The International Labour Organization

Executive summary      [pic 1]

“The International Labour Organization (ILO) is the united nations agency for the world of work. It was founded in 1919 as part of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, to reflect the principle that universal and lasting peace can only be achieved if it is built on social justice” (The ILO in China, 2016).  The Decent work program is an agenda that ILO launched in 1999 to ensure the workers have the secure working conditions, fair income, no discrimination and gender inequality and etc (ILO Decent work, 1996). Decent work agenda is the most significant approach to eliminate the poverty since the short-run expenditure to develop decent work will quickly be exceeded by long-run gains (SlidePlayer, 2016).

In 2014, there was a proportion of 46% in coal’s output and 49% of coal consumption for China in the world, which means China has been the largest coal producer and consumer in global (U.S. EIA, 2014). In this case, it has stimulated the occurrence of the decent work deficit with the huge demand and production. For example, long working hours and lower payment, forced labour, unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, cover up coal mine accidents and corruption, etc. According to the ILO conventions in the coal mining sector, it has implemented the No. 31: hours of work (coal mines) convention and No.176: Safety and Health in Mines Convention (ILO Mining, 1996), however the Chinese government have not ratified these conventions for the mining sector and only ratified 26 ILO conventions until 2016.

There are several strategies to eliminate the decent work deficit such as spread the knowledge for miners about safety or health working conditions’ requirement and inspire the miners to report any illegal activities happened in the coal mine to the local authority, organise the supervising group to monitor the whether the mine owners fulfill the conventions or related regulation as well as the Chinese government should try to develop the new energy structure to diminish the dependence on the coal.

1. Introduction

The 2008 declaration placed ILO’s crucial role in accomplishing the development of social justice and fair globalisation and Somavia made a pithy statement: “the primary goal of ILO today is to promote opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity” (Hughes, 2010). The declaration pointed out to promote the decent work through achieving four significant objectives: rights at work, employment creation, social protection and social dialogue. The purpose of this report is to analyze the various dimensions of decent work deficit against the principles of ILO’s decent work agenda in Chinese coal mining industry . This report firstly will identify the decent work agenda and how the ILO’s convention to improve the decent work, then it will illustrate the decent work deficit in the coal mine sector in terms of four objectives. Finally, this report will establish several recommendations about how to eliminate the decent work deficit.

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1.1 Decent work deficit in China

With the population of nearly 1.4 billion, the Chinese economy has experienced a significant growth, which propelled China to become the world’s second largest economy.  Andrews - Speed stated that coal performs a dominant part in meeting the demands of national energy, and the Chinese coal throughput had experienced an increasing trend, up from 10.8 to 32.4 million tons, with nearly occupied the half of global coal production (BP, 2011).  In terms of the massive demand for coal, there are abundant coal mine industries mainly owned by three types: one is state-owned mines, which were centrally managed by the State Administration of Coal Industry, the second is the local coal mines administrated by provincial and county authority. The last one is township, village and private mines managed by small organisations or individuals (IEA, 2000). The decent work deficit occurred seriously in the private-owned plant result from using the old technology with burning the unclean coals and insecure protection device as well as frequent roof collapse, which caused miners’ ill or even death. Follow graphs and tables illustrated the Chinese coal production and consumption as well as the coal reservation in China.

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1.2 Decent work agenda and ILO conventions

Somavia presented the notion of Decent Work with a more detailed demonstration in 1999. Decent work indicated a traditional and modern purpose of ILO’s principles in order to meet a new and various world (Geneva, 1999).  Decent work, a combination of four strategic objectives, was more efficient to approach the diversity of nation experience. Decent work agenda advocated that everyone has the equal opportunity to self-development, the working environment is safe and protected, no child labour or forced labour. Trade union has right to express their views and the state created a social safety net for all the individuals especially for the vulnerable labour.

