Working Conditions

No end in sight for deadly accidents that claim thousands of lives

The case of Huayuan coalmine – Not a “natural disaster”.

For about two weeks until early September 2007, the Chinese official media had kept repeating that rescue work was “still in progress” for 172 miners who remained buried under nearly 100 metres of water inside the Huayuan coalmine, with a similar fate having befallen nine other workers in the Minggong mine, 10 kilometres away, in eastern China’s Shandong province. At last, on 6 September, a team of scientists announced that the mineworkers had no chance of survival. The miners had by then been in flooded pits for 20 days, in what was one of the worst accidents in China’s coal mining industry. A question arises as to what the official media meant by rescue work for the 181 miners that had been going on for a fortnight before their real fates were revealed.

The Huayuan mine was not equipped with pumps for rescue operations. It took several days for the devices to be borrowed and delivered from other cities and provinces. At last, 11 sets of pumps arrived and the official announcement on 20 August, three days after the accident, said it would take several weeks to extract all the water. In the whole of China, were there so few pumps available for mine rescue tasks? Faced with a large-scale disaster, was it not possible for local authorities or the State Administration of Work Safety to mobilize more machinery and people to carry out rescue operations? The authorities will have to come up with credible answers to these questions if they have any thoughts of forestalling the deaths of thousands of miners throughout China annually.

Preventable disaster

While the official media and local authorities had for a while in August claimed that the Huayuan mine accident was the result of a natural disaster, evidence soon emerged that it was an avoidable man-made catastrophe and even the official media has had to change its tune.

Miners and technical experts have indicated that the accidents in Shandong could have been prevented. Indeed many of the coal mining accidents around China are avoidable but as the country is pursuing rapid economic development, drawing on all the available energy sources it can tap, the concern for workers’ safety appears to receive low priority. Coal accounts for about 70 percent of China’s energy consumption and the country’s planners do not seem to envisage any rapid reduction of this heavy dependence. [NOTE 1]

It has been reported that as recently as in 2003, similar flooding of coalmines took place in Shandong province and that was by no means the first time it happened. It transpires that since 2002, the Huayuan mine had been flooded every year. In April 2007, the provincial authorities in charge of work safety had noted that Huayuan as well as 40 other mines had suffered “serious flooding” in 2006 and therefore required monitoring. And yet, miners said, they had seen no precautionary measures being carried out in the mine over the past year.

There were several warning signs that the Huayuan mine management ought to have heeded. Between 9 and 12 August, the total rainfall in Xintan city, where the Huayuan mine is located, reached 232 millimetres. On 16 August, the day before the disaster, local authorities had issued a “flood warning” and ordered the evacuation of people living in low-lying areas. On the morning of 17 August, some miners asked the management if they could cease work as it had rained heavily, but the reply they got was, “if you don’t want to work today, then don’t come back anymore.” [NOTE 2] Fearing loss of employment, most workers returned to the pits and about a fourth of them never saw their families again. It is illegal to deduct wages or threaten miners with dismissal when they refuse to work under dangerous circumstances, according to China’s Production Safety Law of 2002. [NOTE 3] However, that is yet another piece of safety legislation observed more in the breach.

Compensation

There was some foot-dragging as regards compensation for the victims at Huayuan. Initially the authorities sought to duck their responsibility, claiming the deaths resulted from a natural disaster. [NOTE 4] But on 22 September, the South China Morning Post reported that the Huayuan Coalmine Group had agreed to pay each family about 360,000 yuan, more than the usual 200,000 to 300,000 yuan for similar types of mine accidents. Families that agree not to insist on recovering the bodies were to get an additional 50,000 to 60,000 yuan. Victims' children would receive monthly subsidies of 600 to 800 yuan until the age of 18, but spouses and parents would receive no payment other than the lump sum. Nevertheless, the fact that a higher than usual amount had been decreed is widely seen as a move to douse strong feelings nationwide over the extent of the tragedy which occurred weeks before the scheduled commencement of the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in October 2007.

“Military-style” management

Why was it that the miners, who had long experience of working in the pits, failed to react to the rising waters and make a quick getaway, especially as reports say the flooding started as early as around 11 in the morning of 17 August? Perhaps the management style of the mine provides an answer.

A miner named Li Qun, who was among the 584 miners who fled the mine just on time, said, “I didn’t want to go that morning, but absence from work means a 100 Yuan fine or even lay-off, so I went.” [NOTE 5] Water started to leak in at about 11 am and the miners informed the management at noon, when they emerged for lunch. Other coalmines in the area stopped operating but Huayuan continued to run. At 2.30 pm, the water rose up the miners’ ankles. They called their supervisors on the surface but were told they needed to wait for instruction from above. By 4 pm, the water had reached waist-level and some miners decided to make a run for it, even though no notice was received from the mine management. Those reluctant to do so, perished. “Actually they could have escaped, but they were afraid of being fired… those 172 miners were mostly obedient workers and new employees,” said Li. “Those five hours were the buffer period, but nobody saw it as a crucial time to evacuate the pit. If the company would have let the workers go, the tragedy could have been avoided,” said another survivor.

