Twenty-nine major cities along the Yangtze River held their
biennial meeting for economic development co-ordination earlier
this week.
The theme for this session was development of navigation
channels and tourism along the river.
However, an agreement to build a unified system for the
protection of migrant workers' rights seems to have a more profound
significance.
Under the agreement, the cities will scrap many discriminatory
requirements for migrant workers. They will also start to build
social security systems to cover expenses from migrant workers'
regular medical care and workplace injuries. Systems will also be
built to help migrant workers deal with disputes over issues such
as salary standards.
The agreement represented the first coordinated effort by a vast
area of the country to conscientiously protect a key factor for
their development human resources for the manufacturing and service
industries.
It is a wise move because low pay and poor welfare for migrant
workers have not only drawn increasing criticism based on moral
considerations, but have also become an obstacle for some regions
to get enough workers for their manufacturing businesses, as seen
in the labor shortage in the coastal areas in recent years.
Chinese cities' demand for migrant workers will definitely
increase with the rapid growth of manufacturing and service
industries. Competition among regions for labor, especially for
skilled and experienced workers, will certainly be unavoidable in
the near future.
The decision-makers of the cities along the Yangtze are wise
enough to see this and have taken action.
The move is likely to prompt similar steps by rival areas such
as the Pearl River Delta and the Bohai Rim.
That will be a very desirable scenario.
However, such regional effort should not substitute effort from
the central government, which should play the leading role in
enacting laws promoting welfare and rights of migrant workers and
in ensuring that the laws be effectively enforced.
It is also up to the central government to address some
fundamental causes that put migrant workers at a disadvantageous
position in the labor market - such as the residential permit
system, known as hukou in Chinese.
The hukou system, which divides the society into two worlds
(rural and urban), still prevent migrant workers from enjoying
welfare available only to city dwellers and their assimilation with
the urban population.
The policy-makers at the central level should work out a plan to
refine the hukou system for the eventual unification of
the rural and urban worlds.
(China Daily December 1, 2006)