The government’s revisions to its Work-related Injury Insurance Regulations will go a long way to giving workers the insurance cover and legal protection they need, but lack the clout to force employers to comply.

On the 20th anniversary of the crushing of the pro-democracy movement in Beijing, CLB Director, Han Dongfang, expresses the hope that China’s current generation of civil rights defenders can realize the dreams of the Tiananmen Square protesters, but without further bloodshed. Photo by Chamarisk.

The central government in Beijing last week sent an investigative team to Fengyang county in Anhui to examine media claims that at least 12 migrant workers from Yunnan have died from silicosis after working in the county’s stone crushing mills. Fengyang officials claimed there was as yet insufficient evidence to prove that the Yunnan workers contracted silicosis from breathing in silica dust while blasting and crushing slabs of rock in the county’s factories.

China  Labour  Bulletin  appears  in  this article. Copyright remains with the original publisher

China Labour Bulletin is helping a retired miner in Sichuan with third-stage pneumoconiosis sue for work-related illness compensation after his boss, a local coal baron and parliamentarian, refused any payment. The trial began on 11 September 2008 at the Qu County People’s Court with the exchange of evidence.

To mark the implementation of China’s new Labour Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Law, CLB publishes a new report on the numerous problems that remain in China’s labyrinthine and often bewildering labour arbitration and court system for workers seeking redress for violations of their rights.

China Labour Bulletin appears in the following article. Copyright remains with the original publisher.Father wanted a better future for his kids, so he left his farm for factory wor . . .

CLB publishes one of the first English language overviews of the newly emerging and increasingly influential field of public interest litigation (PIL) in China.

At an official meeting on promoting rural migrant workers' participation in occupational injury insurance convened in early September in Shenzhen, Guangdong, Vice Minister of Labour and Social Security Hu Xiaoyi said that "in the work of promoting rural migrant workers' participation in industrial injury insurance, we need to do a good job of explaining policies, as well as promotion and mobilisation, guiding companies to participate voluntarily.

China's workers reported a total of 12,212 cases of occupational illness in 2005, according to a report jointly published by the Ministry of Health, the State Administration of Work Safety and the All . . .