Huada Electrical Appliances has piles of orders from abroad -- a welcome sign that China's exports are bouncing back after the global economic crisis. But the television and computer components company has just one-fifth of the 300 people it needs to work the assembly line to fill those orders by the end of June. "Our hair is turning grey because of the anxiety," a company executive, who would only give her surname Wu, told AFP, explaining that the firm was recruiting everywhere -- on pavements, near food markets and with job agencies.

If you ask a factory worker or a waitress in Dongguan if they have had a pay raise recently, they will either stare at you blankly or just burst out laughing. For all the hype in the Chinese and international media about 30 percent wage inflation and a “famine” of more than one million labourers in the Pearl River Delta, the reality for migrant workers remains the same; low pay, long hours and no job security.

Following the lead of Jiangsu, which announced a 12 percent increase in the minimum wage this month, several other municipalities have indicated they too will raise the minimum wage this year. The cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Guangzhou and Dongguan have all separately indicated that the time is now right for an increase in the minimum wage, frozen by central government order on 17 November 2008.

China Labour Bulletin appears in the following article. Copyright remains with the original publisher and broadcaster.

The iPhone will soon go on sale in China, but what's life like for the people who manufacture the iPhone? Scott Tong reports.

29 October 2009.

Listen to the broadcast

Three workers died and another three were seriously injured during a sulfuric acid explosion at an electroplating factory in Shenzhen, China’s official media reported at the weekend.

In July 2009, Zhang Haichao voluntarily underwent an operation to open up his chest in order to prove he was suffering from the fatal lung disease pneumoconiosis. Photograph of Zhang by Yanzhou Metropolis Daily

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

A suicide in China has trained a spotlight on Apple and pressure-filled factories.
By David Pierson and Alex Pham

July 29, 2009

Reporting from Los Angeles and Beijing — Sun Danyong was the mild-mannered son of a potato-farming family in an impoverished corner of south-central China.

A twenty four-year-old university graduate working at a moldings factory in the Houjie district of Dongguan jumped from his fourth floor dormitory after being refused time off work by management, the Guangzhou Daily reported.

Eighteen months after well-known labour activist Huang Qingnan was savagely attacked by knife wielding thugs outside his Shenzhen office, his assailants have finally been sentenced. The Shenzhen Longgang District People’s Court on 18 May sentenced principal assailant Huang Zhizhong to five years imprisonment, while the mastermind behind the attack, local businessman and factory owner Zhong Weiqi, was sentenced to four years in jail.

Table of Contents

Part one: Those left behind