On 1 March 2002 about 3,000 employees of the Daqing Petroleum Administration Bureau marched on the bureau's headquarters to protest the management's unilateral breach of their retrenchment contracts; by 4 March China Labour Bulletin put the crowd at over 50,000. The protests continued daily through March and April 2002 and were the first in the wave of large-scale worker unrest that spread to Liaoyang and Fushun in the same period. Human Rights Watch records the demonstrations as beginning on 1 March 2002, with workers raising severance payments, unpaid wages, pensions and welfare benefits.