Following a string of suicides at its Chinese factories, Foxconn Technology Group raised workers' wages and installed safety nets on buildings to catch would-be jumpers. Now the often secretive manufacturer of the iPhone and other electronics is holding rallies for its workers to raise morale at the heavily regimented factories.

The death toll in yesterday’s explosion at a fireworks factory in northeastern China has risen to 19, with more than 150 injured or missing. It is still not known for sure how many workers were in the factory at the time.

A month ago, China's premier ordered mining officials to go down into the shafts with their workers, but the step meant to improve safety in the world's deadliest mines hasn't saved lives.

The standard compensation award for work-related injuries and death will be substantially increased next year, the state council announced Monday 26 July. From 1 January 2011, the basic one-time compensation award for work-related death will be raised from 200,000 yuan to 343,500 yuan. And when funeral expenses and monthly pension payments to the relatives of the deceased are included, the total payment will come to around 618,000 yuan on average.

At least 51 miners have been killed in four separate coal mine accidents over the weekend, the official Chinese media has reported The most serious accident occurred on Saturday evening when a fire swept through a privately-run mine in Hancheng, Shaanxi, killing 28 miners working underground at the time. The mine owner was subsequently detained by police.

At least 47 miners were killed and dozens more severely injured when an explosion ripped through a privately-run coal mine in Henan in the early hours of Monday morning. The Xingdong No 2 coal mine in Pingdingshan had been operating without a valid licence since 6 June, the official Xinhua news agency reported

City governments across China need to repay the debt owed to the migrant workers who have generated their tax revenues for so long, says prominent workers’ rights advocate Han Dongfang

In the wake of the tragic suicides at Foxconn in Shenzhen, Hong Kong-based activists, Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) have issued an open letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs demanding that Apple actively engage with Foxconn to reform its management system based on greater worker participation.

The Foxconn suicides have focused the attention of popular media in the United States and Europe on workers' rights in China, thereby bringing the issue to a much wider audience and perhaps having a bigger impact on major brands. CLB was quoted in the following articles, copyright remains with the original publisher.

Construction workers began erecting anti-suicide nets today at an industrial plant in southern China that makes millions of the world's mobile phones and computers. Five-metre long steel poles were bolted into the walls below the roofs to support webbing that will eventually cover 1.5m square metres.