An elderly community teacher talks to Han Dongfang about his attempts to get a just and decent pension for himself and his colleagues after the authorities basically abandoned them after decades of service. Photo Han Dongfang at Radio Free Asia

The Shenzhen government has withdrawn regulations issued 1 May that would have effectively criminalized migrant worker protests demanding the payment of wage arrears during the run-up to and duration of the World University Games.

Han Dongfang talks to the family of a construction worker left crippled by carbon monoxide poisoning at his former work site about their long struggle for adequate compensation and company’s refusal to accept responsibility.

After being hailed as heroes for braving snow and blizzards to get southern China’s electricity supply back on line during the big freeze of 2008, a group of power workers were cheated out of their jobs, denied judicial redress and eventually forced into a desperate act of self-mutilation in Beijing

Han Dongfang talks to a family of healthcare professional’s whose demands for pension arrears resulted in nine years of petitioning, detention in a black jail, and eventually incarceration in a psychiatric hospital.

Peng Yingquan, a labour contractor from Hubei, talks to Han Dongfang about struggle with local government officials to get more than a million yuan in back pay for his workers, and his subsequent two year jail term.

Chinese migrant laborers toiling in the factories of two major firms won unusually hefty raises in recent weeks, as Honda sought to end strikes and Foxconn, maker of the Apple iPad, tried to stave off criticism over a spate of worker suicides. But multinationals that find themselves backed into a corner are not the only ones starting to heed the demands of increasingly emboldened employees. In some instances government officials here in China’s southern factory belt, Guangdong Province, have also made small concessions as more workers stage sit-ins and pursue legal channels for compensation.

Two community teachers from Jianchang county in Liaoning, both fired by the local government in 2007, talk about their attempts to seek redress and the corrupt and underhand activities of local officials.

Trade union officials in the central province of Shaanxi have threatened the founders of a new workers’ rights group, saying it is a “reactionary organization” (反动组织) that could harm China’s “Harmonious Society,” Radio Free Asia reported on 29 June. More than 380 workers from some 20 enterprises in Shaanxi applied to the provincial Party committee and trade union federation to set up the Shaanxi Enterprise Union Rights Defence Representative Congress (陕西企（事）业工会维权代表大会).

Table of Contents

Part one: Those left behind