www.newsandletters.org
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS, April 2002
Column: Our Life and Times by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes
China oil workers confront the state Thousands of unemployed workers began to gather outside
the headquarters of the Daqing Petroleum Company, on March 1. They came out to
protest severe cuts in the payments they had been promised when layoffs came in
1999. At the same time that workers have seen their severance packages of
several hundred dollars per year slashed, company officials were awarding
themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses. By mid-March, the
daily crowds of protesting workers had grown to 50,000. According to the Hong Kong-based CHIAN LABOUR BULLETIN:
"Workers from Xinjiang, Shengli and Liaohe Oilfields staged solidarity
demonstrations when they heard about the Daqing workers' struggle. Most
significantly, the workers have set up their own union, the Daqing PAB
Retrenched Workers' Provisional Union Committee, and elected
representatives." In another city, Liaoyang, 7,000 workers gathered for
days outside state-owned factories to protest lengthy delays in receiving wages
and unemployment benefits they had earned. Only sell-out unions under the control of the ruling
Communist Party are legal in China today. Up to now, attempts to form
independent unions have resulted in prison or even execution by the
state-capitalist regime. Ominously it has sent both an army tank regiment
and paramilitary police to Daqing in an attempt to intimidate the workers. |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
