Word: liaoyang
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
CHINA Labor Troubles China's efforts to reform its industry brought thousands of workers onto the streets in the rust-belt cities of Daqing and Liaoyang to protest stopped wages and welfare benefits. Hundreds of armed police ringed Liaoyang's government offices and arrested three labor leaders who tried to arrange talks with officials. The whole northeast region is suffering massive unemployment as the state closes down inefficient and outdated factories...
...Heilongjiang, simultaneous and similarly large worker protests occurred at the Daqing oil fields, which schoolchildren still study as the pinnacle of Chinese engineering and Maoist cradle-to-grave security. In both spots, workers were peeved, genuinely needy of some economic relief?and, most surprising, organized. Workers from one factory, Liaoyang Ferro-Alloys Plant, had tried demonstrating last October against the closure of their factory but accomplished nothing. So they reached out to other workers. According to labor activists, leaders from the plant brought together workers from five other factories for protests that began March 11. That day, 5,000 people...
...last Friday, scores of police vans wove through the donkey carts on Liaoyang's streets. Workers were demanding the release of four leaders detained by police and the sacking of government official Gong Shangwu, a delegate to the National People's Congress?a dangerous appeal that smacked of political dissent. "It's the first time I've heard of worker demands going beyond economics and into politics," says Ching Kwan Lee, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who researches labor. "Now we have great power," said one worker, "especially if we stay united...
...Although Liaoyang and Daqing provide the most dramatic examples of organizing, workers in Zhengzhou over the past two years built a network of activists that succeeded, for a while, in resisting factory closures with the risky tactic of physically occupying their plants. A man who goes by the pseudonym Wang Ren is one of the leaders. Now in his 50s with ample girth and a wide-open face, he could have stepped out of a 1960s propaganda poster. For three decades he labored at the Power Generation Equipment Plant, a money-losing factory with half-century-old machinery, that...
...Liaoyang, labor leaders are on the run after last week's dramatic protests; according to fellow demonstrators, they sleep at friends' houses to avoid arrest. "There's not really any formal organization here," says a worker. "But we still have a good many people with the will to protest." More street action is planned for this week. But if the government gives concessions?releasing the detained leaders, coughing up some cash?things could simmer down fast. As the military police who cruised the streets of two industrial cities last week remind us, workers in China are trying to unite...