New plan seeks to ensure migrant workers get paid
- Source: Global Times
- [01:03 March 09 2010]
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By Zou Le
A migrant worker deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC) is calling on the government to set up a "security payment system" to tackle the rampant problem of migrant workers not getting paid.
Migrant workerturneddeputy Zhu Xueqin from Shanghai spoke for 230 million itinerant workers at this year's meeting of the NPC. Zhu's proposal to guarantee pay from deadbeat employers focused mainly on the catering and construction industries, which hire the majority of migrant workers.
Under her proposal, employers would be forced to establish a "security fund" at the local labor and social security department, which the authorities could use to pay migrant workers in case their employers fail to do so.
Zhu said that when she was back home in the outskirts of Shanghai during last year's Spring Festival, she discovered that many migrant workers from her hometown couldn't return home because their wages were not paid on time.
"Many migrant workers would feel ashamed to go back home if their hands were empty," Zhu said.
To prepare her proposal for this year's meeting, Zhu conducted extensive research.
"The problem of wages in arrears is particularly rampant in the construction industry," Zhu explained.
She pointed out that unlike other businesses where people are paid on a monthly basis, construction workers do not get their money until the end of a project.
"That worsens the problem because many construction projects are subcontracted to different individuals. Migrant workers end up having no place to ask for their money."
Zhu is not alone in her pursuit to recover migrant wages in arrears. Hu Xiaoyan, another NPC deputy who is also a migrant worker from Guangdong Province, introduced a similar proposal.
"It is a reasonable solution," Yang Heqing, head of the Labor and Economy Institute at the Capital University of Economics and Business, told the Global Times Monday.
Yang stressed that effective coordination is vital if such a proposal is to be successfully implemented.
A report by the AllChina Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) showed that unpaid wages for migrant workers hit 100 billion yuan ($14.6 billion) in 2006, with 70 percent of the money owed to migrants by the construction industry.
The severity of the situation has prompted some experts to call for a legal stipulation that withholding pay from migrant workers is a "criminal act."
"The penalty for withholding wages must be more severe than the benefits they get from not paying their workers," Zhang Ming, vice chairman of ACFTU, told China Central Television last week.
