Chinese Migrant Workers’ Dream of Getting Out of Poverty by Seeking Wages as Chinese New Year Approaches

Located in Wushan County, Tianshui City, Gansu Province, “Wushan Gansu Huaxia Spring and Autumn (Tianshui. Iron cage mountain) cultural tourism Film and Television base” construction project, workers excavated artificial lake and buried pipelines. (Photo courtesy: He Lin)

As the Chinese New Year approaches, nearly 300 million migrant workers in China are looking forward to going Home for reunion. However, with the fear of a resurgence of the New Guinea virus, nearly 30 provinces are advocating a “New Year in Place” initiative, making it more difficult for migrant workers to return to their hometowns due to Epidemic prevention measures. However, even if they can’t go home, most of them can still spend the New Year with peace of mind after getting their wages and ensuring that their families are well fed. However, there is a huge group of migrant workers who are worried about the New Year holidays and cannot drink safe water. Because they are maliciously owed wages and have no way to collect them.

This group of migrant workers is not only in a difficult situation, but also several people in their hometowns are anxiously “waiting for rice”. This is exactly the Life of He Lin and Qiu Yuping from Gansu Province in the past two years, and their molehill life also highlights that the two major achievements of the government from the central to the local levels, namely “eradicating unpaid wages” and “eradicating poverty”, fall far short of reality. The reality is that there is a huge discrepancy between the two achievements of the government at all levels, from the central government to the local government.

Gansu migrant workers’ road to pay

He Lin, 36, comes from rural Lintao County, Gansu Province, where his 89-year-old grandmother, 63-year-old mother, daughter-in-law, 6-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter, all of whom are supported by him, are the “mainstay” of his Family. He said in an interview with the Voice of America that he has been working outside the home since 2000 and has never worked in agriculture, mostly doing odd jobs as a construction worker for more than a decade. Although it is hard manual work, he gradually achieved an annual income of 100,000 yuan (about $15,600), “enough for a family of six to live a simple life.

Thanks to China’s economic growth, He Lin’s family of six has an annual per capita income of about 17,000 RMB (about US$2,645), which is far above China’s poverty line (4,000 RMB (about US$622) per capita per year) and has long since been lifted out of poverty. However, his family is still a long way from China’s annual per capita income of nearly 30,000 yuan (about $4,667), so he is still considered to be a disadvantaged working class at the bottom of the social ladder, but, he says, having never studied, he is content.

Located in Wushan County, Tianshui City, Gansu Province, “Wushan Gansu Huaxia Spring and Autumn (Tianshui. Iron cage mountain) cultural tourism film and television base” construction project, workers excavated artificial lake and buried pipelines. (Photo courtesy: He Lin)

Until July 2018, he and a group of nearly 100 migrant workers took over a project called “Wushan Gansu Huaxia Spring and Autumn (Tianshui.) Cultural Tourism Film and Television Base” in Wushan County, Tianshui City, Gansu Province. Iron cage mountain) cultural tourism film and television base” of the construction project, the situation has changed. Who had expected to do most of the work, when it came to the settlement of wages, the construction side of Gansu Huaxia Spring Company firstly, the money has not come down, have to wait until after the year to pay a total of 5 million yuan of the project (including farmers’ wages 3.8 million yuan), but after the New Year, the person in charge of Lei Shuangde but overnight disappeared, people can not be found, wages are not accounted for, the whole project is also delayed to date.

Because they are the representatives of the workers, He Lin and other people have been reporting, collecting money and defending their rights, but nothing has been achieved in two years. He Lin said that the government at all levels wasted a lot of their manpower and financial resources and caused great mental loss. He Lin can’t even care about his own work, because as long as he goes to work, there will be workers underneath the clamor for his money, so he can’t work, and therefore, directly led to his personal income for two years almost to zero, effectively “back to poverty”, the original loan can’t be repaid, even the family of five people’s livelihood is also cut off, but also Have to rely on friends to borrow money, otherwise it is impossible to continue.

He said: “The family is now waiting for the rice to fall into the pot! There is no way to live, there is no way to live a normal life. (I) have been asking for money and begging for money for the past two years.”

Another migrant worker representative is 30-year-old Qiu Yuping, who comes from rural Linxia City, Gansu Province, and has two Parents, a daughter-in-law and a 5-year-old son to support in his hometown. Because his parents still have 2 or 3 mu of fields in his hometown, he said that the family should not die of hunger.

Starvation but high debt

Located in Wushan County, Tianshui City, Gansu Province, “Wushan Gansu Huaxia Spring and Autumn (Tianshui. Iron cage mountain) cultural tourism film and television base” construction project, workers excavated artificial lake and buried pipelines. (Photo courtesy: He Lin)

Like He Lin, Qiu Yuping is also less than 20 years old to go out to work so far, more than a decade, he said, also achieved an annual income of 60,000 to 70,000 yuan level, greatly improving the family situation. Only, since the beginning of 2019, because of stand up to deal with the Tianshui Tie Cang Shan unpaid wages incident, also consumed a lot of Qiu Yuping’s heart and Time, so that he can only take advantage of his free time to drive a car, playing short-term construction odd jobs. He said his income has been cut in half over the past two years, and he can’t pay for his expenses back home, so he can only borrow money from online loans to get by. In the past two years, he said, he has accumulated nearly 50,000 yuan in debt.

Qiu Yuping told the Voice of America, “Now that I’m in so much debt and can’t make any money, I’ve been living like this. Sometimes, it’s especially hard to …… It’s freezing on our side, and we have no place to work, so we have to come up here (to the county government) and wait for money. I’m sorry! I hope that the government will hurry up and help us to settle this wage, we will go home for the New Year!

