Chinese Gold Peak Workers Suffer from Cadmium Poisoning

A coalition of Hong Kong trade unions and NGOs is organising a series of actions around 13 September shareholder meeting of Hong Kong GP Battery Ltd, taking up the case of several hundred Chinese workers who suffer from serious cadmium-related health problems.

The company in question, Gold Peak Industrial Holding (GP), which employs the workers, operates several battery-producing factories Guangdong province, and sells the batteries, under different brand names world-wide.

Back in 2004, workers at the company had to engage in strike action to overcome GP’s refusal to carry out health tests. Workers were insistent on being tested after they learned about the dangers of working with cadmium, a toxic chemical, which can cause kidney failures and acute physical pain. Unaware of the dangerous consequences of working with the chemical, workers at the plants had been working with the toxic product with barely any protection.

Official results of the tests indicated that ten workers were suffering from cadmium poisoning and that at least 400 others had abnormally high levels of cadmium. Most of them are women. Victims suffer from severe aches and pains, headaches and hair loss. The ten workers diagnosed with the cadmium poisoning were in a much worse condition.

Three workers at a GP plant in Hong Kong have in the meantime also been diagnosed with cadmium poisoning, with another 21 having excessive cadmium levels. More recent reports mention a GP factory in Hunan province, where a subcontractor produces batteries using substandard health and safety measures.

In spite of all this, workers did not get appropriate treatment, nor were they awarded compensation. Worse still, workers from China, in September 2004, have been threatened for being responsible for “criminal responsibilities,” should they complain to the central authority in Beijing. Furthermore, many workers have complained about the insulting arrangement under which health tests take place, where women are forced to undress and take showers under surveillance of unidentified people.

A compensation fund, finally established in 2005, so far has only provided assistance to 4% of the 400 workers. The company seems to be much more interested in bringing organisations who talk about the scandal to court, as it currently does in Hong Kong, then to provide the affected workers fair and decent compensation, as is requested by these organisations.