"Justice must help us recover our hard-earned money," said Liu, holding up a circular issued by the Supreme People's Court instructing subordinate courts to accelerate lawsuits brought by migrant workers to recover unpaid wages.

The document issued in August said local courts should deal promptly with lawsuits brought by migrant workers on unpaid wages. Once the cases are concluded, the courts should ensure that court verdicts are enforced in a timely manner.

But the litigation process is often too long and costly for the workers who, with big families to feed, sometimes cannot wait to move on to the next job.

"We don't encourage workers to go through arbitration and litigation. On the other hand, we warn their employers to pay wages in time to avoid escalating friction," said Liang Yongan, a lawyer at a legal assistance center for migrant workers in Shijiazhuang, capital of north China's Hebei Province.

Six Chinese localities including Beijing and Hebei have set up such centers this year to provide free legal counseling services to migrant workers.

Meanwhile, trade unions in 30 major Chinese cities have teamed up to help migrant workers claim their wages in arrears.

Early this year, the trade union in Chengdu, in southwest China's Sichuan Province, helped 18 Sichuan farmers solve a notorious labor dispute with an employer in Xinjiang.

Unable to get their wages after building a water storage facility, the 18 farmers tried to walk home to Sichuan in despair but got lost in the desert and one of them died.

With the help of its nationwide counterparts, the trade union from their hometown claimed their wages from the Xinjiang company and obtained jobs for the surviving 17 workers in Ningbo, a booming city in eastern Zhejiang Province.

China's trade unions in 2006 helped 2.8 million migrant workers claim 1.3 billion yuan (US$162.5 million) in wages, according to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU).

About 29.5 million peasant-turned migrant workers had joined trade unions by July 2006 and trade unions plan to recruit 8 million new members each year for the next three years, according to the ACFTU.

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