The Huayuan mine used to be a state-owned enterprise until 2003, when it went through a “strategic bankruptcy” (an otherwise solvent firm precipitating the step with the specific purpose of avoiding future liability). Since then, a so-called military-style management was adopted by its director Zheng Zhenxiu. Miners were required to move in small groups and to salute the mine management or be fined 50 Yuan. Absence from work would result in a 100 to 200 Yuan fine, or even loss of job.

Miners also revealed that the company required them to work not less than 26 days a month and that each day of absence would mean a 10 percent deduction on wages, the average wage at the colliery being just 1,000 Yuan a month.

Overcrowding

Another safety violation that lay behind the disaster was that too many miners were obliged to work in the pits simultaneously. A 2006 guideline on improving coalmines’ employment practices [NOTE6] , issued jointly by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security and the State Administration of Work Safety among others, clearly states that each coalface should have no more than 100 miners working on it and that each mine can have no more than five coalfaces operating at one time. In other words, the mine was supposed to have just about 500 miners working at any given time. When the flooding happened, more than 700 were in the mine. One miner posted the following comment on an internet forum: “I am a miner from Xintai and I can tell that the collusion between business and government is very serious here.” [NOTE 7]

Illegal operation

A Hong Kong newspaper, the Ming Pao Daily, sent a reporter to see how coalmines operated in Shanxi province, another major coal producer, adjacent to Shandong. The reporter undertook the trip after the government called for full safety checkups of all mines in China -- a stock response that follows major accidents. A Shanxi resident told the reporter: “Most accidents take place in illegal, private coalmines. The local government either has no capacity to do frequent examination, or is bribed to turn a blind eye. Some cunning mine owners even employ migrant workers or people on the run from the law, so that when an accident happens, their families would not raise an alert and nobody would claim their bodies either. Any reporters seeking to investigate the incidents would get beaten up for their pains.” [NOTE 8] Even Chinese official entities have taken note of the penchant for cover-ups of such accidents in China, a typical example being a report in a Guangdong-based website in March 2007, which blandly said, “Coverup alleged in mine accidents”. [NOTE9] And in May, China Daily reported that a mine owner had received a life sentence for having ordered an “outrageous cover-up" of 21 deaths in a gas blast in Shanxi.[NOTE10]

The Ming Pao reporter further observed that in Shanxi, trucks from coalmines did not even carry vehicle licence number-plates and the drivers were dressed in camouflage outfits. A resident in the area told him, “those trucks are from the army. Even the police have no right to check them and they pay no tolls.”

Grim statistics

While the government claims that the death toll from coalmine accidents has dropped from some 6,000 annually some years ago to some 4,700 in 2006, the Shanxi residents’ observations indicated that the real figures may be much higher and that the well-connected mine owners manage to deflect attention from their misdeeds. Top Chinese officials periodically acknowledge the problem of poor safety for workers and even cite alarming statistics. Li Yizhong, who heads the General Administration of Work Safety, was quoted by official media in the aftermath of the Huayuan tragedy as saying the situation in China was grim: Although there was a 14 percent fall in the number of work-related accidents between January and August 2007, there were still 61,919 people killed nationwide in that period. [NOTE11]

Given China’s level of dependence on coal, the indifference to safety among well-connected or greedy proprietors, the fear of sudden unemployment goading the predominantly unorganized workers and possible complacency in the face of only gradually decreasing accident figures, the question arises as to when and indeed whether China’s coalmines will see an end to the regular and wholly avoidable accidents that claim the lives of thousands of its workers.

__________

IHLO
September 2007

Further reading:

Reuters: China mine executives investigated for disaster
The aftermath of the Huayuan disaster.

China Daily: Two miners crawl out after being trapped 130 hours
Short report of an escape form an illegal village mine – after rescue attempts had ended and rescuers failed to use adequate procedures for searching

China Labour Bulletin: Minister claims the government is not legally bound to give miners' families compensation after a "natural disaster."
Article on the official announcement that the Huayuan accident was a natural disaster. Shortly after the announcement (by Xinhua) it was denied by officials. The current official “definition” is still unknown.

China Labour Bulletin: A Journey into the Black Heart of Shanxi
An excellent overview of illegal mines in Shanxi Province.