Beijing Retirees Talk,
Liaoyang Protests Flare
By: Reuters
New York Times, March 28, 2002
BEIJING (Reuters) - About 100 retirees met with
managers of an ailing car plant in Beijing Thursday but failed to resolve
a dispute over years of overdue pension and health care payments,
witnesses said.
Meanwhile, in the northeastern ``rustbelt'' town of
Liaoyang, hundreds of workers protested for the morning in front of the
city government demanding the release of four labor leaders detained
earlier this month, a rights group said.
The Beijing pensioners dispersed around midday after
an informal meeting with managers inside the Beijing Automobile and
Motorcycle Works compound, said one witness.
The part-time factory employee said they had not
resolved the dispute and the retirees might return Friday.
``These problems can't be solved,'' he added.
More than 200 pensioners, many of them elderly, had
protested a day earlier, blocking a major thoroughfare in China's capital
and snarling traffic for several hours after they went to the plant for a
meeting but found themselves barred at the gates.
The gates were open Thursday morning and they milled
around inside and outside the plant grounds awaiting a chance to air
grievances over inadequate housing fees and medical compensation. One
retiree said they thought the company was working to solve the issue.
``Since 1999 they haven't reimbursed any of our
medicine costs,'' he said. ``1999, 2000, 2001 -- it's been three years.''
LIAOYANG PROTESTS RESUME
Discontent among retrenched workers has underscored
China's concerns over social stability in the sensitive run-up to a
leadership transition late this year, when President Jiang Zemin and other
senior leaders are due to step down from their Communist Party posts.
An editorial in the state-run China Daily Thursday
said a key challenge for China in coming years would be supporting and
caring for an aging population.
In China's northeast, thousands of protesters have
demonstrated in the city of Liaoyang and oil town of Daqing this month in
what some have called the biggest labor demonstrations since the
Communists took over in 1949.
Pressure on the Communist Party has increased as
millions have lost their jobs through painful reforms of the inefficient
state sector, and analysts predict more pain as the country's World Trade
Organization commitments force further job losses.
A spokesman for the New York-based China Labor Watch
said about 500 workers resumed their protest in the streets of Liaoyang in
Liaoning province, and in front of the city government after a two-day
break.
The workers, most of whom were from the city's
bankrupt ferro-alloy plant, demanded the release of four labor leaders who
were detained for ``illegally demonstrating'' two weeks ago.
Police and government officials in Liaoyang declined
comment.
There was no immediate word on whether protests in
Daqing, which have fallen off from a peak of more than 50,000 participants
two weeks ago, resumed their demonstrations.
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