The leading poisoning agents were lead and lead compounds (1,082 cases or 56.69%), benzene (208 cases or 10.88%), and arsenic compounds (165 cases or 8.63%). In the same
year, there were 63 reported cases of occupational cancers, 22 cases of leukemia caused by benzene and 11 cases of lung cancer and mesothelioma caused by asbestos. In total, the country has accumulated 722,730 cases of occupational diseases since 1949,³ with the figure equaling the total cases of the rest of the world. 

Pattern of the occurrence of occupational disease in China: the “Three Transfers”

China is ranked the top in the world’s incidence of occupational diseases. In comparison to industrialized countries, where occupational health surveillance and services coverage ranges from 20-50%, the coverage in China is estimated to be in the 10% average⁴. Workers engaged in agriculture, forestry, middle and small scale enterprises, self-employed and the informal sectors, including migrant workers get only limited or no occupational health service at all. The statistics only represent the tip of the iceberg. The actual figures of unreported and unidentified cases are not known, let alone the figures on the actual occurrence of deaths among the precarious migrant workers in China. In fact, the Chinese government has admitted that the official statistics do not include workers in village and township enterprises or in small informal workshops, where workers’ health and safety situations are much graver, nor those workers whose occupational diseases have been certified and who have returned to their hometowns. The Chinese government describes the phenomenon as the “Three Transfers”. Occupational diseases have been transferred from the urban to the rural, from the coastal and economically more developed regions to inland and less developed regions, and from the large-scale, state-owned
enterprises to the small-medium sized private enterprises with foreign investment. In addition, we also identify the trend of shifting from the traditional hazardous industries to a wide range of other industries. All these trends explain the increase in occupational health problems in China.

Government pitfalls in the monitoring and handling of occupational aliments

Recognizing the changing patterns and trends of outbreaks of occupational diseases in recent years, the Chinese government is taking more remedial measures as well as new legislations and policies to address the imminent threat of an epidemic of occupational diseases. The efforts to revise the legal provisions, such as the Law on Prevention and Control of Occupational Disease (職業病防治法) and the Production Safety Law (安全生產法) reflect the urgent need identified by the government to redress the occupational health problems. However, while the national laws are under scrutiny, the malpractices of the occupational safety and health administration of the local authorities and weak enforcement of the OSH related laws remain persistent. The administrative hurdles in occupational disease diagnosis and work injury
certification process of pneumoconiosis and silicosis victims still show no signs of abating. The menace of the administrative malpractices is the deprivation of occupational disease victims’ access to their lawful compensation rights, which has caused serious outcry from the entire migrant working class. As seen in the past decade, the poor implementation of the laws and regulations on controlling occupational disease has forced tens of thousands of migrant workers to use litigation as the means to defend their legal rights and challenge the irregularities of the authorities. Regrettably, the health and work safety authorities and occupational disease prevention hospitals usually took action only after the harm had been done, or when employees took complaint actions after falling prey to occupational aliments.
Instead of taking precautionary measures to prevent employees from contracting occupational diseases, the inaction by the health administrative agencies fuels workers’ frustration, leading them to take on strikes and demonstrations to demand for
upper-level government intervention in solving their disputes. The implementation of the OSH inspection and monitoring system of the government is actually seen as a passive reaction to industrial accidents after the outbreak of workers’ outcry. The new moves of legislation are rather piecemeal stop-gap policies without a centralized and systemic approach to change the existing legal gaps and bureaucratic malpractices. The inconsistency between the administration and the legislation of the Chinese authorities is too huge to be rectified by individual legal corrections.

We recognize that legislation itself is not sufficient in solving the occupational health problems which are evolving in rapid ways. The real challenge lies upon the implementation of effective monitoring and control in the workplace and the  administrative practices of the law enforcing agencies. The common problems can be seen in:

1. Poor occupational disease prevention, workplace inspection and surveillance;
2. Non-standardized and irregular practices in occupational disease diagnosis, certification and compensation of the OSH administrative and law enforcing agencies;
3. Contradictions in the adjudication of disputes over occupational disease cases

