Trade union for migrant workers established in Hunan

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, January 02, 2004

Trade union for migrant workers established in Hunan

A trade union for local migrant workers has been set up in Xiangtan City in central China's Hunan Province.

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A trade union for local migrant workers has been set up in Xiangtan City in central China's Hunan Province.

The committee of the trade union is made up of 15 members, including 13 rural workers employed in construction enterprises.

The committee was elected Wednesday by 50 representatives chosen from 4,000 migrant workers.

Before the election, the municipal trade union sent an open letter describing the organization to many construction sites.

According to Wen Ditao, the elected president of the organization, the trade union will urge enterprises to pay workers on time, ensure production safety and improve workers' living conditions and help them obtain more opportunities for education and training.

The union will also try to launch labor emulation and promote technical innovation, he said.

Surplus rural laborer began to migrate to cities in the 1980s. Statistics from the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) show that China has about 94 million migrant workers, with an expected increase of 5 million every year.

The most common problem for migrant workers is that they often do not get paid on time and get fired easily as the employers usually do not sign contracts with them.

The ACFTU made it clear last August that Chinese rural migrant workers who work in cities away from their homes can join ACFTU branches nationwide.

Since then, trade unions for migrant workers have been established in several cities, including central China's Henan Province and Heilongjiang Province in the northeast.

(Source: Xinhua)

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