Description

From RFA (Cantonese):

黑龙江佳木斯市一所国营纺织厂的岗工人，抗议厂方拒绝提高失业援助金，星期二再度游行示威。

数百名工人星期一早上堵塞了佳木斯通往北京的铁路，抗议厂方拒绝调高失业援助金。市政府官员其后派人与工人代表见面会谈。不过，工人表示政府官员没有答应他们有关离职补偿的要求。在星期二，一百多名工人在警察的严密监视下再次游行示威。工人还扬言会继续示威，直到厂方答应他们的要求为止。部分工人获准与市政府官员举行另一轮谈判。

市政府的官员向法新社的记者证实了工人再次游行示威的消息，但拒绝透露详情。这名官员声称，政府官员在会上向工人代表解释政府的政策，并答应向工人准时发放基本生活补偿和退休金以及为贫困家庭的子女提供免费教育。

据设于美国纽约的人权阻止中国劳工观察的消息，在星期二的示威行动中，有纸厂和糖厂的工人加入。中国劳工观察还表示，如果厂方不答应工人的要求，佳木斯市将有更多的工厂举行更大规模的示威。

佳木斯纺织厂一名女职工早前向本台表示，工人曾多次与市、厂领导见面，商讨提高生活援助金，但都没有结果。佳木斯纺织厂是国营企业，原本雇用了五千多名工人。但这名女职工表示，工厂已经半年没有开工，工人现在只能依靠每月一百多元人民币的生活援助金。

From the NY Times:

This remote industrial outpost, a stone's throw from Siberia and snowbound for months at a time, usually hibernates for winter. But not this year. Since last fall, tens of thousands of disgruntled workers in this former workers' paradise have defiantly staged a series of protests.

On some days, retirees blocked all traffic on the main highway into town, squatting in rows on the pavement. On other days, thousands of laid-off textile workers sat on railway tracks, disrupting service. In late December, workers from an ailing pulp mill lay like frozen soldiers on Jiamusi's only runway, preventing planes from landing.

[Today, workers once again took to the streets of Jiamusi, blocking the train track for 20 minutes until the police forced them away and then marching through the city in protest, according to China Labor Watch, a group based in the United States.]

Jiamusi's failing state-owned factories have laid off huge numbers of workers in the last five years, leaving families with nothing to live on. Eighty percent of people in their 40's are out of work, residents say, receiving at best about $20 a month from the government. Retirees have no way to pay medical expenses.

''We Chinese workers are honest and humble -- we protest only because we have no choice,'' said one worker who witnessed the protests and would give only his surname, Li. ''We've lost our iron rice bowl'' -- a secure livelihood -- ''but how can we survive without even the most basic help?''

Vice President Hu Jintao, who became Communist Party chief last fall and is expected to be named president at the National People's Congress meeting in Beijing, has said his government will give urgent attention to his country's ''disadvantaged groups,'' particularly farmers and laid-off workers.

In Jiamusi, the depth of disadvantage is evident -- as is the restiveness that has led to the wildfire spread of protest all across China and is forcing the government to act.

China's elites ''face growing pressure and resistance -- strikes, collective petitions, explosions and acts of violence,'' said Kang Xiaoguang, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. ''All this public discontent threatens security and stability and may force concessions.''

Although the protests are technically illegal, the workers' grievances are often viewed as legitimate and their plight evokes enormous public sympathy. In 2001, the number of appeals and protests to government offices grew 7.2 percent and the number of participants by 11.7 percent, wrote Du Gangjian, a researcher, in The Economic Observer, a leading newspaper.

Chinese police journals are now filled with advice about ''managing'' rather than ''crushing'' protests, allowing peaceful demonstrations to proceed and detaining only the ringleaders afterward. Likewise, local officials now tend to meet with protesters, acceding to at least some of their monetary demands.

''As the market economy has developed, mass incidents are constantly occurring and they are characterized by high levels of organization, dramatic impact and major disturbances of society,'' wrote Liu Wie, a police official, in the magazine Public Security Research last year.

But he added that the police and government had to respond to the crises with ''utmost care'' because ''if we lose the support of the masses, even if their measures do hold things down for a while, they will rebound and do even more damage.''

In the short term, the conciliatory tactics tend to ease the unrest, even though payments are generally far less than the workers are owed. But they have also created new expectations among China's masses and are slowly altering the previously one-way social contract between an authoritarian leadership and its nonvoting population.

''If they contain and manage, rather than deter, they could create a dicey situation for the government,'' said Murray Scot Tanner, a political scientist at Western Michigan University. ''Choosing this route, I wonder if the government can avoid getting drawn into some negotiation with society over larger issues, concerning politics and power.''

The workers of Jiamusi turned to protest only after realizing that lesser measures were getting them nowhere. There is a credo well known to laid-off workers these days: ''A small disturbance leads to a small solution, a large disturbance leads to a big solution. No disturbance leads to no solution.'' Often, the only brake on demonstrators is the knowledge that police tolerance has its limits.

Jiamusi is a depressed and depressing place: laid-off workers in ragged coats shiver in freezing temperatures, tending plastic buckets containing a icy fish for sale. Factory apartments have water for only an hour a day. In some families, three generations are unemployed.

