Through study of a collective labor dispute and lawsuit that occurred in Shenzhen, this book analyzes the problems that occurred and how it represents changes in laborers' functions, roles, and relative status in China's economy. The project received funding from Oslo Law School's Norway Center for Human Rights

Executive Summary
One of the key phenomena of China's reformatory opening-up and economic transformation is the serious demise of labor rights. In particular, for migrant workers numbering in the hundreds of millions and struggling at the fringes of society, their civic, political, economic, social and cultural rights as workers and ordinary citizens have been gravely violated and stripped away due to structural and systematic social problems. The impoverished countryside, the migrant workers it produces and the families of these peasantshave formed a giant social underclass and a social ecological chain of compounding powerlessness. When this group can not longer bear the weight of long series of vicious incidents caused by the loss of rights, violent reactions and eruptions are inevitable and pose a danger to public security and social development.
In April 2002, The Institute of Contemporary Observation (ICO)'s Workers' Support Center began to provide assistance to 188 Shenzhen construction workers in their labor dispute case against their employer. In the course of continuing investigation and legal aid, we discovered that this case of collective labor dispute had almost completely condensed the key issues of shifts in labor relationships in the past ten years of China's economic and social transformation. It also paints a picture of fundamental realities and factors in the loss and violation of Chinese workers' rights in these ten years.
The employer in this case was a state-owned construction company. Construction was the first and also most common industry to employ peasant workers in the reform ear. Besides being the most dangerous and grueling, it is also the industry with the most serious violations of labor rights. China's household registration ( huhou ) system is also a key factor contributing to the predicament the workers in this case faced regarding their status. We can take the position that the discriminatory treatment of peasants based on the household registration system is one of the main sources of social injustice.
Since the 1980s, when China started to institute its reform and opening-up policies, Chinese peasants have overcome institutional barriers to enter urban areas to take up work. However, policy makers and the government continued to emphasize the effective control of migrant population. As a result, local government and labor administration bureaus established employment intermediary agencies and labor mobility managementunits to oversee the growing flows of peasants and to take on the functions of sending out laborers and controlling labor mobility. The 188 peasant workers in this case were sent to Shenzhen by a government-run manpower and employment service agency. To provide services to the public is supposed to be a key function of the