Xie Hongsheng, a 28-year-old peasant from southwest China's Sichuan Province, died on the spot when he was beaten up by a gang of strangers last Wednesday at a construction site in northwestern Shaanxi Province. Xie was demanding immediate payment of about 40,000 yuan (US$5,130), a sum owed to a dozen rural workers including himself and his father.

The team finished building a 14-storey apartment building for Guanzhong Construction Engineering Co. Ltd. in mid November but Geng Zhengjun, the project manager, had paid them only 11,000 yuan (US$1,410).

Xie's father, 51-year-old Xie Youyuan, also took a pounding at the hands of the thugs. He needs a few months to recuperate from a cerebral concussion and bone fractures, said Dr. Gao Lijun at the No. 3 Hospital of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in Baoji, the city where they were working with about 50,000 other rural workers.

Wages In Arrears: A Chronic Problem

Factories and construction companies who withhold workers' pay have been a persistent problem in China in the last 10 years. Many of the workers are migrants from rural areas. Until recently, they have had little bargaining power with management.

A survey of the Ministry of Agriculture shows China's migrant worker population has grown to 114.9 million with an estimated 6.7 million new migrant workers this year. The central government has ordered local officials to make sure workers are paid on time and in full, but enforcement is lax.

A recent investigation found that 980 employers in northwestern Gansu Province owe 130 million yuan (US$16.6 million) of wages to some 130,000 migrant workers. Most of the debtors are construction firms and restaurants, according to the provincial labor and social security department that investigated nearly 6,000 businesses in October and November to make sure all migrants' wages are paid.

Meanwhile, the eastern province of Jiangxi has blacklisted 518 companies for defaulting on 62,000 migrants' wages worth some 24 million yuan (US$3.1 million).

Anxious to bring home cash for the coming new year holiday, some unpaid migrants threatened to jump off high rises while others staged open protests. A group of 87 construction workers took their bedrolls to the doorstep of the Beijing-based Chaolin Company this week, claiming 1.4 million yuan (US$180,000) of wages in arrears.

The workers had built an office building for the company earlier this year but were still waiting for 85 percent of their wages that should have been paid upon completion of the project.

"I can't go home empty-handed. I won't be able to face my family," said a migrant worker called Hu. Hu and his co-workers spent 48 hours in the open air, sleeping on thin bedding in the freezing cold, until local police and the Beijing Municipal Trade Union intervened in the dispute Wednesday.

Mr. Deng, a Chaolin Company manager, complained the workers were "making a fuss", but said the management was ready to solve the dispute "as soon as possible". On Thursday, the workers were still waiting for a solution in their ramshackle, unheated sheds on the northwestern outskirts of Beijing.

Seeking Help

Unable to get their wages after years of pleading, 137 construction workers in central China's Hunan Province recently sued a local court for failing to play its role.

Zhuzhou Intermediate People's Court solved a dispute between the workers and their employer, a local real estate developer, over 860,000 yuan (US$110,260) of wages in arrears since 2002, and put a freeze order on the company's assets until all the default payments were made.

But the assets were illegally sold in 2005, shredding the workers' last hope of getting their money back.

Only then was Liao Heping, legal representative of the developer, arrested. He was forced to pay 100,000 yuan (US$12,820) in cash, but most of the money covered legal fees and very few workers got paid.

The workers then prosecuted the court for breach of duty, but lost the lawsuit two weeks ago, when the Hunan Provincial People's Higher Court ruled that market disorder, rather than the intermediate court, was to blame.

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