There was never much work here except that provided by state factories, part of China's planned economy. So entire families were left without jobs when these economic dinosaurs began to fail in the transition to a market-based system.

The situation was particularly glaring at the Jiamusi Textile Factory, which once employed 14,000 workers. ''Before everyone wanted to work there because conditions were so good -- housing, health care, pensions,'' said a worker named Liu. ''I, my wife and four brothers all worked there, too.''

The workers never dreamed that the mill was bankrupt when it suddenly shut production in 1998, offering to pay each employee the equivalent of about $20 a month in living expenses. Factory officials kept workers in the dark, selling off the factory's assets to pay its debts.

Two years later the payments stopped altogether. But the workers were not informed of the factory's bankruptcy until last May, when official termination notices were issued.

In response, workers' representatives traveled to the provincial capital, Harbin, and later to Beijing, demanding the pay and benefits to which they were entitled by law. In Beijing, they presented government officials with petitions containing hundreds of signatures. Then they went home and waited.

''The fundamental problem in Jiamusi is that there is no market and there are no opportunities,'' said Mr. Liu, who said 70 percent of the factories were bankrupt and the remaining 30 percent were failing.

He said he generally supported the economic reforms, but added that they had come at a cost: ''The gap between rich and poor is growing. And the poor need a little help.''

By November, with temperatures well below zero, thousands of workers from the textile factory began a series of increasingly well organized protests. Though the police occasionally arrested an organizer, others emerged. The authorities acknowledge that they were up against new and potent social forces.

''In recent years, the degree of organization of mass incidents has intensified; the period of inception is quite long, and there are abundant preparations made,'' wrote Li Shenxue, an official in Jilin Province, in People's Petitions and Appeals, a government magazine. ''There are even budding tendencies toward the formation of spontaneously organized 'trade unions,' and 'associations' and other 'unapproved organizations for defending rights.' ''

In late November, textile workers sat on the train tracks for more than an hour after the police stopped them from boarding a train bound for Beijing. City officials met with them in a station lounge. But when talk yielded no action, the workers returned -- this time with reinforcements. On Dec. 2, they marched through the city and staged a sit-in on the tracks that lasted from morning until night.

The police, many of whom had relatives at the factory, did little to disperse them. Restaurants near the station welcomed protesters, providing them with meals and tea.

During the next week, there were three straight days of meetings at the local movie theater, where officials sought to placate the workers. On Dec. 5, they were offered about $15 a month for living expenses -- a triumph of sorts, but not as much as they were owed under their contract.

Inspired by that success, laid-off workers from a nearby pulp mill, which once employed 8,000, descended on the airport and lay down in the snowy runway, preventing planes from landing. Now, each worker at the mill is getting about $30 a month for living expenses, more than the textile workers because the pulp mill has a bit more money.

Already the workers from the textile factory are grumbling that the city has not given them enough. ''You can't live on $15 a month,'' said Mr. Liu. ''Our basic problem hasn't been solved.''

From BBC:

中國東北黑龍江省佳木斯市一家紡織廠的數百名工人上街示威、堵住鐵路線，要求當局發放拖欠工資和下崗補貼。

佳木斯市政府一位官員周一（3月10日）證實，數百名下崗工人周一在市政府大樓外和平請願，警方沒有拘留任何人。其後，有關官員把示威工人帶回紡織廠進行談判。

佳木斯火車站的員工說，一些下崗工人周一上午封鎖了一條國有鐵路線，阻止列車通過，開往北京的列車耽擱了五、六分鐘。警方後來把示威群眾驅散。

一名職工說，這家紡織廠的1000多名下崗工人去年至今進行了多次小規模的示威。去年12月，他們堵住鐵路和到機場的公路，指責公司官員貪污了他們的下崗補貼。

總部設在紐約的人權組織中國勞工觀察表示，這家紡織廠擁有6000多名職工，由於“腐敗和管理不善”而瀕臨破產。下崗工人每月只有人民幣120元補貼，即使如此，有關方面常常不按時發放補貼。工人要求增加失業保障金和獲得被拖欠的工資。

失業問題

北京現在正進行人大會議，失業問題是本屆人大的主要議題之一。不過，佳木斯市紡織廠的工人聲稱，曾給人大代表們寫請願信，但沒有得到回應。

據佳木斯市政府官員表示，佳木斯一家國有的紡織廠破產後，當局承諾發給下崗職工每個月人民幣120元失業補貼。

一名市府官員說：“工人不斷向市政府請願，因為工廠破產存在不少尚未解決的細節問題。最重要的問題是120元不夠支應生活開銷。”

這位官員說，佳木斯市副市長已經前往紡織廠尋求解決工人的投訴。

在中國東北，很多國營企業關閉，上百萬工人失去工作，不滿情緒上漲。遼陽市和大慶市則出現了多次大規模示威活動。

去年人大期間，大慶市和遼陽市分別展開了大規模的工人示威行動，但不知道最近發生的一些示威行動是偶發的，還是經過協調的。

在中國，公開示威和獨立的工會活動均屬違法