2016-02-04
More than 100 migrant workers surrounded a government office and blocked highways in Qianjiang, in China’s central province of Hubei to protest unpaid wages, Feb. 2.
RFA
As millions of people brave the nationwide travel rush to make it home to spend Chinese New Year with their families, hundreds, possibly thousands of the nation’s army of migrant workers are being left stranded and penniless, as employers fail to pay their wages.
Protests have broken out at struggling factories around the country as workers try to put pressure on bosses to pay salaries that are often several months in arrears, workers told RFA.
Construction workers on a new residential complex gathered outside municipal government offices in Qianjiang, in the central province of Hubei, earlier this week, blocking the road before clashing with riot police sent to clear the area.
“The workers gathered outside the municipal government, blocking the road, but they said we were breaking the law and started shooting video of us,” a worker surnamed Zhou told RFA.
“Of course it isn’t exactly legal to block the traffic, and we didn’t want to, but we had been waiting there for two days after spending a week at the complaints office, where nobody would pay us any attention,” Zhou said.
“They owe us more than a year’s worth of wages,” he said. “We weren’t able to get our money last year, either.”
“About 100 of us went, but they sent in the riot police, who grabbed us and shoved us to the ground … They said that the people from the labor service center were causing trouble.”
“We couldn’t fight back … we have to think about the consequences,” Zhou said. “There are young and old back home [who depend on us].”
A worker surnamed Sun, who has been working on the Zhujia Chunqiu apartment complex since last year, said the developer had told workers they haven’t got any money to pay the workers with from the investor.
“You should send someone here to investigate; I can’t really explain it on the phone.”
A second worker on the same project surnamed Mai said workers are anxious to lay hands on their hard-earned cash ahead of Chinese New Year, when they are expected to travel home bearing cash gifts and new clothes for family members.
“Of course we’re worried; we just want to be paid what we are owed, to take it back home for our families,” Mai said.
“The workers are getting pretty heated about this now, which is why they blocked the road,” Mai said.
“Then the municipal authorities sent [police] in, because they saw it as ‘picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,'” he said.
“Some of the so-called trouble-makers were detained and taken to the police station, where they are being held for 15 days [as an administrative sentence],” Mai said.
Years of arrears
Labor activist Wu Lijuan, who has been helping the workers, said the dispute has dragged on for more than a year now.
“They were already trying to get their wages last year, and they are still trying to get them this year,” Wu told RFA. “This is the second Chinese New Year they have spent here [instead of going home].”
An official who answered the phone at the Qianjiang government offices said the government is in a mediation process with the workers.
“We are working to resolve this, but I don’t know the exact plan,” the official said.
Calls to the developer, Hubei Zhongqian Property Co., rang unanswered during office hours on Wednesday.
Elsewhere in Hubei, workers at an industrial plant in Wuxue city protested outside the municipal government offices in a similar dispute over unpaid wages, the Sichuan-based Tianwang rights website reported.
Meanwhile, workers at a construction project in the northern province of Shaanxi said they had clashed with riot police amid a dispute over unpaid wages totaling tens of millions of yuan.
“They haven’t paid out a single paycheck,” a worker surnamed Hu told RFA. However, a manager at the construction contractor surnamed Cao said they had yet to receive funds from the developer, who was waiting for the property to sell before paying contractors.
Cao said the contractor currently owes the migrant workers some 10 million yuan in total, but that the local government was dragging its feet over interim payments to workers.
“If we don’t kick up a fuss, they won’t pay them,” he said. “Everyone is waiting for the other party to pay up.”
A spokesman for the investor said the contractor had been slow to complete the project, and still had work to finish before it would release further funds.
In the end, the veiled threat was unnecessary. Simply by obeying the law and paying the employees what they were owed, Stella was able to do what hundreds of other business owners in the Pearl River Delta region had failed to do: close down a well-established factory with minimal struggles.
The Hong Kong-based rights group China Labour Bulletin (CLB) said that it is poor practice among employers rather than the economic slowdown that is behind a growing wave of similar protests across the country.
Citing the recent closure of the Stella shoe factory in the Pearl River Delta region, CLB said the factory closure had been achieved “with a minimum of fuss.”
“The … closure shows that it is not China’s economic slowdown per se that gives rise to worker protests, rather it is the response of employers to that slowdown and the way they treat their employees in difficult times that largely determines worker actions,” CLB said in an article on its website.
It said nearly all the recent strikes and protests in the southern province of Guangdong linked to factory closures, mergers and relocations “were caused by management’s blatant violation of employees’ labor rights” and a refusal to listen to legitimate grievances.
“These employers were able to get away with breaking the law because local government officials had no interest in enforcing the law,” CLB said, adding that local governments are more interested in protecting the interests of businesses.
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