Miss Chen stares curiously at the iPad. Even though she works overtime in a factory in southwestern China that manufactures them, she's never seen the finished product. "Wow, I want it," said Chen, brushing her finger across the glossy screen with curiosity and amazement.

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

In an email reportedly sent to Apple's 60,000 or so employees, Tim Cook, the company's chief executive said that Apple "cares about every worker in its supply chain". The letter appears to be in response to a series of articles in the New York Times cataloguing the company's problems in China and divisions within Apple about how to handle the issues.

IN AN industrial zone near Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in south-west China, a sign colourfully proclaims the sprawl of factories to be a “delightful, harmonious and happy district”. Angry steelworkers must have winced as they marched past the slogan in their thousands in early January, demanding higher wages. Their three-day strike was unusually large for an enterprise owned by the central government. But, as China’s economy begins to grow more sedately, more such unrest is looming.

CLB translates two Chinese media accounts of labour disputes that give a detailed insight into how China's embryonic collective bargaining process is beginning to develop. Photo by attack the darkeness@flickr.com

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

With the traditional Lunar New Year holiday approaching, police across China have launched high-profile campaigns to crackdown on the malicious non-payment wages (恶意拖欠). An amendment to China’s Criminal Law early last year, which criminalized the non-payment of wages, has allowed police to detain factory bosses and labour contractors who flee owing large numbers of workers hundreds of thousands of yuan in unpaid wages.

A three day strike by several thousand workers at an automotive plant in the south-eastern province of Jiangxi has reportedly forced the provincial government to intervene and suspend plans to restructure the company.

Foxconn Technology Group (FOXCGZ), maker of Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone and parts for Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox game console, said 150 workers at a southern China factory protested against a plan to transfer them to another business unit.