Xu Zhihui, a pioneer and leader in the struggle of China’ workers to get compensation for the deadly lung disease, pneumoconiosis, has passed away. He was 55-years-old…Xu was one of around 180 construction workers from Leiyang in Hunan who made national headlines in the summer of 2009 when they travelled back to Shenzhen to demand compensation for the pneumoconiosis they had contracted while working as drillers and blasters on the city’s construction sites in the 1990s.

After staging several protests and threatening to sue to Shenzhen government, the majority of workers were awarded various levels of compensation…The compensation award was a major breakthrough at the time and inspired many other groups of migrant workers across China to pursue their demands for compensation as well…

However, for many of the Leiyang workers, the compensation they received was too little too late. In 2013, China Central Television’s News 1+1 returned to Leiyang to find that several workers had nothing left after paying off their debts and medical expenses…It is not known exactly how many of the original 180 Leiyang workers are still alive.