Poor occupational disease prevention, workplace inspection and surveillance

The Chinese MoH reported in 2009 that only 125,231 companies or a mere 0.78% of the 16 million companies were actually inspected⁵, of which less than 60% have occupational health record documentation for employees according to the laws. The number of companies that received penalties is 871 (the total penalty amount is RMB12.8 million yuan). The number of companies ordered to suspend operation and ordered to close is 34 and 122 respectively. The official figures also revealed that among the employees in the inspected companies which have occupational hazards, only 59% had actually received medical examination in 2009. In other words, the remaining 40% of employees exposed to occupational hazards in the workplace did not have proper medical records of their occupational health conditions. The inspection figures also showed that only 0.51% of the employees (33,164 people) who received medical examination were reported to be suspected of having an occupational disease. But what worries the most is that only 28% of the 21,000
suspected cases were diagnosed. The low rate of diagnosis and certification of suspected cases raises the questions of credibility of the diagnosis system in China. 

The above figures, however, only demonstrate the partial reality of the OSH situation in China. The problems concerning the inconsistencies in the quality of the inspections and the qualifications of the inspectors should not be overlooked. The most common problems such as selective inspections, non-standardized health examination procedures, non-standardized or defective health reports, inaccurate statistics on hazard assessments etc remain prevalent. In addition, the lack of transparency and the workers’ denied access to the workplace inspection data is still a common phenomenon.

From the silicosis cases which we handled over the past few years, we observed that the occupational health authorities including the MoH, the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did not provide adequate and proactive measures to prevent the aggravation of the occupational aliments. Instead of taking precautions to prevent workers from contracting occupational diseases, the health authorities denied the victims of the rights to receive diagnosis and certification of their illnesses. In some extreme cases,workers spent more than six years to go through the procedures of receiving their diagnosis report and work injury certificates because of the administrative hurdles and the inaction of the government authorities. Specially, migrant workers bear the brunt of the contraction of occupational disease. Their demands for diagnosis were usually rejected by the occupational disease prevention hospitals given the fact that most of the migrant workers, in particular to those employed in informal sectors, could not produce evidence of their employment. Usually many migrant workers were already forestalled from entering into the compensation claim process at the very first stage of diagnosis. 

Non-standardized and irregular practices in occupational disease diagnosis, certification and compensation of the OSH administrative and law enforcing agencies

 One of the fundamental reasons that cause the intricate problems in the Chinese OSH system is that the mandate of implementing the OSH related laws are segmented between different government bodies. The health and work safety administration authorities, namely the Ministry of Labour and Social Security (MoLSS), the Ministry of Health, the Bureau of Work Safety and other related departments, have conflicts of interests in terms of their overlapping roles and responsibilities. Migrant workers are usually pushed back and forth between various departments when they seek the mitigation from the authorities. In some cases, the MoLSS simply turned down the request for work injury certification of workers and shifted the responsibilities to the local occupational disease hospitals by saying that the diagnosis results were not delivered to the employers and therefore denied the workers’ entitlement of work
injury certification. Such blatant irregularities were not uncommon and many workers were entangled for years just in the procedure of work injury certification before entering into the legal proceedings. The departmental segregation is also seen in the lack of inter-provincial and inter-municipal collaboration mechanism of the health administration between labour exporting and labour importing regions. In many cases of silicosis victims, different diagnosis results were given by the authorized occupational disease hospitals in the place of the employing units and the authorized hospitals in the place of workers’ origin. What’s worse, many workers who returned to their hometowns after contracting occupational diseases had their diagnosis rejected by the hospitals in the place of work on grounds that they no longer have current employment relations at the previous workplace. Due to the long incubation of occupational diseases and the high turnover rate of migrant workers, the time lag between the contraction and identification of occupational disease can be wide. An important point to note is that occupational diseases are chronic and developmental in nature. Unlike work injuries in which validity time for diagnosis and disability certification can be set, occupational disease diagnosis cannot be limited by a fixed
term of time period. Despite the fact there is no legal restriction about the validity period for filing diagnosis according to the provisions of the Administrative Methods on Occupational Disease Diagnosis and Appraisal issued by the MoH, at the local
implementation level, however, contradictory regulations are found in practice. For instance, in 2008, the Guangdong MoLSS issued an administrative notice (《关于进一步完善我省工伤保险制度有关问题的通知》) containing a new restriction which
sets the validity period of the filing of diagnosis to two years from the date of termination of the employment contract. Under this local ‘administrative paper’ (commonly known as the ‘No.21 Paper’), workers who have suspected symptoms of 
occupational disease after their employment contracts have been terminated are not entitled to receiving the official certification of work injury. This administrative limitation has caused a huge backlash from the migrant workers, who considered it as a ‘draconian decree’ as it is misused by the local judges in denying workers’ rights to
assessing work injury certification and claiming compensation. 

