When Ma Jixing contracted the fatal lung disease pneumoconiosis his former employer refused to pay any compensation claiming Ma had never worked for the company

During the run-up to the Spring Festival holiday, government and trade union officials were once again prioritizing the resolution of labour disputes, to ensure that migrant workers could return home with at least some of the pay owed to them by employers. In December 2011, at least eight government departments issued notices demanding that employers pay their workers on time, and the national trade union urged local unions to mobilize and prioritize legal assistance for migrant workers in these matters

Han Dongfang talks to a young couple fighting an obstinate employer and buck-passing officials to get unpaid social security contributions who finally got some help after posting an account of their struggle online.

Amendments to China’s Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Occupational Diseases (职业病防治法), approved by the National People’s Congress on 31 December 2011, will go some way to ease the ordeal workers face in getting diagnosed and compensated for occupational disease, according to a leading labour rights activist.

Miner He Quangui is ready to die. Often hit by coughing fits and breathlessness, he is one of hundreds of thousands in China who have contracted silicosis from working in the country's gold, coal or silver mines. And there is no safe cure.

Protests have erupted over the last week in a wide range of industries and locations across China, indicating that worker unrest is far from confined to just the manufacturing heartland of the Pearl River Delta.

Around 7,000 workers at a Taiwan-owned shoe factory in Dongguan took to the streets today, 17 November, in protest at salary cuts and the earlier dismissal of 18 managerial staff, according to posts on Tianya and a Southern Daily reporter’s microblog.

Several thousand workers in at least five Chinese cities have staged a coordinated protest against the takeover of PepsiCo’s bottling plants in the mainland by Taiwanese food and beverage conglomerate Tingyi Holdings. Workers in Chongqing, Chengdu, Nanchang, Fuzhou and Changsha all took their annual leave on 14 November in a coordinated campaign to protect their jobs and demand assurances that pay, benefits and working conditions will not be eroded as a result of the takeover.

A former miner with third-stage pneumoconiosis tells Han Dongfang about the terrible cost of working in the lead and zinc mines of Sichuan for two decades with no protection from the clouds of deadly mineral dust enveloping him.