In a bid to gain compensation and highlight the workplace health and safety obligations of local governments, a group of 75 former miners and their families from remote villages in Sichuan have filed an administrative lawsuit against a local county health department for dereliction of duty.

A 21-year-old migrant worker from Hunan, who lost a hand in a work-related accident last year, is challenging legal provisions that limit the amount of compensation workers can receive, irrespective of the employer’s culpability in the accident. In July 2009, Ruan Libing, a newly recruited employee at Elec-Tech in Zhuhai, had his left hand crushed whist operating machinery at the plant. His hand was amputated in a subsequent hospital operation. Even though his working life was effectively over, Ruan received just the statutory compensation payment of approximately 90,000 yuan.

A retired miner from Sichuan with stage-three pneumoconiosis, who has been seeking occupational illness compensation from his former employer for the past three years, has finally been awarded 136,000 yuan in a court mediated settlement Xiao Huazhong had been seeking 190,000 yuan, the amount he should be legally entitled to, but accepted the lower award because he is currently seriously ill in hospital, has already spent his entire life savings of around 80,000 yuan on medical care, and is faced with additional hospital bills of several hundred yuan a day.

A retired coalminer with third-stage pneumoconiosis and living in poverty in rural Sichuan is being pressured by local officials to withdraw his work-related illness lawsuit against local coal baron, Liao Xing’an, one of the most powerful men in eastern Sichuan’s Qu county.

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.

In November 1997, Deng Wenping, a migrant worker from Sichuan province, got a job as a gem cutter at a factory owned by Perfect Gem & Pearl Manufacturing Co, a Hong Kong-invested enterprise in Boluo county, Huizhou city, Guangdong province. After falling seriously ill, Deng was admitted to the Guangdong Occupational Disease Hospital in December 2000. The Guangdong Province Occupational Illness Diagnosis and Appraisal Committee subsequently diagnosed him with stage II silicosis.

Zhang Guangli was a worker at the No. 1 Steel Plant operated by Angang New Steel Co Ltd., a subsidiary of the Angang Steel Group in Anshan city, Liaoning province. On 23 April 1993, Zhang had four fingers and the skin on the thumb of his left hand torn off while operating a machine at work.

In June 2000, Lu Hongfu (then aged 28) got a job at a Sino-Japanese joint venture in the city of Yixing in Jiangsu called Qingxing Powder Machinery Co., Ltd. doing odd jobs in a chemical micropowders workshop and working as an assistant painter. A year after he started working at the company, Lu began to suffer from dizzy spells, vomiting, bleeding gums and other symptoms.

Before employees can make a claim for work-related injury or occupational disease compensation at their local Labour Dispute Arbitration Committee (LDAC), their degree of disability has been assessed and officially certified by the Labour Appraisal Committee. There are ten grades of disability, determined by the Standard Assessment of the Seriousness of Work-related Injuries and Occupational Diseases (zhigong gongshang yu zhigong bingzhican chengdu jianding biaozhun) issued by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security in 1996.

CLB assisted seven groups of jewellery workers from Guangdong province to seek full and proper compensation from their former employers after they contracted silicosis – a chronic and ultimately fatal disease – because the employers had failed to install proper ventilation equipment in the workplace. The lawyers whom CLB has arranged to pursue these cases have successfully negotiated surprisingly high compensation payments for several of the workers concerned, and several other collective compensation cases of this type are currently under litigation.