LABOUR SAFETY has become a critical issue in China, with the government keenly pressing ahead the market economy, and seeking optimum economic "efficacy".
So severe is the problem that the government has now been forced to embark on a national inspection of production safety in an attempt to contain major accidents and hazards.
The Emergency Circular issued by the State Council on 7 August 2000 pointed out the gravity of the problem. Within a period of ten days in late June 2000, a series of major accidents had occurred' • 130 people died in a shipwreck in Hejiang County, Sichuan Province on June 22;
• 49 people died in a plane crash of the Wuhan Airline Company;
• 38 people died in an explosion of a fireworks factory in Jiangmen City, Guangdong Province on June 30;
10 people died in an explosion of a firecrackers factory in Dianjiang County, Chongqing Municipality. For years, industrial and traffic accidents have been rampant, with around 100.000 deaths every year. Of this. about 16,000 are - just ask them in Leging City workers whose deaths are induced by industrial and mining accidents. China produces about a fifth of the world's raw coal output, yet Chinese miners account for four-fifths of the world's mining casualties.
According to the State Coal Industrial Bureau, each year there are about 70 mining accidents killing more than 10 people. This means an incident every five days.
In 1996, coal output in China was 1.374 billion tons, with 10,015 miners killed in accidents. In the USA, the figure was 38 deaths for a coal output of 0.96 billion tons. In 1998. the Chinese death rate was 6.04 persons per 1 million tons of coal output - 200 times the casualty rate of the USA Up to the end of 1998. there were 550.000 pneumoconiosis Market forces are less than finger-licking good for Chinese workers sufferers across China, of whom 130,000 have died. This equalled the total number of pneumoconiosis cases in the rest of the world. Numbers of Chinese pneumoconiosis victims are growing at a rate of 15,000 to 20,000 a year.
Incomnlete statistics show that there are around 380,000 hazardous or poisonous industrial enterprises in China. A Health Ministry survey of 1,426 foreign invested enterprises, found 37% involved occupational hazards in the process of production, and 35% of workers were exposed to such hazards.
Large numbers of people also die of poisoning. According to incomplete statistics by the health authorities, occupational poisoning took the lives of hundreds every year, and jeopardised the health of thousands. In 1999, the number increased by 47% as compared to 1998.
With no legislature to monitor occupational health problems, the violation of production safety and health standards by small and medium township enterprises has been getting serious.
According to a Health Ministry survey in the early 1990s, industrial hazards existed in 83% of township enterprises; 34% of workers in township enterprises were in contact with dust and poisonous substances, and 16% of the workforce faced occupational hazards.
Another major hazard is the danger of the same building housing workers' quarters as well as the factory and warehouse. When fires have broken out, the casualties have been high. In November 1993, 83 workers were killed when a fire broke out in Zhili Toy Factory in Shenzhen; and in 16 June 1994, 93 died when a fire broke out in Yuxin Dye and Textile Factory in Zhuhai, and the next day the building collapsed.
Long working hours, fatigue and lack of safety protection equipment have also caused numerous accidents to occur. On June 19, Yang Cheng Evening News reported that privately run enterprises in two are not covered by medical townships in Leqing City, insurance or labour insurance Zhejiang Province, were using schemes. cheap and unsafe machinery. According to newspaper The two hospitals in Leging reports in mainland China, fees City had set a record of stitch- for medical care have soared in ing severed fingers for 14 the last decade. In the early workers per day, treating over 1990s, the average outpatient 5,000 workers during the year. fee was 10 yuan (US $I.20)
The Workers Daily on March and hospitalisation fee was 400 2 also reported on the situation yuan. By 1997, they in a "village of severed fingers", were respectively 60 yuan and where in one village alone 2,300 yuan. there had been hundreds of In addition, 80% of the state's casualties, "and it was said that medical and health resources severed fingers could fill up a are in urban cities, with twobasket". thirds concentrated in There may be a correlation large hospitals. Health care has between the hundreds of thou- become simply unaffordable cance of victime or inductrial and unavailable to the rural hazards and accidents and the working masses. high suicide rate in China. Before the economic reform Shenzhen SEZ Daily reported of 1978, workers were lauded on May 27 that the suicide rate as the masters of the country, in China - 19.58 per 100,000 even if sometimes it was lip population - was well above service. The economic reform the world average of 15.23. has given autonomy to the 42% of the world's suicide management of the entercases happen in China. prises, and now it is difficult to The Workers Daily of March find even propaganda about 13 reported that some employ- workers' rights or workers' ers signed "Life and Death power in the enterprises and Contracts" with workers, stat- in society. ing that workers would receive Trade unions are powerless only wages but no compensa- on matters of occupational tion for whatever injuries health or safety. The Labour or casualties they might suffer. Laws cannot offer protection. As most workers in low-paid With such intensification and hazardous jobs are peas- of contradictions and tensions, ants from the countryside, they it requires the effort of both constitute a vulnerable labour workers and groups working force and a vast reserve labour for workers' welfare to army, and the ill or injured are improve on the situation and simply sent back home. They fight for workers' rights.
Outlook As we go to press, the outcome of the Presidential race still hangs in the balance.
With the recount in just over half of Florida's 67 counties completed, Bush's lead over Gore has been cut by about 600 votes -around a third of the 1,700 votes that separated him and Bush on the first count.
Both candidates need to win Florida to win the presidential election and have sent teams of lawyers to the southern state to investigate a series of alleged irregularities in the voting.