After the Spring Festival in 2019, He Lin and Qiu Yu Ping, a group of five people representing nearly 100 migrant workers, officially reported to the Wushan County Labor Inspection Brigade to carry out the process of defending the rights of this unpaid wages. But two years down the road, He Lin said, the provincial, county and municipal governments “pushing each other to the ball”, so they are tired of running around between the relevant units at all levels, also in the letter and petition department to hold more than ten coordination meetings, and from time to time personally on the county government “squatting”, hoping that a leading senior officials can step in to do justice for them. But he said, week after week to urge, week after week to get the answer is “under investigation”, sometimes go to the county government and wait for the results, waiting for a whole day, but no one out to deal with them. When they are lucky, they can ask and talk to the county government personnel who happen to be in and out, but often when they disagree, the impatient leaders or officials will call the public security, take them to the police station to make a statement and lock them up for a whole day before they are released to go home, so they feel helpless and angry that “they can’t call every day, they can’t call the ground”.

According to He Lin, this project was originally a local government investment, social financing projects, that is, the responsibility for the settlement of wages should be in the private developers. But they are in the process of rights, but one after another found that the private developers only in the local Development and Reform Commission for the record, equivalent to, the project is likely to belong to no official government project, nor issued construction permits, not to mention the environmental assessment on the start of the “three no projects. Therefore, He Lin believes that the Wushan County government has allowed the illegal project to start, and has not done a good job of guaranteeing the payment of farmers’ wages or the source of funds such as wage deposits, and has not done its duty of supervision, and has also committed malpractice, and should be held responsible.

Tianshui City in Gansu Province is a city without unpaid wages?

Located in Wushan County, Tianshui City, Gansu Province, “Wushan Gansu Huaxia Spring and Autumn (Tianshui. Tie Ceng Shan) cultural tourism film and television base” construction project, workers excavated artificial lake and buried pipelines. (Photo courtesy: He Lin)

Tianshui City, Gansu Province, is building a national city without unpaid wages, and He Lin and his party’s unpaid wages case is now supervised by the city, the deputy mayor in charge of supervision, has also been reported to the relevant departments of the provincial government. But He Lin said the county government is now not only shirking its responsibilities, unwilling to take up the supervision, both hands, but also urged them to go to court to sue the developers themselves. He said that the lawsuit is not only time-consuming, they are more intimidated by the lack of Education, the road to defend their rights is more difficult than the blue sky.

In response to He Lin’s query, the Voice of America called the relevant units at all levels in Gansu Province, hoping to get further relevant statements. But the Wushan County Labor Bureau, surnamed Ma, only responded: “In the investigation, after verification, will reply.” Hu Lixia of Wushan Propaganda Department said, “Migrant workers will not be unable to seek help, even the county mayor is helping to coordinate this matter.” The Wushan County Bureau of Letters and Visits personnel, after listening to the Voice of America’s case, transferred to the contractor, but the contractor seemed to repeatedly pretend to pretend that there was a problem with the phone line and could not conduct a conversation, which was amusing. As for the official surnamed Luo from the Tianshui Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, although he patiently explained, he repeated the fact that “the case is sponsored by Wushan County and it is the supervising unit”, but he could not say anything about the matters that were supervised.

He Wei, the vice governor of Gansu Province, held a special meeting at the end of last year to promote the winter action to eradicate unpaid wages, claiming to implement the State Council’s major deployment of “two zeroes”, that is, the cases of defaulted wages of migrant workers in government-invested projects, state-owned enterprise projects and various government-social capital cooperation projects occurring in 2020 will be zeroed by the end of 2020. All cases of defaulted wages will be cleared by the end of 2020, and other cases of defaulted wages will be dynamically cleared by the Spring Festival in 2021, so as to fully promote the creation of a city without defaulted wages.

But the wages of He Lin and 100 other migrant workers have been in arrears for two years, can they really be cleared by the Spring Festival this year?

Geoffrey Crothall, spokesman for the Hong Kong-based labor group China Labor Bulletin, said in an interview with the Voice of America that the Chinese government has claimed year after year that it wants to eradicate unpaid wages and has introduced many laws and policies, but for nearly 20 years, workers have been owed wages without interruption before the Chinese New Year.

Wage arrears play out year after year

According to China Labor News, they have tracked nearly 600 incidents of collective action by workers nationwide from the Internet since the second half of last year. Guo Zhanrui said at least 70 percent of them were collective protests to collect unpaid wages, each involving groups of about 100 migrant workers, and the total wages owed amounted to millions of yuan.

He said, “The main (delinquencies) are in the construction industry, where the nature of subcontracting at different levels means no one is ultimately responsible for payment. Meanwhile, as China’s private economy grows, many industries go through boom and bust cycles repeatedly. Once the boom is over, workers are vulnerable to unpaid wages. These are two major areas that the (Chinese) government has to actively address, and just issuing orders and instructions is not going to help.”

Guo Zhanrui said many factory employees in China were laid off in the first half of last year due to the impact of the epidemic and factory closures. Fortunately, the second half of the year saw the rise of job opportunities for Food delivery workers, and it is estimated that 500,000 people should quickly join this new industry, but also because of a momentary increase in manpower supply, resulting in lower wage levels. Overall, he said, China’s salary growth is flat. As the electronics industry recovers, factory workers are returning to work on the production line, but workers are forced to sign shorter-term contracts, but the daily working hours are relatively long, and the working environment and pay levels have not improved for them, but may worsen.