Contradictions in the adjudication of disputes over occupational disease cases

The settlement of occupational disease dispute cases is not a mere judicial matter.Instead, it is subject to a large number of considerations in the interests of the local governments and the employers. The court’s interpretation and application of different national and local laws and regulations relating to work injury and occupational disease compensation can be politicized by the judges out of fear of creating legal precedents that would in return trigger more diseased workers to use legal and social actions to pursue their rights. As a result, there are enormous contradictions in court adjudications which vary widely case by case even though the same laws are used in making the verdicts. 

The major contradictions in the adjudication are observed in the application of the national law on The Prevention and Control of Occupational Diseases, the Work Injury Insurance Ordinance, and the Administrative Methods on Occupational
Disease Diagnosis (《职业病诊断与鉴定管理办法》), and the ministerial regulations on The People’s High Court’s Interpretation on the Application of Related Laws in Cases of Tort Claims (《最高人民法院关于审理人身损害赔偿案件适用法律若干问题的解释》).

The contradictions and inconsistencies in the interpretation and application of the national laws and local regulations result in varied court decisions in diagnosis,certification and compensation of occupational disease cases. For instance, when
giving judgment in occupational disease cases, the courts at various local levels tend to decide the compensation items and levels based on the Work Injury Insurance Ordinance rather than the Prevention and Control of Occupational Diseases Law, despite the latter has a higher legislative authority and status. By ruling the occupational disease cases with reference to the compensation standards stipulated in the Ordinance, the level of compensation is generally lower because occupational disease plaintiffs would be deprived of the rights laid down in the Prevention and Control of Occupational Diseases Law, which specifies the compensation on continuous medical treatment expenses, care for family dependents and the psychological damage claims. 

Another key conflict is also seen in the use of The People’s High Court’s Interpretation on the Application of Related Laws in Cases of Tort Claims. There is a strong arbitrariness of the local courts in deciding the victims’ entitlements to civil
compensation. According to the Article 52 of the Prevention and Control of Occupational Diseases Law, the occupational disease patients still have the right to claim civil compensation against the employer according to the related Chinese civil
laws. In some cases, victims filed to the local courts for work injury insurance compensation in addition to civil compensation from their employers for causing damages to their health and loss of work capacity based on the Article 52. However, the rights of the industrial accident victims to claim for civil compensation are not usually supported by the courts even though the rights are enshrined in the Law. We handled some cases that in which the civil compensation items claimed by workers based on the same legal provision, i.e. The People’s High Court’s Interpretation on the Application of Related Laws in Cases of Tort Claims, can be ruled very differently in different jurisdictions or localities. Some judges may not rule in favour of the worker claimants due to the consideration of local government interests with the
enterprises. 

Against the background of politicized judgment and the arbitrary interpretation and application of the laws at different levels, many lawful entitlements to the compensation rights of occupational disease workers are not implemented in real
terms. And more regrettably, the laws and provisions are in itself contradictory beset with many grey areas and loopholes which add more room of arbitrariness for judges to select the ‘correct’ provisions to justify their rulings. The failures and
contradictions in the adjudication of dispute cases on occupational disease are considered as the biggest obstacle to handling and solving the disputes on the institutional legal ground, and therefore many desperate workers tend to resort to more radical and social actions to seek mitigation. It is against this context that the legal struggles of the occupational disease workers are not actually limited to ‘legal’ means in a narrow sense. It is, after all, the workers’ proactive actions and their perseverance to challenge the authorities that make their ‘legal’ struggles more substantial and sustainable.

III. Latest Development of the Silicosis Campaign

Important Achievement

In the course of international campaigning to support the Chinese silicosis victims, we made a very significant breakthrough after more than five years of campaigning over the collective compensation cases of silicosis victims of the Hong Kong-owned Lucky Gems and Jewellery Company. In March 2010, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) and the BASELWORLD of Switzerland decided to ban the company from participating in its international trade shows in Hong Kong (5-9 March 2010) and in Switzerland (18-25 March 2010). This is the first-ever move of international trade fair organizers to exercise a sanction on a Hong Kong-owned company over labour rights violations with reference to ILO Convention 155.

