Authorities intervene to secure migrant wages
Print Edition
AHEAD of the recent Spring Festival holiday, the officials from administrations across Changning District joined together to make sure that migrant workers were able to return to their hometowns with the wages owed them by their employers.
During routine checks, the district’s Labor Security Supervision Squad uncovered one company that owed salaries to more than 200 employees.
Members of the squad teamed up with the Chang-ning District Human Resources and Social Security Bureau to investigate the case.
Inspectors worked overtime to collect evidence of unpaid wages. It was eventually ascertained that the company owed 307 workers salaries totaling more than 3 million yuan (US$458,000) during November and December.
Squad leaders confronted the company’s managers with this information. Representatives from the company explained that it was experiencing financial hardship and its executives were considering various strategies to pay wages owed to employees.
Paying owed wages
Members of the squad asked the company to calm its workers, while putting pressure on the managers to come up with the money as soon as possible.
Prompted and educated by the special group, the company distributed more than 3.35 million yuan to 229 workers in January.
Many of China’s migrant workers are promised payment for their services just before the Spring Festival.
Unfortunately, each year some migrants end up going home without the money owed to them, either through sheer mismanagement or fraud on the part of their bosses. In such cases, it can be difficult for migrants to claim what’s owed to them unless authorities intervene on their behalf.
Against this backdrop, district authorities took early action to uncover and mediate in cases where workers were stiffed.
Taking part in this initiative were officials from the district’s public security bureau, local trade unions, as well as public asset supervisors and authorities in charge of construction and transportation.
The city’s construction and transportation department, for instance, urged investors and company owners to give priority to paying workers’ salaries ahead of other obligations.
If such persuasions proved ineffective, the public security bureau was tasked with punishing those who withhold wages. It also intervenes in instances where withholding wages impacts public security.
Shanghai’s market supervision and administration bureau was there as well to close down unlicensed businesses, which in the past have been known to cheat their workers.
Meanwhile, the trade union is responsible for supervising cases of rights infringement involving migrant workers.
Their joint efforts paid off. Forty companies were found withholding migrant workers’ salaries, affecting 751 workers and involving unpaid salaries of 9.6 million yuan.
Together, inspections launched by Changning authorities covered a total of 2,034 companies, safeguarding the rights of more than 90,000 employees.
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