In a first for China, a court has awarded compensation to 192 farmers who developed lung disease while employed as tunnel diggers, an official newspaper said yesterday.
The landmark ruling comes as Chinese legislators are planning to approve a new law to stem the toll of work-related accidents and diseases in China's often chronically unsafe factories and workplaces.
The class-action lawsuit filed by 192 farmers in the eastern province of Zhejiang was China's first seeking compensation for lung disease, the China Daily said.
They were hired in 1993 to dig a highway tunnel in China's northeast, the newspaper said. In their suit, the farmers claimed that the two engineering companies that hired them took no steps to protect them from silicon dust in the tunnel, the newspaper said.
Ten of the farmers have already died from lung disease, it said. In all, 196 were sickened and all but four of them filed suit five months ago against the companies and a man identified by the China Daily only by his name, Chen Yixiao.
An official at the court which ruled Wednesday that all 192 farmers be compensated said that Chen headed one of the engineering firms. The official, reached by telephone, gave only his surname, Pan.
The court, in the Zhejiang coastal city of Wenzhou, awarded 226,800 yuan (US$27,400) for each death, the China Daily said.
The sickest surviving farmers were awarded 389,600 yuan (US$47,050). The smallest award was for 38,960 yuan (US$4,700) -- still more than many Chinese farmers earn in 10 years.
The China Daily did not give a total for the compensation awarded. But it appeared to be considerably lower than the 200 million yuan (US$24.1 million) that earlier state media reports had said the farmers were seeking.
Industrial safety has suffered in China's pursuit of high economic growth.
Tens of thousands of people are killed each year in mine explosions, factory fires and building collapses. Often, farmers are employed as workers but given little or no training.
Human rights campaigners and labor activists say China's communist government is partly to blame because it does not allow workers to set up independent trade unions to protect their rights.
Chinese lawmakers meeting in Beijing are expected to give final approval Saturday for a new law that will require employers to do more to prevent industrial accidents and diseases, the newspaper said Wednesday.
The law will require employers to provide occupational health facilities and accident insurance for employees, the newspaper said. It gave no details.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
RSS