The company has set an example of international sanction to a Hong Kong company for violating labour rights in China and damaging the reputation of international trade fairs. The persistent record of violations of Lucky Gems as exposed since 2004 seriously contradicted the exhibition regulations of the HKTDC⁶ and the Baselworld⁷ which contain clauses on social and labour rights based on ILO Conventions and national laws. In particular, the company repetitively and openly defied the verdicts issued by the mainland Chinese court on workers’ compensation. The refusal to implement the court verdicts finally resulted in the decision of the trade fair organizers to ban the company.

 In addition, in August a final court decision was issued on five silicosis workers,namely Liu Dabing (劉大丙), Tan Zhouquan (譚周全), LiuZhongwu (劉忠武), Ren Qimei (冉啟美) and Jiang Xueying (蔣學英). On 3rd August, the Higher People's Court of Guangdong Province made an ultimate and irreversible judgment on the five cases: the Court upholds and reaffirms the original verdicts of the second trials on the five cases and dismisses the application for re-trial of Lucky Gems Jewellery Company. In other words, Lucky Gems must abide by the judge’s decision in the second trial of the Huizhou Intermediary Court, which ruled that the company has to pay full compensation to the plaintiffs for its occupational hazards caused to the
workers. In September, the Lucky Gems finally agreed to pay over 2.2 million yuan (US$320,000 approximately) compensation for five of its ex-workers who won their appeal cases in August. In addition to the previous compensation settlement for another ex-worker Deng Yonghong (鄧永紅), who received ¥426,168.5 yuan in June,the total amount of compensation ruled for the six Lucky Gems workers is more than 2.6 million yuan. This is a record amount of compensation fought by occupational disease victims in China through the means of litigation. This is a triumph to be
celebrated, yet still we do not forget those who for various reasons were shun from the legal process. 

During the course of campaigning in the past year, LAC worked closely with overseas civil society organisations and trade unions in Switzerland. In July last year, a factfinding trip to China constituted of delegates from Swiss trade union UNIA, a Swiss NGO and a member of the Swiss National Parliament was organized. The delegates made an intensive 2-day visit to Panyu City and Huizhou City where most small-scale gemstone processing enterprises are located. Witnessing the dangerous and hazardous working environment on the ground and having face-to-face dialogue with the workers, the delegation had much more understanding of not only the plights of the workers but also the contextual complexities of the issue of occupational disease in the gemstone processing industry. To escalate the pressure, we filed a complaint letter
to the Baselworld this February, based on the solid evidence of the company’s persistent record in causing silicosis to workers from 2002 to 2008 as documented in a portfolio of cases supported by court verdicts and other official materials. Our complaint supported by a complete document of the case profile of Lucky Gems was finally accepted by the Baselworld. In March, a delegation of two Chinese workers and one LAC representative made a visit to Switzerland to meet with various Swiss NGOs, as well as the Swiss trade union for discussing the campaign on the Baselworld. The lobbying visit was important because it successfully raised the issue of Chinese labour rights in Switzerland and also strengthened the solidarity between the Chinese workers and the Swiss civil society. Most importantly, after more than five years of campaigning over the collective compensation cases of silicosis victims of the Hong Kong company, we made a breakthrough as the Baselworld finally decided to disqualify the company’s exhibition. At the same time, LAC organized a
press conference in Hong Kong to denounce Lucky Gems and publicize the decision made by the Baselworld (for details, please see the attached news articles). The domino effect was then taken place. The Hong Kong Trade Development Council followed the suit and also made a decision to disqualify the company from participating in the Hong Kong International Jewellery Show.

The termination of Lucky Gems’ exhibition in the 2010 March Baselworld and Hong Kong international jewellery trade fair marks a critical step of giving pressure to the company to resolve the labour rights violation cases with workers before the two exhibitions could be assured that the image of the fairs would not be damaged by the company’s disputes again.

However, despite the disqualification, the Lucky Gems still evaded the settlement of compensation. The company exploited every means to lengthen the legal procedure. It relocated its factory, changed its name and legal representatives, repeatedly filed for appeals and administrative review under various guises, and blatantly ignored the court orders. In April the company lodged an appeal for administrative review for the compensation cases of five ex-workers, contesting the Huizhou City Intermediate Court second-trial ruling in January that the company should pay a total of ¥2,201,235.38 yuan to the worker plaintiffs. An investigation conducted by the Haifeng Court revealed that Guangdong Lucky Gems had zero balance in its bank account, and all the assets left under its name was four cars. The name of Lucky Gems’ factory in Haifeng has been changed into “Guangdong Stone King”. Lucky Gems attempted to transfer its assets to “Guangdong Stone King” by simply renaming its factory, in order to immune itself from the court’s sequestration order.