A number of Democrat voters have filed a lawsuit demanding a new election in Florida because they say a confusing ballot paper led them to vote for the wrong candidate. Legal challenges or the counting of postal votes could delay the process further and the votes of an estimated 2,300 people living abroad are still awaited.
None of this has stopped the vitriol against Ralph Nader's candidacy from leading Democrat supporters - strengthened by the fact that in a number of key states Nader's vote was greater than the difference between Bush's success and Gore's showing.
While there are many justified criticisms that can be made of Nader, as his supporter Michael Moore points out, Nader and his supporters cannot be blamed for the rightwing policies of President Clinton and Vice-President Gore.
It is this neo-liberal trajectory that has led more and more American voters to recognise what has always been the case - the difference between the two parties of American capitalism have always been T he United States industry.
is now approach- While allowing the gap ing the culmina- between rich and poor to tion of a contest widen, the administration for the most pow- has pursued tough 'law and erful elected position on order' policies and supported earth. Yet, if previous elec- the expansion of the death tions are anything to go by, penalty. barely half of the electorate will even bother to vote. despite this, It is not hard to see why: the leadership of the election is between two the labour moverich white men, each repre- ment in the senting a party that has con- United States sistently promoted the continues to support the exploitation of working peo- Democratic Party, pouring ple, the exclusion of women money and volunteers into and ethnic minorities and Al Gore's election campaign the pursuit of corporate and mobilising its members interests abroad to turn out the vote. imperialist wars. At national level, almost The Clinton-Gore adminis- every union has endorsed tration, in its eight years in Gore, seeing him as the power, has continued the lesser of two evils, a safeneo-liberal project initiated guard against a Republican by Reagan and Bush, with its Party characterised at its 'reform' of the welfare sys- worst by union-busting tem, the signing of the North bosses, white-supremacists, American Trade anti-abortionists and reliAgreement and the deregula- gious fanatics. tion of the communications Yet, while Gore will grateSo which is which? fully accept the unions' support and pay lip service to their concerns during his campaign, if elected he will assuredly continue with the same anti-working class policies that he has supported for the last eight years.
Unions under
Democrat thumb And as long as there is felt to be no alternative to the left of the Democrats, this will continue to be the case. As the American Marxist, George Breitman, put more than torty vears ago:
"The Democrats have much more influence in the ahar movement than the labor movement has in the Democratic Party. The Democrats con take the unions for granted because they feel they have them in their pocket; because the unions, having sworn not to create their own party, have nowhere else to go.
"The union leaders not only have become dependent on the Democratic Party. They have become its captives. And this is one of the reasons why the Democratic Party has been moving steadily to the right year after year."
Volon Supporters of Nader (right, and above) packed Madison Square Gardens - the first time a politician has done this since the 1930s, challenging the two parties of big business and the super-rich A ttempts to create a viable working-class or socialist aternative to the two big parties have always faltered, since the time when a strong Socialist Party, which had won nearly a million votes in the 1912 presidential election, was smashed by the state for its opposition to the First World War.
A Labor Party was established in 1996, at the behest of activists in a number of unions who were determined to fight for working-class independence of the Democrats. It now has the support of nine unions at national level, and numerous local branches.
But, as a compromise to maximise its union support, it has agreed that it will neither stand its own candidates against the Democrats, nor endorse candidates of any party (including the Democrats).
In this year's election, however. many trade unionists (including Labor Party activists) • and others on the left are supporting the candidacy of Ralph Nader, a veteran consumer rights campaigner who is standing as the candidate of the Green Party.
While Nader makes no claim to be a socialist, his campaign includes pledges to restrain corporate power, to boost the minimum wage, to introduce a univerval system of healthcare and to repeal anti-union laws.
He would fight racism and sexism at every level, cut back military spending, abolish the death penalty and phase out nuclear power in favour of renewable energy sources. And he would open up the political system by regulating campaign financing and introducing PR.
Predictably, there have been attempts to frighten would-be Nader voters by claiming that "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" in those marginal states that Gore hopes to win. This argument is countered by the writer and filmmaker, Michael Moore:
"A vote for Gore, who supports the death penalty, and NAFTA, and WTO, and won't ivere healthcare immediately, that is a vote tor Kush. A vote for Gore is a vote for Bush; that is the new equation.
"A vote for Nader is a political Molotov that we need to throw into a corrupt and bankrupt system filled with its dirty money."
Throughout the 'United States, trade unionists and left activists who with this sentiment have been organising for Nader. He has won the endorsement of one small national union. the United Electrical Workers, one statewide union and a few local branches.
In Detroit, a "Labor for Nader" group has been set up, including six local branch presidents and organised a 350-strong Labor Day rally at which Nader spoke A similar group has been set up in New York.
Nader's union supporters hope to help him reach the target of five per cent of the vote, which will entitle him to state funding for a further campaign in 2004. But he is also, by his presence in the presidential race, raising issues on the national political agenda that would otherwise go unheard, and most importantly, encouraging class-conscious workers, feminists, environmentalists, black, Latino and native American peoples and progressives', to break the stranglehold of the two-party system. S ocialists can, of course, have no illusions in any political campaign that, like Nader's, remains within the constraints of the bourgeois political system and fails to challenge capitalism as such. But Nader's campaign presents the best opportunity in decades for a break with the political duopoly of the 'Republocrats'.
It helps to give expression to the demands of the Seattle demonstration against the WTO and like that demonstration, it unites greens and radical campaigners of all kinds with the most progressive wing of the organised labour movement. And in this way, it helps to create the conditions for the construction of a genuine working-class socialist party in the future.
Outlook