A young rural worker who was beaten up last week and died while
claiming unpaid wages has aroused widespread indignation over the
plight of China's migrant millions. Many of the migrants are
anxious to be at home for the New Year.
Xie Hongsheng, a 28-year-old peasant from southwest China's Sichuan Province, died when he was beaten up
by a gang of strangers last Wednesday at a construction site in
northwestern Shaanxi Province. Xie was demanding immediate
payment of about 40,000 yuan (US$5,130). This sum of money was owed
to a dozen rural workers including himself and his father.
The team finished putting up a 14-storey apartment building for
Guanzhong Construction Engineering Co. Ltd. in mid November but
Geng Zhengjun, the project manager, had paid them only 11,000 yuan
(US$1,410).
Xie's father, 51-year-old Xie Youyuan, also took a pounding at
the hands of the thugs. He needs a few months to recuperate from a
cerebral concussion and bone fractures, said Dr. Gao Lijun at the
No. 3 Hospital of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in Baoji,
the city where they were working with about 50,000 other rural
workers.
Wages in arrears:?a chronic problem
Factories and construction companies who withhold workers' pay
have been a persistent problem in China in the last 10 years. Many
of the workers are migrants from rural areas. Until recently
they've had little bargaining power with management.
A survey of the Ministry of Agriculture shows China's migrant
worker population has grown to 114.9 million with an estimated 6.7
million new migrant workers this year. The central government has
ordered local officials to make sure workers are paid on time and
in full but enforcement is lax.
A recent investigation found that 980 employers in northwestern
Gansu Province owe 130 million yuan (US$16.6
million) in wages to some 130,000 migrant workers. Most of the
debtors are construction firms and restaurants. This is according
to the provincial labor and social security department that
investigated nearly 6,000 businesses in October and November to
make sure all migrants' wages are paid.
Meanwhile, the eastern province of Jiangxi has blacklisted 518 companies for
defaulting on 62,000 migrants' wages of some 24 million yuan
(US$3.1 million).
Anxious to bring home cash for the coming New Year holiday some
unpaid migrants threatened to jump off high rises while others
staged open protests. A group of 87 construction workers took their
bedrolls to the doorstep of the Beijing-based Chaolin Company this
week claiming 1.4 million yuan (US$180,000) of wages in
arrears.
The workers had built an office building for the company earlier
this year but were still waiting for 85 percent of their wages that
should have been paid upon completion of the project.
"I can't go home empty-handed. I won't be able to face my
family," said a migrant worker called Hu. He and his co-workers
spent 48 hours in the open air sleeping on thin bedding in the
freezing cold until local police and the Beijing Municipal Trade
Union intervened in the dispute Wednesday.
Mr. Deng, a Chaolin Company manager, complained the workers were
"making a fuss" but said the management was ready to solve the
dispute "as soon as possible". On Thursday the workers were still
waiting for a solution in their ramshackle, unheated sheds on the
northwestern outskirts of Beijing.
Seeking help
Unable to get their wages after years of pleading, 137
construction workers in central China's Hunan Province recently sued a local court for
failing to play its role.
Zhuzhou Intermediate People's Court solved a dispute between the
workers and their employer, a local real estate developer, over
860,000 yuan (US$110,260) of wages in arrears since 2002 and froze
the company's assets until all the default payments were made. But
the assets were illegally sold in 2005 putting an end to the
workers' last hope of getting their money.?
Only then was Liao Heping, legal representative of the
developer, arrested. He was forced to pay 100,000 yuan (US$12,820)
in cash but most of the money covered legal fees and very few
workers got paid.
The workers then prosecuted the court for breach of duty but
lost the lawsuit two weeks ago when the Hunan Provincial People's
Higher Court ruled that market disorder, rather than the
intermediate court, was to blame.
"We won't give up," said Liu Huihan, one of the three
representatives who've been acting as plaintiffs on behalf of the
workers. "Justice must help us recover our hard-earned money," said
Liu, holding up a circular issued by the Supreme People's Court
instructing subordinate courts to accelerate lawsuits brought by
migrant workers to recover unpaid wages.
The document issued in August said local courts should deal
promptly with lawsuits brought by migrant workers over unpaid
wages. Once the cases are concluded the courts should ensure that
court verdicts are enforced in a timely manner.
But the litigation process is often too long and costly for the
workers who, with big families to feed, sometimes can't wait to
move onto the next job.
"We don't encourage workers to go through arbitration and
litigation. On the other hand we warn their employers to pay wages
in time to avoid escalating friction," said Liang Yongan, a lawyer
at a legal assistance center for migrant workers in Shijiazhuang,
capital of north China's Hebei Province.
Six Chinese localities including Beijing and Hebei have set up
such centers this year to provide free legal counseling services to
migrant workers.
And trade unions in 30 major Chinese cities have teamed up to
help migrant workers claim their wages. Early this year the trade
union in Chengdu, in southwest China's Sichuan Province, helped 18 Sichuan farmers
solve a notorious labor dispute with an employer in Xinjiang. Unable to get their wages after
building a water storage facility the farmers tried to walk home to
Sichuan in despair but got lost in the desert and one of them
died.
With the help of its nationwide counterparts the trade union
from their hometown claimed their wages from the Xinjiang company
and obtained jobs for the 17 workers in Ningbo, a booming city in
eastern Zhejiang Province.
China's trade unions in 2006 helped 2.8 million migrant workers
claim 1.3 billion yuan (US$162.5 million) in wages, according to
the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU).
About 29.5 million peasant-turned migrant workers had joined
trade unions by July 2006 and they? plan to recruit 8 million
new members each year for the next three years, according to the
ACFTU.
(Xinhua News Agency December 31, 2006)