Until August, a final court decision was issued on the five abovementioned silicosis workers. On 3rd August, the Higher People's Court of Guangdong Province maintains the original verdicts of the second trials on the five cases and dismisses the application for re-trial of Lucky Gems Jewellery Company. Yet the company ignored the verdict, and tried to evade payment through transferring its assets. 

In September the world’s largest jewellery fair is held in Hong Kong, with Lucky ¥1,000,000 yuan payment before the fair, and that it will settle the rest of the ruled compensation before 30th September. By the date of writing, the company has already settled the one million yuan compensation but the rest of the balance has not yet paid to the workers on the mentioned date.

Significant victory

The court ruling was an important precedent in itself, affirming the workers’ rights to seek civil compensation from employers for their violations of China’s national laws on occupational health and safety. In total, the company has to pay more than 2.6 million yuan compensation to the six workers according to the court verdicts. This is a record amount of compensation fought by occupational disease victims in China through litigation. This is a triumph to be celebrated, yet still many sufferers were shun from the legal process for various reasons. 

In fact, the company's prolonged refusal to obey the court order showed not only its remorseless attitude, but also the court’s lack of power and authority. More than legal protection is needed to make real workers’ rights; if not for the workers’ own determination and power in fighting for their rights, if not for the pressure put on Lucky Gems outside the courtroom, such a historical ruling might become an empty promise.

In the course of campaigning, the intensive lobbying and solidarity support from the Swiss partners plays a crucial role. Without their assistance and guidance, the campaign would not be successful. The decision to sanction the company by
Baselworld and HKTDC was a hard-won result of the continuous lobbying work over the years. Such decision is an effective means to regulating the violations of the labour standards of the exhibitors for ensuring fair standards of the whole trade. The impact is expected to raise the social cost of violation of OSH standards and therefore reduce the employers’ malpractices and non-compliance with the national and international OSH regulations.

Our Strategies
Starting in 2004 with supporting the struggles initiated by the occupational disease victims, LAC has developed a three-dimensional strategy of organizing, campaigning and advocacy to build solidarity with workers, regulate the labour practices of companies and monitor the labour laws in China. This strategy was exercised in the following aspects:

1. Legal and paralegal assistance, including finding lawyers to represent the victims in their litigation cases against their employers and against the inaction of the local authorities. The legal consultation is realized as a strategic approach to organizing workers and raising their knowledge in defending their legal rights by challenging the malpractices and irregularities of the Chinese judiciary. 
2. Assisting the workers to organize solidarity actions to support each other during the litigation procedure, such as media appeals, petitions to the authorities, street rallies as well as networking with workers’ families in their local communities.
3. Building alliances with civil society organizations, trade unions and politicians in Switzerland to campaign on the Baselworld, the world’s biggest jewellery trade fair, to integrate labour standards based on the International Labour Organization’s conventions into the exhibition guidelines for jewellery companies. Finally the Baselworld accepted our demands and added a new exhibition guideline that requires all exhibitors to respect and comply with the international labour rights according to the ILO conventions. We also have been lobbying the World Health Organization (WHO) and the ILO for regulatory mechanism to implement the ILO conventions on labour rights and safety and health protection of the jewellery and gemstone processing industry in China. Since 2005, delegations composed of Chinese silicosis victims (with Indian silicosis victims as well in 2006) and organizers had been sent during the annual Baselworld fair.
4. Public actions and alliance building with civil society organizations and trade unions in Hong Kong to put pressure on the Hong Kong employers for violating labour rights and evading the mainland court rulings to compensate the Chinese victim. We have demanded the jewellery trade exhibition organizing body in Hong Kong to ban such companies from participation. The lobbying and meeting with the HKTDC has been taken place over the past 5 years continuously. This campaign demand was finally achieved as the Baselworld and the Hong Kong Trade Development Council for the first time decided to sanction an exhibitor on grounds of labour rights violations which contradict their exhibition regulations.
5. Developing victims into organizers by working with five victims closely in handling their own and others’ cases, thus turning them into activists and paralegals. From victims to active organizers, the workers have undergone a process of empowerment in terms of capacity building, awareness raising and skill developing with our constant support and assistance to their actions within and beyond the domestic institutions. In 2007, two victim organizations were founded in two labour exporting regions (Sichuan Province and Chonqging Municipality) by two silicosis workers under our support. Both centers have so far established initial niches in workers’ rights promotion and lobbying with the local authorities for the social security benefits available for migrant workers, in particular to industrial accident victims. They help facilitate a quicker and easier access for the local peasants and the returned migrant workers to acquiring local public resources, such as the basic subsistence allowance and the subscription to the All
   China Handicapped People’s Association and the All China Federation of Trade Unions. Through setting up victims-led organizations, we are able to promote the awareness of rights and sense of activism and extend our network to the wider population of the Chinese working class. How to consolidate the existing victims’ network and enlarge the significance of the two organisations in participating and influencing the decision making of the local governments will be the prime objective in the next stage.
6. Advocating for legislative changes in the OSH system in China. This has been done by building an advocacy platform to canvass civil opinions represented by workers, mainland and Hong Kong labour NGOs, Chinese academics and legal experts, to analyze and document the legal loopholes in advocating for new legislative and policies pertaining to migrant workers’ interests. We attempt to carry out different dimensional exchange with OSH experts, lawyers and academics in order to bridge the knowledge gap and sensitise their awareness in promoting OSH rights in China. The advocacy efforts are aimed at improving the existing legal and institutional barriers to defending the OSH rights of labourers.

