China Seizes Union Organizer

Chinese police detained a man who had been organizing factory workers’ efforts to form an independent union, sending him to a psychiatric hospital, a human rights group said Saturday.

Electrician Cao Maobing was committed Friday to Yancheng city’s No. 4 Psychiatric Hospital, said the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.

Cao had been leading unionization efforts by 300 workers at a state-owned silk factory in the eastern province of Jiangsu. His detention came a day after he spoke to Western media about his independent union campaign, the Hong Kong-based rights group said.

China’s government does not allow unions other than those overseen by the ruling Communist Party and has jailed many labor activists who sought to form independent unions and bodies to protect workers’ rights. Critics of the official unions say they are failing to safeguard workers from the wrenching dislocations brought on by economic reforms and widespread layoffs by ailing state-owned firms.

The silk factory in Jiangsu’s Funing county used to be profitable and employed 2,000 people, but corruption by factory leaders helped push it into the red, the rights group said. More than half the workers were laid off, and many were owed more than six months of wages, it said.

After workers protested to the county government without redress, Cao and others last month organized 300 workers to sign an appeal to local officials. They were asking for an independent union to investigate corruption at the factory and help it out of trouble, the rights group said.

Cao told the media that the workers wanted to form the union to protect their rights, not subvert Communist Party rule.