Introduction
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, labour and health policies regarding rural migrant workers in China were reoriented to a more pro-migrant stance. As part of a broader shift in thinking about the political leadership’s efforts to establish a legal basis for a more equal treatment of rural migrants in urban areas, an official report on problems of Chinese migrant workers, commissioned by the State Council’s research office, was published in 2006. The report addresses the labour environment of migrant workers as one of the outstanding problems:
Labour safety and health conditions are poor, often the most basic labour protection is lacking…Many enterprises are using old machinery without safety devices. Excessive levels of noise, dust and poisonous gases are commonplace. A lack of safety equipment and training is causing occupational diseases and accidents in the workplace. According to the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) nearly
700,000 people1 are left disabled every year due to work-related injuries; most of them are migrant workers. Occupational diseases and accidents have become a
major public health and social problem (Guowuyuan yanjiushi ketizu 2006:12).
While the problem of migrants’ occupational injuries has been acknowledged by China’s political leadership, it is still difficult to get accurate information on the numbers of migrant workers’ occupational injuries.2
The frequency of work-related injuries and diseases differs by sector and enterprise ownership. More than half of the fatalities each year between 2000 and 2005 were in mining only. Manufacturing had the second-highest number of work-related injuries, followed by the construction and transport sectors (Zheng et al. 2007:391, 392). The situation is much less severe for state-owned enterprises, which generally have better occupational health and safety systems than privately owned enterprises (Chen and Chan 2010; Zheng et al. 2007:392). This is confirmed by a study of work-injury patients carried out by the Yilian Legal Aid and Study Center,3 showing that more than 70 per cent had been working at privately owned enterprises (Wang 2011:20).
Migrant workers are concentrated in high-risk occupations/sectors, accounting for 68 and 80 percent of the workforce in manufacturing and construction respectively (Zheng et al. 2007:391). Migrant workers face particular risks of occupational injury, including excessively long working hours, lack of on-the-job skills training, high mental stress at work and a past history of work injuries, and it seems questionable whether the cash- earning jobs of migrants in the city can lead to better and sustainable lives for them and their families over the long term.4
Despite these risks, there are few comprehensive studies on migrants’ occupational health in China. Information on the occupational health and safety situation of migrant