China strikes hard on wage defaulting

GUANGZHOU, Dec. 15 (Xinhua) -- Forty-year-old migrant worker Li Yongfen felt high-spirited after hearing of a construction contractor sentenced to 10 months in jail and fined 20,000 yuan for refusing to pay his workers.

The case rekindled her hope of claiming back 6,000 yuan in overdue wages from her boss, who, apparently to avoid paying up, went missing recently.

Li, who left her poverty-stricken hometown in southwestern Sichuan province for work in the Pearl River Delta in southern Guangdong province, is one of China's 200 million migrant workers, a group for whom unpaid wages are a frequent thorny problem.

Some unpaid workers resort to radical measures. Last month, a photo of a half-naked migrant on the streets of Shenzhen in Guangdong in protest at wage default went viral on the Internet and once again brought the issue of unpaid wages into the spotlight.

Others have threatened suicide or have petitioned in groups in a bid to attract public attention and thus bring pressure to their employers.

As laborers prepare to spend earnings to reunite with families back home over Spring Festival, wage defaulting looks set to rear its ugly head once again.

But there is hope for these unfortunate workers. The Chinese government has vowed to crack down on malicious wage defaults to protect workers' rights and maintain social stability.

Yin Weimin, Minister of Human Resources and Social Security, said last week at a governmental convention that China would prioritize preventing and cleaning up wage defaults before the Spring Festival.

In February this year, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress passed an amendment to the Criminal Law to stipulate that malicious wage default is a crime and employers who intentionally withhold pay face up to seven years in jail.