Title: Help the China Labor Support Network
Author:
Section/SPIG: Occupational Health and Safety
Issue Date:
Garrett Brown
<gdbrown@igc.org>
Betty Szudy
<bszudy@uclink4.berkeley.edu>
We are writing to ask you to make a donation to help support the work of a new labor rights organization based in southern China, called the China Labor Support Network (CLSN). This group was recently founded by Juliana So, a longtime workers’ rights advocate whom many of you met in November 2003 at the APHA Annual Meeting in San Francisco.
The China Labor Support Network is establishing a workers’ support center in China’s Pearl River Delta, where there are more than 40 million migrant workers employed by transnational corporations in huge factories. The Network will focus on three key areas: 1) designing and conducting training for women organizers on occupational health and safety and participatory training techniques; 2) promoting occupational health and safety through delivery of awareness trainings to workers and establishment of an occupational health resource library; and 3) facilitating ongoing support groups for workers who have been seriously injured on the job and/or disabled by occupational disease.
The work of the China Labor Support Network is invaluable. Many young workers in southern China factories have lost fingers or limbs as the result of serious industrial accidents. Others have developed occupational diseases as a result of exposure to chemicals like benzene and toluene. Establishing an organization that will offer practical support and services for workers who are injured, as well as conducting prevention training, is critical at this time of rapid factory expansion in China.
Juliana So has already raised “seed money” that has allowed her to begin the work of the new organization. She has established a governing board of occupational health educators and others who will oversee the fundraising and operation of the project. She now needs additional funds to recruit and hire organizing staff and build the resources of the organization.
Juliana previously worked for four years with the Chinese Working Women Network, where she coordinated the “Women’s Health Express,” a mobile working women’s service center that traveled throughout the Pearl River Delta providing information and training to young women in factories. Her commitment to occupational health and improving the lives of women workers was recently honored by APHA. She received the International Activist award from the association’s Occupational Health and Safety Section at last fall’s annual conference.
Many of you have generously supported the work of southern China NGO’s in the past. We are asking you again to take out your checkbook and write a check to help expand the work of the China Labor Support Network. Your contribution in the amount of $35, $50, $100 or whatever you can afford, is tax-deductible and will help bring vital information and services to thousands of young working women in China.
Please make your check out to the “New Ways to Work Foundation” (IRS: #94-2835779 and California: #1098796), and mail it to P.O. Box 124, Berkeley, CA 94701-0124. If you can send your donation by May 1st, it will help ensure the summer programs begin as planned.
On behalf of Juliana So, the China Labor Support Network, and the young workers in southern China that they will assist, we thank you in advance for your support.
Sincerely,
Betty Szudy, Labor Occupational Health Program, UC Berkeley
Garrett Brown, Maquiladora Health & Safety Support Network
Pam Tau Lee, Labor Occupational Health Program, UC Berkeley