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Case of severed thumb raises migrants' issues
By People's Daily |
April 24, 2012, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
WHEN migrant workers make the news, it's often about tragic events like suicide leaps and self-immolations to call attention to the injustice they suffer. They have touched society's raw nerve and exposed its chronic maladies.
The raw nerve was recently touched again by the report that Xiong Chungen, a migrant worker in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, could not afford a surgery to reattach his left thumb ripped off in a workplace accident.
Xiong was handling a steel bar when the accident happened on April 16. With only 100 yuan (US$14.70) on him, he couldn't pay for the surgery and left the hospital in despair. Xiong's boss finally helped, albeit grudgingly, lending him 5,000 yuan for the operation.
What tremendous pain it is to have one's thumb cut off! However, in a society that vows to enable workers to live in dignity, the pain doesn't afflict Xiong alone. Local authorities must do some soul-searching: should migrants endure the pain all by themselves?
Behind the single story of Xiong's mutilation lies the general lack of remedies for frequent workplace injuries.
Migrants have little access to the benefits enjoyed by urban dwellers, most importantly, social security protection. There are two parallel labor markets in cities, one formal, the other informal, in which workers' rights are constantly abused.
Migrants sometimes toil in small plants and sign no contract with employers, let alone pay their share of social security funds. Statistics show that of 2.21 million migrant workers in Jiangxi, only 1.06 million are insured against industrial injuries. In the Pearl River Delta alone, there are over 30,000 cases of workplace mutilations every year. Most end up with no compensation to the victims.
Whenever migrants are maimed at work, media call on them to enhance their awareness of their rights. These pleas may work when individuals of a group are harmed. But when that group invariably suffers as a whole, it's not just the victims themselves or their cold-hearted bosses who are at fault.
If officials demonstrate the same commitment to workers' welfare as to luring investment, migrants may have avoided being maimed or have had their thumbs sewn back on.
Charlie Chaplin's Film "Modern Times" (1936) has opened our eyes to the general apathy in human beings caused by assembly line work.
In some locales, how to eliminate that appalling apathy should now be raised higher on the official agenda.
The raw nerve was recently touched again by the report that Xiong Chungen, a migrant worker in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, could not afford a surgery to reattach his left thumb ripped off in a workplace accident.
Xiong was handling a steel bar when the accident happened on April 16. With only 100 yuan (US$14.70) on him, he couldn't pay for the surgery and left the hospital in despair. Xiong's boss finally helped, albeit grudgingly, lending him 5,000 yuan for the operation.
What tremendous pain it is to have one's thumb cut off! However, in a society that vows to enable workers to live in dignity, the pain doesn't afflict Xiong alone. Local authorities must do some soul-searching: should migrants endure the pain all by themselves?
Behind the single story of Xiong's mutilation lies the general lack of remedies for frequent workplace injuries.
Migrants have little access to the benefits enjoyed by urban dwellers, most importantly, social security protection. There are two parallel labor markets in cities, one formal, the other informal, in which workers' rights are constantly abused.
Migrants sometimes toil in small plants and sign no contract with employers, let alone pay their share of social security funds. Statistics show that of 2.21 million migrant workers in Jiangxi, only 1.06 million are insured against industrial injuries. In the Pearl River Delta alone, there are over 30,000 cases of workplace mutilations every year. Most end up with no compensation to the victims.
Whenever migrants are maimed at work, media call on them to enhance their awareness of their rights. These pleas may work when individuals of a group are harmed. But when that group invariably suffers as a whole, it's not just the victims themselves or their cold-hearted bosses who are at fault.
If officials demonstrate the same commitment to workers' welfare as to luring investment, migrants may have avoided being maimed or have had their thumbs sewn back on.
Charlie Chaplin's Film "Modern Times" (1936) has opened our eyes to the general apathy in human beings caused by assembly line work.
In some locales, how to eliminate that appalling apathy should now be raised higher on the official agenda.
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