Did overwork kill migrant woman?
Dwight Daniels chinadaily.com.cn  Updated: 2005-11-04 08:48

In Japan, they call it karoshi (kah-roe-she). Peer pressure and trying to keep up with co-workers to increase market share at all costs drives some to die from overwork.

In China, they call it guo lao si (goa-lou-suh). It is usually brought on by poverty and uncaring workplaces that force people to work until they drop dead.

Such is the difference between developed and still-developing Asian nations. But the results are the same.

Despite the many strides China is making to bridge the staggering gap between rich and poor, one can find workers toiling in the worst of conditions under pressures most of us can only imagine.

Take the case of a 30-year-old woman in Guangzhou of South China's Guangdong Province for example. He Chunmei began work at the Guangzhou Huaxin Handicraft Factory just this past February.

By last Friday, the migrant from Southwest China's Sichuan Province had already been at her post 24 hours straight. At 7 in the morning, she collapsed and fell into coma.

Her younger brother, He Maojun, who works at the same factory, sent his sister to a local hospital. Doctors, sadly, were to pronounce her dead at 9:30 am.

He said his sister was generally a very healthy person, and under normal circumstances would have left the workplace at about 8 pm.

Because the factory is soon to move to new premises, however, its workers have been ordered to undertake round-the-clock shifts to finish existing consignments.

"Since October 24, all of us have had to work more than 15 hours a day," Zhang Zujun, one of the dead woman's saddened colleagues told a China Daily reporter.

The younger He said his older sister had worked more than 20 hours a day toward the end of last month, and had become very tired in the days before her death.

Though in retrospect he should have done something, he did not. If his sister had chosen to stop working so hard, her salary of just 1,000 yuan (US$123) a month - vital for their family's well being - would've been lost.

Think of it. That meager salary ought to have been earned for a normal month's work. Yet it was to be paid to this young woman for having worked 20-hour days for the sake of an employer that really didn't give a hoot about the consequences her labor would have on her and her family.

Now He Chunmei is gone.

Her brother did not look out for her. She herself had failed to take matters into her own hands. If she had, perhaps walking up to the company bosses to say, "Gee, you know I feel like I'm about to drop dead. Maybe I should be allowed to take time off," what would have been the consequences?

We all know the likely answer. "Take all the time off you want, Ms. He," the boss might've said. "You're fired."

The family is trying to negotiate some form of compensation with the factory. Meanwhile, the local hospital has not even yet had the courtesy to tell the family the official cause of Ms. He's death. This has Ms. He's relatives and local factory's workers with no other conclusion than that the young worker died from overwork.

Wu Ziyin, deputy director of the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Labor and Social Security, told China Daily an investigation is taking place.

But where is the Bureau of Labor and Social Security when companies such as this one routinely violate the labor laws of China? What, if anything, will actually be done to punish the factory (other than perhaps a slap on the wrist)?

The He family, the factory workers, the community, and Chinese workers deserve some answers.

Email:respondtodwight@gmail.com

(Dwight Daniels is an American. He works in Beijing as an editor, and teaches journalism at Renmin University)