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(Hughes, 1999)

“The ILO are laid down in ILO-conventions and recommendation, which is the negotiations between governments of member states, national trade unions and employers associations regarding social justice and decent working and living condition” (Wage Indicator, 2016). China has ratified 26 ILO conventions, of which 22 are in force. Follow ratified conventions list is about coal mining industry.

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2. Decent work deficit in Chinese coal mining industry

2.1 Unsafe working condition

China has above 15,000 coal mines and 5.5 million coal miners, and for coal mine accidents, the Chinese coal miners’ death rate occupied the percentage of 70 of the world coal miners’ death. On the contrast, the proportion of coal mine accidents is 4% of whole industry accidents only in The United States (Chen, H, 2013). The coal miners’ life have been faced numerous challenges including low payment, long working hours, comprehensive pressure, injury-prone and occupational hazard. Coal miners had to work in a wet and cold undermine environment with fulling of the coal ash and flammable and harmful gas.  In February 22, 2009, there was a gas explosion accident in the Tunlan Coal Mine of the Shanxi Coking Coal Group result from the lost of the flameproof facility, where 74 people died and 114 injured.  The occurrence of most accidents was owing to the miners operates the procedure without exactly on the basis of the safety explosion-proof strategy and when encounter the accident, they did not execute the correct safety precautions (Wei, J, 2015). Miners are injured and maimed on the work frequently. Many of them get arm broken, hands and fingers are crushed, and others have their teeth were knocked out or their shoulders smashed by dropping rocks. Meanwhile, some miners were hit by the coal car and caused their ribs broken and damage lungs and other internal organs.  “In 2006, 4,746 miners were killed in 2,845 accidents, mainly in underground explosions and flooding” (Hays, J, 2013).  In illegal coal mines, any occurrence of explosion are due to the accumulation of gas or dust that result from the lack of ventilation. In 2010, the State Administration of Coal published a policy that it is necessary to install six kinds of safety systems in all the coal mines in three years. On the contrary, Hu Xingdou, an economics profession of the Beijing Institute of Technology, states that this approach can only make local officials accountable because our countries neither have democracy basis, no independent labour union, nor any officially accountability system. “mining companies routinely ignore safety equipment and procedures, exceed the number of miners allowed in the mines at one time to boost production far beyond what is safe” (Hays, J, 2013).

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2.2 Occupational hazards

The underground coal working environment has caused significant detriment to miners’ body including the dust, noise, vibration, high temperature, high humidity, insalubrious and other occupational hazard elements, which was the most likely result in the occupational disease like pneumoconiosis. This disease was defined as any chronic lung disease caused by the inhalation of particles of coal, or similar substances and leading to the loss of lung function (Merriam-Webster, 2016). The main source of this disease is unclean air. The one of the most usual reason of unhealthiness air in coal mine is dust, which is released into the air from some operations such as blasting, drilling, shovelling coal and tipping. In the accordance with the statistics released by the Ministry of Health of China, the mortality rate of pneumoconiosis was 20%, ans the death toll was 4311, 5997, and 12208 in 208, 2009, 2010 individually, simultaneously occupied 78.79%, 79.95%, and 87.41% of whole occupational hazards cases (Chen, H, 2013). Most of the miners seemed to be older than their actual age, which was for the reason that the breathing air was filled with soot and drinking water was extracted through a simple purification from the mines as well as the vegetables grow from the land doped with cinder. The hearing loss is the obvious problem among the miners because they had to talk loudly within the closed undermine environment and amplified machine operation noisy.  According to the study of Liu, J and Xu, M (2016) in the Journal of Thoracic Disease, the one of the determinant element of hypertension and hearing disability was the occupational noise in terms of Chinese coal miners, which has the danger of rising amounts of systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP). The occupational hazards is a severe problem for the coal miners, which significantly harm the coal miners’ physical health, life, and even their next generation. In terms of the statistics, 54.08% of the total occupational hazards in whole working population was the coal miners’ occupational diseases, which was 12.6 times exceed that of the US (Chen, H, 2013).