In the campaign for compensation and improving labour standards in the gemstone industry, the three-dimensional strategy proves to have set an example of combining the national litigation strategy (or the so-called “Fa-lu-weiquan”) of the workers in the production country – China- with pressure from the labour rights communities in the capital-exporting place – Hong Kong - and pressure from the trade union and civil society organizations in the trading country – Switzerland.

For labour NGOs and migrant workers, the challenge in the next stage lies in the need to build up a solidarity platform and long-term strategies based on the self-organizing of workers in particular, to achieve associational and bargaining rights on top of the individualized legal struggles and wildcat actions. The silicosis campaign, despite the main focus of organizing is outside the workplace, demonstrates an example of the intertwining of bottom-up grassroots organizing and external campaigning in a way to achieve the advancement of workers’ rights and lead to changes in behaviours of the
government and the capitalists by establishing solid and concrete lawsuits pursued by occupational disease victims.

Chinese workers nowadays are increasingly setting the pace in advancing the domestic labour rights agenda, and they are winning important concessions from the government. But within this larger context of change, outside actors/agents can still
play an important role by assisting and complementing workers’ efforts. Our example demonstrates some of the possible elements that could make up a potentially powerful and effective coordinated strategy – one involving international NGOs and overseas trade unions – for promoting a real advance in workers’ rights in China.

END

1. Report on New Cases of Occupational Diseases in 2009, Ministry of Health http://www.gov.cn/jrzg/2010-05/01/content_1597269.htm
2. 数据显示我国受职业病危害人数超2亿http://www.zscdpc.org.cn/E_ReadNews.asp?NewsID=3891
3. http://www.moh.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/mohwsjdj/s5854/201004/47129.htm
4. Global Action Plan for Worker’s Health by World Health Organization (WHO) http://www.who.int/occupational_health/publications/newsletter/newsletter_15_regions/en/index8.html
5. 卫生部2009年职业病防治工作情况通报http://big5.gov.cn/gate/big5/www.gov.cn/gzdt/2010-
   04/28/content_1594571.htm
6. The HKTDC can terminate the right of an exhibitor to exhibit if the latter could cause damage to the
   reputation of Hong Kong and the industries in certain concerned areas including labour and
   environmental rights violations (Article 72 (h), Rules & Regulations, HKTDC).
7. The exhibition regulation of Baselworld requires exhibitors “to provide evidence of fair labour
   practices, i.e. no violation of basic human rights – and social rights in particular – i.e. no employment
   of minors, but much rather the implementation of social practices conforming to industrial and local
   standards, etc. The examination is based on the regulations of the International Labour Organisation”.
   (Article 3.5 General Regulations and Supplementary Regulations for Exhibitors, Baselworld)