For three days they barricaded streets and organized to defend themselves against police and several hundred army troops dispatched to the area, in what the Washington Post calls "one of the most explosive known incidents of urban labor unrest in years." According to an April 4 BBC report, the action occurred in February but was hushed up by the Chinese government.

The mine, which was closed last November, produced molybdenum for the electronics and aerospace industries. This state-owned enterprise was the country's largest nonferrous mine. Many workers there had not been paid since early last year.

"It's so obvious that the leaders are [cheating] us," said Wang Jian, 56, who has worked at the mine since he was 19. "They have sold parts of the mine to their friends. They have sold all the mine's trucks. But we haven't seen this money. There is no open accounting."

In February, the mine announced a severance package that would pay each worker $68 for each year worked at the mine, but workers would have to pay back large portions of this to cover social security and health insurance. Zhang Jianguo, 53, who together with his wife worked 35 years at the mine, received $2,380, but after subtracting these deductions ended up with only $500.

Coal miners in the southwestern province of Sichuan have also been organizing protests against layoffs. Some 500 miners there blocked rail traffic on the Guiyang-Kunming railway for several hours on April 1 after it was announced that the Liuzhi mine where they worked had gone bankrupt, threatening the jobs of 40,000 people.

At least 10 similar protests have erupted on the railway lines in recent months. Last December some 10,000 workers stopped rail traffic for half a day.

Labor Minister Zhang Zuoji said last month that 11.5 million workers could loss their jobs by the end of the year as the Stalinist-led government continues its policy of introducing "market reforms" in the workers state. The World Bank estimates that of the 140 million workers in the state-owned sector, as many as 35 percent could be fired.  
 
 
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