State Council, Labour Ministry and Trade Union focus on migrant workers' issues
The State Council, China's cabinet, issued an opinion paper on solving problems regarding rural migrant workers and listed seven key issues to be tackled. Among the priority issues listed in this 31 January report were solving the low wage and wage arrears problems of migrant workers, regularizing their employment procedures, providing recruitment services and job training, and tackling migrant workers' social security problems, in particular access to labour insurance schemes. The paper also addressed the issue of providing public services, such as education and welfare payments, to migrant workers. It also suggested that there should be better systems in place to protect migrant workers' rights and that there should be a policy on the mobilization of the labour force from rural areas.
The Ministry of Labour and Social Security on 2 February announced the start of the “Three-year Action Plan for the Labour Contract” which will be used to implement the State Council's policies. Under this plan the ministry would endeavor to get all employers to sign labour contracts with their staff over the next three years. In addition, on 14 February, the ministry announced that China would eliminate those policies which restrict labour from the countryside seeking employment in urban areas.
In early March, the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) held a news conference in which it announced that the trade union would adopt 10 measures to ensure the protection of the legal rights of rural migrant workers. These included helping labour bureaus in local governments promote the use of labour contracts; assisting and guiding rural migrant workers entering into these contracts; coordinating the union's efforts with those in local labour bureaus to promote a prompt payment system in the construction industry so that workers receive their wages in full at the end of each month; strengthening occupational health and safety education among rural migrant workers; coordinating with the government's social security departments to bring rural migrant workers into the Work-related Insurance network; utilizing the union's resources to provide rural migrant workers with free legal assistance; providing necessary livelihood assistance to those rural migrant workers who are in desperate straits; and providing rural migrant workers with professional training and employment assistance.
Since the 1980s, China's vast rural labour force has been migrating in great numbers to urban areas seeking employment opportunities. In 2005, the Ministry of Labour and Social Security issued a report on a survey it had undertaken and estimated there were 120 million rural migrant workers on the move. Of those, about 100 million had found work in urban areas; about 60 million had left their home province to find work. Over the past 20 years, the labour rights of rural migrant workers have been severely abused by their employers. They worked long hours, received low pay, and lived and worked in sub-standard environments. The most common abuse seen has been the long delays in paying wages.
Since the start of 2003, the southeastern coastal areas of China have repeatedly reported a shortage of labour and the problem continues today. The opinion of local governments in these areas and experts in the labour field is that the shortage is due to efforts by enterprises operating in these areas to contain labour costs.
Employers suppress wage costs despite persistent labour shortages in coastal areas
A report published by China Textile on its website on 15 March 2006 revealed there continues to be a labour shortage in China's southeastern coastal provinces of Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang following the Chinese Lunar New Year period.
The latest statistics from the Labour and Social Security Bureau of Zhejiang province indicate that there is shortage of 500,000 workers, or about 35 percent of total demand for labour in that province. A survey undertaken by the government on the labour situation in enterprises in Quanzhou, the most prosperous city in Fujian province in terms of private commercial investment, found that the private enterprises had 160,000 unfilled positions. Industries reporting labour shortages included garments, footwear, textiles, packaging and other labour intensive industries. The garment industry, for example, reported the need for an additional 45,000 seamstresses. Central provinces, such as Jiangxi and Anhui, also reported varying levels of unfilled positions. This shows that the shortage of labour has worsened since 2003.
Wang Kaiming, deputy director of the Development Research Centre of the Fujian Provincial People's Government, believes that the labour shortage has revealed the defects and shortcomings in the growth model of China's labour intensive manufacturing industries. These industries were over-reliant on cheap labour, and suppressing labour costs has become a common (systemic) management method of these industries.
According to a survey done by the Quanzhou Municipal Labour and Social Security Bureau, labour costs account for just 9.63 percent of total costs of manufacturing industries in that city. Of the 11 industries participating in the survey, the garment, footwear and headgear industries had the highest labour costs at 19 percent of total costs, while the textile industry had the lowest with just six percent.
Wang believes that management in these industries, which are currently facing restrictions on sources of capital, are focused on energy and transportation costs and overlook the limitations on labour resources. They believe that labour costs are always one area where they can cut expenses. The previous excessively low wage rates have seriously perverted the balance between price and value of labour and are a direct cause of the labour shortage, according to Wang.
Sources: Official Chinese Government websites, China Textile Net