From: "Margaret" <margaret-AT-rie.net.au>
Subject: AUT: Chinese workers make their bosses 'redundant'
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2002 08:01:25 +1100


Times OnlineWorld News
March 19, 2002

Sacked Chinese murder their bosses
>From Oliver August in Xianning

WORKERS in China^Òs industrial heartland have started killing their bosses in
protest at mass redundancies.
In three recent, gruesome cases, managers at neighbouring state-owned
factories were murdered in disputes with their employees.
Sources say that labour-related killings have become widespread as reform
programmes try to shift millions of workers into the private sector. Among
the worst affected areas is Hubei province in central China, once the cradle
of Maoist heavy industry but now weighed down with thousands of dead-end
factories.
In Xianning, a town 100 miles south of the Yangtse River, unemployed workers
play cards at a decrepit chemical fibre factory while discussing its
impending bankruptcy. They seem to accept the murder of their boss by Xu
Yudong, a sacked colleague, as an almost normal by-product of Government
restructuring.
Many of Xianning^Òs residents share the frustrations of Xu, a 28-year-old
worker who was laid off last October. The manager of the fibre plant, Wang
Shihua, offered him a redundancy package worth £350 after eight years of
employment. Xu is said to have protested: ^ÓThe severance pay is too little.
It^Òs not even enough to start a small business. What am I going to do when I
get old?^Ô The manager agreed to increase the package to £500 but Xu was
still dissatisfied. When he began work at the plant in 1993, the Communist
Party was promising lifetime employment. Now, the Communists wanted to throw
him out with little hope of a new job.
Xu returned to Mr Wang^Òs office on October 31 to negotiate again but this
time he was armed with a fruit knife. Mr Wang rejected his renewed demands
and an enraged Xu pulled out his knife and stabbed him in the lower abdomen.
Mr Wang died in hospital the same day. Xu was sentenced to death three weeks
later and executed in January.
In the street outside the factory, grimy children play a game called Kill
the Boss in which they re-enact the manager^Òs death, pretending to stab and
throttle each other.
A worker called Xiang said that people had become used to eating from the
^Óiron rice bowl^Ô, the Chinese expression for a state-allocated job,
guaranteed for life. ^ÓThey don^Òt know anything else, so when that^Òs taken
away all of a sudden, they don^Òt know what to do with themselves,^Ô he said.
Mr Wang^Òs murder is one of three at Hubei^Òs state-owned enterprises in less
than six months. In Huanggang, two hours^Ò drive north of Xianning, the
19-year-old son of a man laid off from Huanggang Aluminium Group killed the
general manager who had sacked 10 per cent of the workforce.
Even the Xinhua state news agency, which usually plays down such incidents,
reported that the son was enraged at his father^Òs redundancy and by the
wealth of the general manager, an allusion to corrupt practices.
The agency also reported the killing of the deputy manager of a subsidiary
of Xiangfan Xiangyang Resources as he was closing the insolvent company. He,
too, was the victim of a sacked worker.
Beijing has admitted that unemployment is one of its biggest problems.
Although the official total is seven million, the real figure may be more
than 100 million.

Times Newspapers Ltd.


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